I watched Kill Your Darlings last night, and have been listening to run-on-sentence-filled beat poetry today at work while scanning a typewritten journal from 1946-47 (pictured above) in which the text runs right to the edges of the paper. Collectively, these demonstrations of the urgency of creating — of getting words on the page without fussing over format — settled into my brain, worked its way around and came out as a project concept:
I want to put together an issue of our Bümfmag zine the “old-fashioned” way, using a typewriter, scissors and glue to paste-up the original then photocopy instead of print the issues.
I would of course scan it to make a digital version, too.
The trick will be finding a working typewriter — the one we have at home (which is Shawn’s) is more or less decorative; it doesn’t have a working ribbon. I may ask around my circles to see if anyone has one I could borrow for a weekend. If it works out, I will seek out my own machine to use for future projects.
This led to another stray thought… what space might be open to putting in typewriters that people could use? I mean, before wifi and smartphones, it wasn’t uncommon to have internet portals tucked into the back corners of cafés or bookstores. I could see a typewriter or two being quite a draw for hipsters and the hipster-adjacent creative. Of course the image of the writer bashing away at a typewriter, ashtray overflowing, and whiskey or gin bottle nearing empty doesn’t exactly fit into a communal setting, but perhaps it could be adapted. If anyone out there wants to run with this idea, all I ask is that you allow me some time on one the typewriters when they are in place.
I have some spare ribbons for different machines. I’d need to know what your machine would need (take a picture of the spool tops). What do you mean when you say the ribbon isn’t working – is it cut, or bunched/knotted up, or just gone dry? There are ways to work around this – ribbon sections can be cut and stuck back onto spools; use alcohol to dissolve and redistribute the ink on a dry ribbon, etc..
Remember when there was a typewriter room on the 3rd Mezz? Ten bashed-up machines… I typed up a few papers there, from my handwritten manuscripts, on paper scavenged from the photocopier bins….