This sort of thing just doesn’t work with texts and emails. While we exchange probably more with the written word than ever before, we have lost the material pleasures and pain of written communication. In order to return someone’s “letters” today, you’d have to first print out all the stuff and you’d have to delete them from your email program and your server, maybe and my devices that collect emails, like your phone or your tablet.
A love letter used to smell good. It felt good. You could hold it in your hand and know that the paper you held had been held by your beloved. The ink you run your finger over came from a pen between the beloved’s fingers. Did he scent this paper or is this just how his rooms smell or him? You could bind letters up with ribbon and treasure them as a series, watch the handwriting shift and charge from letter to letter, notice the use of a different pen, different doodles in the margins.
A packet of letters could live, treasured, in an underwear drawer or a treasure box. A secret pocket, perhaps or under a pillow. Paper. Ink. Atmosphere.
The Hamlet Project 