WEST TOWN — If you can't find the right words, why not hire a professional to go in search of them for you?
That's the idea behind Pixiehammer Press, a custom letter-writing service that's the newest venture from two Chicago writers.
Lindsay Muscato and Ian Belknap, the duo behind Hideout live lit show Write Club, compose letters of love, betrayal, apology and advice, made-to-order and on-the-spot, on Muscato's collection of vintage typewriters.
"It lends itself to the big stuff," said Belknap, of Albany Park. "There's something about the one-of-a-kind nature of these that grants people this license to do that monumental level of profession of feeling for someone."
Kyla Gardner says the quicker the people open up, the better the letters are:
Muscato, of Ravenswood, helped compose the first "I love you" declaration between a husband and wife of 10 years, and she had the woman walk around the table to punch the final keys herself.
Belknap wrote an apology to the entire Navajo nation, on behalf of a woman admiring of Native American culture but heartbroken after working on a reservation.
They've produced words of advice for babies yet unborn, and "I'm just really glad we met" tokens of appreciation between new couples.
"It's a different way to use your writing brain," Muscato said. "It's like getting in the mind of the person you are writing for and trying to tease some extra meaning out of it, or get the sense of what that person really wants to convey."
The origins of the Pixiehammer name might be obvious to anyone who personally knows the writers, Belknap said. Muscato is the "Pixie" half, the bearer of good news. Belknap is, well, the "one who [brings] down the hammer." They've since done away with the love vs. hate binary (inspired by the competitive nature of Write Club), as there are more requests for letters with positive sentiments than negative.
Through their Etsy shop, for $9.75 per letter, Belknap or Muscato will interview the customer by phone, compose the letter and mail it to the recipient. At their live appearances — most recently, Printers Ball in West Town, with writer Katie Prout filling in for Belknap, and coming up next, Pitchfork Music Festival — the interviews are conducted on the spot, and the letters composed within 15 minutes. Then it's up to the customer to actually mail the message.
With the explosion of the live lit scene in Chicago in recent years, "the transformative power of storytelling," has become a cliche, Belknap said. But Pixiehammer's "live writ," if you will, has demonstrated that power more than either Muscato or Belknap expected.
The woman who commissioned the Navajo apology later messaged Belknap to tell him that she couldn't stop thinking about the letter, and she was inspired to begin writing about her experiences herself.
"It doesn’t have to be a work of genius. It is a revelation to them: another individual person taking on a creative work on their behalf and doing it well, some approximation of what they could say themselves," Belknap said. "It provides a jolt to everybody involved. It's restoring for me, as an old heap of a wreck of a cynic."
Muscato likens the experience to therapy.
"People are really appreciative," she said. "It's not often that someone listens to you and then reflects yourself back to you in a way that is even more artistic than you would have said it yourself. It's cool that that's a possibility."
Ever since a line of customers persisted for three hours at Pixiehammer's first show at the Museum of Contemporary Art in February (and Muscato accordingly suffered from typewriter finger fatigue), interest in the work hasn't subsided.
In the digital age, who doesn't want a piece of mail, a typewritten letter, a message that can't be scrolled past, "hidden" or deleted?
"It re-ignites, on all sides, the capacity for meaningful communication, rather than the sort of sketchy overview of what passes for communication too often," Belknap said.
It's "a tangible thing," Muscato said. "I think that's kind of lost these days. You get a lot of communication, but not a lot of communication that you really keep."
Pixiehammer Press will appear from 2-7 p.m. Saturday and Sunday in the Book Fort at Pitchfork Music Festival in Union Park. To learn more about Pixiehammer Press, find it on Facebook or Etsy.
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