I wrote this for you

I first heard about this book in the comments of a blog I read. The author told her readers something to the effect of, "You've got to read this! I wrote this for you." Then she captured and shared a picture of one of the pages. I read the words, saw the picture and thought, "Hey! I will give that a try." The next several comments were by people either saying, "I've read that and it was amazing!" or "I want to read that, what is it called?" The blog author responded with, "You can buy the book on Amazon.com. I wrote this for you." People kept saying, "Great! But what is it called?!" It took me a very long time to realize the actual title is, I wrote this for you. Ohhhh.... I get it now.

by pleasefindthis

So, I ordered the book (in print because I thought the pictures would be more enjoyable) and waited eagerly for it to arrive. Boy, was I in for a surprise! The book is full of beautiful, deep, raw prose and seemingly random yet perfectly matched photographs.

Some verses are a short one or two sentences. Others are longer and take up the entire page. I loved each and every page. It's not very often I can say that about a book!

The text is broken up into four sections titled: Sun, Moon, Stars and Rain. Together, each chapter focuses on a different facet of life, love, loss, beginnings and endings. The Sun is about looking for love or the potential for love. Moon is about the act of being in love. Stars is the loss of that love. And Rain is about rediscovering hope in life at the end of that cycle.

In an interview, Thomas described his writing as "ambiguous microstories" and went on to explain that "by leaving out things like gender, age, race, location, people apply the stories to themselves."

The back story of the book is just as interesting as the words themselves. It's my understanding that the concept for I wrote this for you started in 2007 as a transcontinental collaboration between photographer Jon Ellis and author Lain Thomas (aka pleasefindthis). Ellis provides the images and Thomas writes the captions, which are always addressed to a person only referred to as "You." The two men communicate online but have never met in person. Thomas lives in South Africa and Ellis was based in Japan but now lives in Germany.

Here is an interview with Ellis from Heso Magazine in 2011 that explains in more depth the birth of the project and how the twosome started working together. It's rather interesting but I will leave that up to you to read.

http://hesomagazine.com/photographic/i-wrote-this-for-you

I highly recommend this book. I've read it front to back twice and continue to bookmark pages and reflect on them later.

This is the type of book that five different people can pick up to read and it will mean something different to each and every one of them.

Also, you can explore the blog, http://www.iwrotethisforyou.me/. All of the book entries are published on this site, and then some more. It's just not as easy to thumb through.

The back cover of the book reads:

"I need you to understand something. I wrote this for you. I wrote this for you and only you. Everyone else who reads it, doesn't get it. They may think they get it, but they don't. This is the sign you've been looking for. You were meant to read these words."

If you get a chance to read this book, let me know what you think!