Discredited words

Writing with a mobile phone is a pain. Writing anything at all, but especially texts of a certain length, be they books, articles, or whatsapps long enough to function as modern-day epistles. Surely someone will tell me that to write books you don't need anything digital, that paper and pencil are enough; it should be like that, but that is not the case for someone like me, for whom the computer is an indispensable appendix to my work. Once I tried writing a story by hand and it was a fiasco: I am too used to deleting, changing, reordering. The thing is that this summer I had to write with my mobile phone; I was away and hadn't brought my laptop (I didn't want to lug it around for weeks for just a couple of articles: space in a cabin-sized suitcase is too precious), so I used a wireless keyboard that is a marvel: it weighs little, takes up little space, and is comfortable enough to write with. However, the mobile phone screen is tiny and my presbyopic eyesight doesn't help, so despite the keyboard, the whole thing was a bit annoying. I was thinking about all this the other day when I saw one of those foldable phones with a spaceship name –Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra– which has a huge eight-inch screen. Wow. Having one would be like carrying a laptop in your pocket at all times, ready to be drawn. Bam. I fantasized for a while (not long) about the idea: it would be great for writing on the go, and also for reading, which is another thing we writers do to a somewhat pathological degree (I have read entire books on the tiny mobile screen); it would be ideal for writing and illustrating with photos the travel diary that I have been thinking about doing for years. I fantasized until I saw the price: more than two thousand euros. What a chimera. But fantasy has no stopping point and, just as water always finds a path to flow down if its way is blocked, illusions also drag whatever is necessary to keep moving forward. And what if they gave it to me? I am not a influencer, of course, I already know; my celebrity is like that of a breadcrumb embedded in the sole of Lamine Yamal's shoe. Like an atom of shit stuck to the anus of the Taylor Swift. Or not even that, because the fans would kill for an atom of Swiftian excrement. Why would anyone gift a phone to a writer, and even more so, to a Catalan writer who doesn't even write bestsellers? Mobile phones are gifted to people who matter and who have things to say: to tiktokers who scratch their ass with both hands, at youtubers that talk about soccer or any other topic the further away from culture the better, at instagrammers and gamers and company. I read that Bill Gates has been gifted a few, and also one to Alexia Putellas, who look, with her I am actually happy because she is a hell of a woman and she has guts. They give them away, of course, only to people who could easily afford them; the gift is, in fact, a plea: please use it, so they see you with my gadget and thus I bring prestige to the brand, etc. And this is the crux of the matter: prestige.The growing marginality of written culture

Written culture no longer provides any kind of prestige. It is like that. To me, coming from another century and having seen things you wouldn't believe –ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion, C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate–, it feels strange. I perfectly understand that there is a lighter popular culture; a culture that must be there, and that it is good that it is; a culture in which I also participate at times, because there must be moments for everything; a culture, however, that cannot be everything.That written culture is becoming a marginal thing is also evidenced in mobile phone advertising, as well as in that of the spaceship; only its audiovisual capabilities are praised: it is used to watch (poorly) movies, to scroll listlessly, to play video games (how many hours devoted to Candy Crush, my God!), to take photos and videos and upload them to social networks. If I had one I would also do all of this, of course, because I am human and I live in the year 2026, but I would also get the most out of it to write and read, I would give real utility to the eight-inch screen. However, the use the user gives it is secondary to the manufacturer: what matters is that it is a status symbol.I know they won't give me one. The truth is that it might be a bit strange to have a mobile phone that is worth a third of what my second-hand car cost. And now that I mention a car, I think of the thousands of kilometers I travel every year for work: reading clubs, conferences, talks, presentations. They could give me a Peugeot 2008 with large logos on the doors communicating that Peugeot supports culture, and I would commit to pronouncing the brand name with a radiant and sincere smile (it would be) at every event, interview, or presentation I did; and since I am a writer, I would explain the excellence of the product with beautiful words. But who cares about beautiful written words anymore?