The Mole

I’m lost and clearly in over my head. I am being held captive by the MOLESKINE brand police somewhere in the heart of Europe on charges of circulating a conspiracy theory to the public. What you are reading is the only remaining page of my little black MOLESKINE notebook which has suspiciously gone missing in recent weeks due to events that are now out of my control. For over two decades now I have been working undercover at MOLESKINE headquarters to unravel the secret behind their brand success that spans thousands of years and centuries of creative masters like Vincent Van Gogh and Pablo Picasso who are believed to be some of their highest-ranking members. And what I have found is so unbelievable, I have been paid a good deal of money by their competitors, $20,000 to be exact, to get the word out behind their sorcery and this is the only way I could think to do it under my current circumstances.

Contrary to what they would have the world believe, the MOLESKINE brand did not form in 1997. It was merely made public then. For long before the world ever knew about MOLESKINE, it existed as a secret society of creative masters of old who all secretly dabbled in the magic arts of the MOLESKINE notebooks to create work that was nothing short of genius. And though, from the onset of the public formation of the MOLESKINE brand, they misled us all to think that the secret power behind it was found in their unmistakable craftsmanship or the unwavering quality of their materials, the truth is that was all just a red herring. For the true source of their power was safely concealed within the very name of MOLESKINE itself only to be unlocked by their unsuspecting customers. This is why it has gone almost completely unnoticed and undetected by both their competitors and customers alike until now. For shamelessly encoded in the MOLESKINE brand name was a potent spell so effective that it would alter the chemicals of any creative mind inspired enough to put ink to the MOLESKINE pages.

And as I look back now at what I didn’t know then I wonder why none of us saw this earlier. For if anyone of us would only have started with the ‘O’ in MOLESKINE and loop around backwards to the ‘N’ on the other side of their name we would have begun to see beyond the veil of their branding to the word ‘OMEN’ cleverly written through it, side to side. Now exactly how the omen works is still widely unknown and quite mysterious, but what it foretells is no mystery. Legend has it that when the ink hits the page of a MOLESKINE notebook it opens a narrow gateway in the superconscious mind of the creative individual that mystically connects them directly to the creative force inherent everywhere in the universe. So, listen carefully to what I am about to tell you next, because how this spell works is the brands most closely guarded secret and the true source of an unfair competitive edge they have enjoyed for centuries.

MOLESKINE is no ordinary name. It is a highly strategic collection of words and letters put in a very specific order, that conceals, at its core, the secret identity of their true founder who lived and died in medieval Poland over a thousand years before the MOLESKINE brand was ever even heard of by any of us common folks. Only known in his time as Sir Owen Leski, this man was a wizard of words. Leski believed, for his entire adult life, that the power of words lied in the specific selection and arrangement of letters which he called spells and sought to harness their power to unleash the creative genius that lay dormant in all mankind. He also knew that his sir name had special meaning that had been tragically lost over the centuries and he sought to reclaim it and build his MOLESKINE notebook brand around it.

For years he relentlessly studied his sir name, LESKI, and the many variations that sprung from it, hopelessly searching his family’s long-lost past for the secrets that lay hidden therein to no avail. Until one fateful day he finally had a breakthrough and uncovered its astonishing secret. LESKI was a two-syllable word that when made vocal sounded like the words ‘less’ and ‘key’. And when he flipped their order, making the last word first and the first word last, he noticed it formed the familiar word ‘keyless’. But what that meant exactly in the grand scheme of things or how it tied into the great mystery of creativity eluded him for a time, right up until it dawned on him that the locks on the doors of creative genius were keyless and could be accessed through the power of words alone.

This single insight turned his vision and understanding of creativity upside down which he symbolized in the name MOLESKINE when he turned the ‘W’ in his first name, Owen, upside down to form the ‘M’ in the word Omen which he then faithfully wrapped around his sir name of LESKI to complete the spell for his world-renowned brand, MOLESKINE.

But the ‘INK’ of their sorcery does not end there. For when he connected his first name to his last name, in this way, the word ‘KIN’ was also formed, which spoke of his long family heritage of creative masters of old who all harnessed the power of the MOLESKINE brand to conceive some of the greatest creative work this world has ever known.

So there you have it. The truth behind their brand. It is only to be used by those bold enough to go to and take note of the outer limits of creativity and venture into a realm of the mind many have never even heard of and few have ever witnessed – MOLESKINE.

The word is out. It’s now become vocal!

Sincerely,

The Mole