California Typewriter Page #3

---

about half a block down Ellis

and continues to grow.

- [Carmen] Well,

things have been tough,

up and down all along.

We've had loans,

we've had second mortgages.

We've had all our

credit cards maxed out

just to keep the

business rolling.

When you like what you do, you

can almost get paid peanuts

and if you can get by

on peanuts, it's fine.

- This is a Hermes,

made in Switzerland.

Early 60s.

My oldest son found it in a

swap meet somewhere

in California.

And it was in

fairly rough shape,

we had to kind of rebuild it.

I mean, some people who

knew what they were doing

rebuilt it, you know. (chuckles)

It's a beautiful typewriter

and it feels great.

And of all the manual

typewriters I have,

it has the greatest feel.

Just in the keys,

there's a little way they

cup your fingers.

I mean, this is as

good as it gets.

(quiet rattling)

There's the whole

deal right there.

So simple

and complex.

(light piano jazz music)

(soft clicks)

(whirring)

- [Ken] You know, it's

almost like you're a kid

working on your bicycle.

You can see what's

happening with it.

The lever goes up,

the carriage moves,

the letter leaves its mark.

You just can't get that

kind of fascination

out of a piece of

electronic equipment.

- [News Anchor] The

magic moment came at 8:00

when the doors opened.

(applause)

- Unfairly well known

for standing next to

new technology and finding

a way to incorporate it

into what I'm doing.

I was onstage several

years with Steve Jobs,

introducing Apple

software and hardware.

I mean they would come to

my house and show me stuff

and it would be mind-blowing

and I would say,

oh, I can't wait to use this.

For me, I feel like the

next step in technology

is less about what you're using

and more about how

you're using it.

In between my second

and third record,

I went to the Rock

and Roll Hall of Fame.

And I saw all these great,

classic seminal songs

that were written on

hotel paper, or you know,

whatever paper was around.

I mean, you can see

right into their ideas.

You can see who scratched

out a lot of ideas and

which ideas came to

people really quickly.

And I thought to myself, wow,

I don't have any

representation of this.

I have hard drives, you know.

And you think to yourself,

you always have it

it's on a hard drive,

but I've never gone back

to any hard drive

that I've saved.

Ever.

And said, oh, let me

dig this thing up.

It's sort of like

a high concept trash,

in a weird way, you know.

It's like a trash with

this weird sort of promise

that you can still always

get it, but you won't.

And I realized,

I have nothing to prove

that I've written the

stuff that I've written.

There's no...

You can't see how I came up

with the stuff, there's no...

You can't touch it, you know.

So I started saying,

I just want documentation

of my writing.

Then I remembered seeing

Don't Look Back,

you know that great

Pennebaker documentary

on Bob Dylan.

And there's this scene where

he's just sitting there,

he's kinda playing

the typewriter.

It's almost as much of

a musical instrument

as the harmonica or

the guitar is for him.

And he's kinda in his own

world, and there's the requisite

ashtray with a whole bunch of

smoldering cigarettes in it.

And I just sort of

love the idea of

even if you're Bob Dylan,

you still have to sit

at this altar to sort

of produce something.

See what that's all about.

(grinding peeling)

I got my typewriter at some

online office superstore.

They're like $120 and

you get everything in it.

You plug and play

and it's ready to go.

It just makes me think

there's probably like

four or five of them

in the warehouse

and every time

they ship one out, it's like,

someone at Brother

gets pissed off

that they have to keep the

Service Department open

for that much longer, 'cause

someone else bought one.

(clicking)

I instantly started to

really come alive on it.

And I realized the

reason that I was able

to come alive on the typewriter,

where I wasn't using

a computer or even a pen,

was that you were at

sort of a safe distance

where you can express

yourself openly

without having to edit

yourself at the same time.

And so it became this sort of

like confessional for me where

I would sit and just type.

And the reason that I was

able to go deeper into an idea

is because I wasn't

stopped anywhere

in that writing by

a red squiggly line.

And what is spell

check or grammar check

if all you're really

trying to do is sort of dig

into this sort of

mercurial sort of world

of what your ideas are.

So if you're trying to say,

close your eyes

and clone yourself,

build your heart and army,

and you spell army wrong.

Well, now you feel sort of

obligated to fix the word army,

and while you're

fixing the word army,

you've now completely lost

the tack on being a whacko

in what you're writing.

So what I would do is

I would sit at my counter

in my apartment in New York

and I would type

out three pages.

Sometimes it would

be before I went out,

sometimes it would

be after I went out.

And I never read 'em back

until I got to the studio.

If this were in Microsoft Word,

I'd never see these again.

some of which made the records.

Obviously, most of

which didn't, but

you can see me sort of

fighting for this song

called Queen of California.

(strumming folk chords)

"When I die,

I'm coming back as colors,

"the Queen of

California's on the line.

"I've got five

free days and a..."

Wait a minute, "I've got five

free days before I go away."

"I hear the Queen of

California needs a man

"to start a new life in the sun.

"I'm chasing the sun.

"I gotta find the

Queen of California.

"I hear the Queen of California

lives up there in the sun,

"took a while to get it through.

"There's nothing she

can do to me now."

It's like, and it's almost

kind of artistic, sort of.

Even when it is spelled

completely wrong.

It's almost what

thoughts look like.

You know, the sort of

stop and start of it.

"Never has a man this

alone felt this alive

"Never has a man so

alone felt so alive,"

it's like trying

to get the wording.

"Never is a phone so dead

"at the side of my bed

"Haven't charged it in 36 hours.

"Searching for the sun

that Neil Young hung

"after the gold rush in '71."

A lyric that actually made

it into Queen of California.

"They must have switched

it for a different one,

"'cause it's some new

kind of digital light."

Well, you know.

(strumming light melody)

All stream of consciousness.

And that's the thing, I can't

get to stream of consciousness

when I'm involved in my

own editorial process

as I'm trying to be a whacko.

You know, I'm trying to

be an absolute whack job

when I'm typing, but it's like,

the typewriter doesn't

judge you, it just goes,

right away, sir.

Right away sir, however

you want it to be.

- [Ken] They do

talk to you, yeah.

They talk to you.

I didn't think a machine

Rate this script:0.0 / 0 votes