Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life
-Pablo Picasso
Some things begin with a plan. This one began with a feeling I could not quite name. It was when I began to feel strongly that I was drifting, from places, from people, and sometimes from myself.
Art and storytelling, reading and writing have been a constant in my life. For over six years, in my free time, I have worked as a ghostwriter, writing novels for others who publish them under their own names. It is quiet work, patient work, and I have loved it. But the stories I write for others are not always the ones I most want to tell.
Last Christmas, a few of us who work in the corporate world, where pressure is high and the decision-making can be hard, chose, quite deliberately, to slow things down for a little while. We began writing real letters again, not messages sent in haste, but thoughts shaped slowly, on paper, with care. One of my closest friends now writes to me from Singapore. Each month, I find myself waiting for her letter, knowing it carries something that cannot be rushed, or replicated, or replaced. I still like her posts on social media, but this is our ritual. I send her a story and a print, and she sends me a poem and a photo from Singapore. Then I'll take a quiet moment, make coffee or tea with my favourite shortbread biscuits, and read it slowly.
And so, I built The Lantern Society for myself and my friends around the world. A place I could return to when the noise grew too loud, a small world I could make with my hands, slowly, once a month. But I also built it for the possibility that somewhere, someone else was longing for the same thing, for a quiet exchange with a stranger who might, in time, feel less like one, and we could become pen pals.
To spend time creating something for someone, carefully, with intention, is a way of saying I see you, and I care. In many ways, it is no different from writing a letter to a friend, a small offering of time, made with them in mind, and sent with care.
The Lantern Society is a way to place something tangible into your hands each month, a story, a print, a piece of my time, and a quiet reminder that some things are still worth waiting for.
If you should ever wish to become part of the Society, I look forward to writing to you more slowly, from my own small corner of the world.
Love,
L.J. Black
A Light in the Drift
Art is not beauty,
art is seeing things differently
— Virginia Woolf
To carry the lantern is to trust that even the smallest light is enough to guide the way.
Light, for me, has always been both something I see, and something I follow. Not only in the darker moments, when direction feels uncertain, but just as much in the brightness of everyday life. In the glow of a lamppost on a familiar street, the soft flicker of winter lights, or the pages of a book held open just a little longer than intended. It is there in different forms, at different times, asking nothing of us except that we notice it.
And The Lantern Society, for me, is also about gathering. Not in any formal sense, but in the recognition of those who find meaning in similar things as I do, in Christmas cards chosen with care and sent just a little too early, in birthday notes written by hand (I use a fountain pen since I was young), in small messages left on a kitchen table, or tucked into a coat pocket to be found later. It lives in the instinct to make something rather than buy it, to set the table a certain way, to return to a favourite film or a well-loved book, to draw, to cook, to notice.
It is for those who find joy in these things, and who believe that kindness, attention, and small acts of care still matter. Not as grand gestures, but as part of how we move through the world, and how we leave it a little better for others.
The Lantern Society is not only about stories or illustrations, but about that presence — something steady, something warm, something that meets you where you are and, gently, shows you a way forward. Not all at once, and not too far ahead. Just enough.
If this feels familiar to you, you are welcome to step into it, and stay for as long as it feels right.
Love,
L.J. Black