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Comte de Lautréamont (1846-1870) writes famously in The Songs of Maldoror of a connection 'as beautiful as the chance encounter of a sewing machine and an umbrella on an operating table.' I have cited that simile in reference to the contemporary mutuality of words and calligraphy.

Rendering text in script occasioned a diversity of writing, of which one strain developed as calligraphy. A pastoral harmony resonated between calligraphy and textual content, which postwar avant-garde calligraphy dissolved in the name of liberating both elements. Contemporary calligraphy, divorced as taction from the prose and verse of text, assumes an autonomy of kinetics, coloration, and form. It no longer fits naturally into the same circuitry as vocabulary and grammar.

I recognize the autonomy of modern taction, but I sense a need for restoring a viable circuitry for connecting text and calligraphy and strive through my work to reestablish that connection. 

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Excerpted from Kindai shoshi (A history of modern calligraphy) (Nagoya: University of Nagoya Press, 2009)