The Daily Lyric
The other morning I went to collect the Le Document mail and from the post bag and among the usual rubbish we receive I noticed, with curiosity, this A5 brown envelope addressed to me from Nat Forman (I knew it was from Nat because he had written his name in large felt-tip marker pen across the back of the envelope.)
Once I had opened the envelope, I discovered an A3 folded document with a paper wrap around. What I held in my hands was a colour photocopy of a hand written newspaper based on popular music lyrics to express different sections of a newspaper ranging from the arts page to the opinion to the TV listings.
Here is an excerpt from the cover letter from Nat:
Some time ago, I thought of making a hand-written newspaper, whose text is entirely comprised of words from songs. But there were so many reasons not to make it, I made a list:
It's a stupid and pointless idea
I can never predict how much space my hand lettering will take up, so it’s impossible to know exactly how many songs you can fit on a page.
Whatever songs I included, I knew it was very likely I would immediately think of a better one, or, even worse, whoever read it would.
It's a stupid and pointless idea
But I went ahead and made it anyway, in early April this year. The original texts are hand written on A3 sheets of card, held together with brown linen cloth tape.
I had always thought of printing a "trade edition", and so in late June, I printed 5 copies, of which I have only sent out 3. The band around the paper shows attempts to design a logo for The Daily Lyric. it is meant to look like a lyre, but frankly I think they look more like hairy onions, so I rejected for it inclusion in the paper. I noticed a lot of mistakes in the text, and made an Errata list, which I planned to write out by hand. But the likelihood of making further mistakes meant that so far I have only typed it out – the only printed copy of it to date is also enclosed in the envelope.
So there you have it. I’ve taken a few photos so you can get a sense of the paper looks like. Here in the Le Document office, we love it and I hope you do too. It’s a real labour of love and I hope we see another issue at some stage in the future.
If you want any further info on the paper, please contact Nat here.
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