Dear Friends,

I sit down at a table in our makeshift art/music studio. Makeshift, because the studio is really just a living room that, for our family, accommodates the creative things we like to do. We have two industrial metal tables with mint green laminate tops that I scored from Vermont State Surplus for $50 a piece. They are fraternal, rather than identical, twins – one shorter, one with a drawer, mostly the same though. As I settle down I slide over the Brother Charger 11 portable typewriter. The rubber grommet feet resist as I pull. I press the left and right latch buttons and lift the case off the machine. Baby blue metal, ebony keys with white characters, flush with the smell of oil and dust. Those old dust bunnies hiding in the works predate my ownership. I reposition the typewriter to make the exceedingly long space bar parallel with the table edge.

On my left, I grab an unopened ream of Hammermill multipurpose copy paper. Slide my index finger under the glued fold at the end and rip. Move to the adjacent broad side, slide down longways, and rip. I carefully pinch the top few sheets and pull them out; I dog-ear one of the corners. My instinct is to toss it aside and grab another without the damage, but I resist. This particular brand of 20 lb. paper has a slight tooth (texture), and I sense that it will confidently accept the imprinted ink of the typewriter. I can almost see it, feel it – how I imagine the typed letters should appear on the page. There’s a faint charge of anticipation in what I’m about to do.

The paper feels slightly rough to my calloused fingers. I place the sheet’s top edge on the platen (the black rubber roller) and turn the right knob to feed the paper into the machine. After a few turns, I remember to lift up the paper bail, then carefully press the sheet underneath, turn the knob a few more turns, and snap down the bail. The trailing end of the page sticks out at me like a tongue. The whiteness of the page is unsettling against the dark metal and black components. The blankness of the page is unsettling, as all blank pages, real and metaphorical, are.

The sensation of typing compels me. It’s been many months since I’ve hammered these keys. On a frictionless computer keyboard I’m a fluent, fast typist, but hunt and peck works best on a 40-year-old machine like this Japanese-made Brother Charger 11 model. For me, typing is drawing, mark making. The force of an idea transmuted through my index finger pressing down on the key, flowing up through the type bar, and impressed on the page. Analog par excellence. There is no 0/1, on/off binary in a typewritten mark; just gradations governed by the physical properties of material things… I mean: I press softly, the typed letter is faint, or I press forcefully and the letter is dark, and all the possibilities in between. Like drawing. Like playing the piano.

I begin improvising. I start at “the end” because why not get that out of the way and then work backwards? I hear the sound of a word, type it, see how it looks, which suggests another word. And so on. Soon, a trail of verbal and visual associations accumulates across the page. Private references occur to me. I allow them. I’m beginning to feel self-conscious, but this is play. Who cares? I keep going. I’m moving fast with language now. The gratifying clack/thunk of the key and type bar mechanism in motion creates a beat that I’m following. My conscious mind wants to pause, reread, revise, censor, simply stop. I keep the beat, finding words quickly like scraps gathered off the cutting room floor, and putting them down. I work the carriage return lever and carriage release lever in tandem, deftly shifting the paper position back and forth. Words are clustering, then shooting toward the margins. In a split second I wonder about a stanza, so I make one. Then, more words on the margins. The bottom of the page is near. I wind down. As it turns out, I end at the end.

Lucie (6 years old) is at my side. “Read it,” she says. I comply. But it’s not just reading. It’s interpretation, like playing sheet music for the first time. Out loud, the words sound strange, unfamiliar. The sounds I first heard in my head are now more than I thought they were. The play of spoken language is different from the visual, tactile process of its making. I’m surprised. Lucie says, with some quizzical skepticism, “That’s, uh… interesting.”

Begging your pardon 😉,

Jeremy