ABRACADABRA
The Spirit of the Written Word

She is the typographic queen of grandiloquence, the supreme communicator and record keeper. Her throne is the Printing press. Her boudoir is the library. Her sword is a pen. She binds the melody to the sheet music, affixes the affection to the love letter and sticks the sizzle to the sext. She holds the world record for speed reading and knows everything that has ever been written. She has read your diary and dialed every number in the phone book. She types 213 words per minute and won the Ultimate Spelling Bee Championship with the word Logorrhea. She collects dead languages and heralds new words. (What better way to suggest neologisms than with an interobang‽) Her encyclopaedic vocabulary scribes ransom notes in Invisible ink. She dreams of cryptic crossword puzzles. Her favorite font is hieroglyphic. She signs her name in blood. She is the address on the envelope and the invitation inside. She’s the X that marks the spot, the exclamation point at the end of the sentence, the ding the end of the line.

Abracadabra: The Spirit of the Written Word is made of typographic objects including typewriter parts and pen nibs. Her face is covered with the gilded edges of pages from a dictionary. When the titles of the books in her headdress are read in sequence a poem emerges. Hidden in her headdress is letterpress type that spells Abracadabra, a magic word with ambiguous etymology. It translates from Aramaic as “I create as I speak“ or “I create like the word”. In Hebrew it translates as “I will create” and “As spoken”.