California Typewriter Page #6

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To me, it's understandable.

I press the key, and

another key comes up

and prints a letter

on a piece of paper.

And then you can pull it out,

it's a piece of paper upon which

you have printed something.

You've made that, it's tangible.

It's real.

I think the tool

of the typewriter,

because it is more difficult,

produces for me a better result.

(birds chirping)

I work virtually

all day, every day.

I come out after breakfast

and I work until lunchtime

and then I go in, get a

bite to eat, come back out,

work for the rest of the day.

Now I'm not typing, not

writing on the typewriter

all that time.

If you were to walk by

in the field behind there

and you looked in the window,

you'd think, well that

guy's just sitting

in there daydreaming, but an

awful lot of the process is

just thinking.

- There are a lot of

fractals in nature.

Mysterious geometry that

exists in everything.

(clanking)

I see the same shapes

inside the typewriter.

I like to pull out the

shapes that I feel resemble

parts of the anatomy.

Sometimes a part dictates

that it be surface anatomy,

sometimes it's a bone,

skeletal anatomy.

Sometimes it's a

little mixture of both.

When I take the

typewriters apart,

I don't see this

unnatural object.

I see people, I see us in them.

Very often, near

the platen knobs,

there's a spot where

someone's finger

has rubbed across the carriage.

And it's this one nice,

shiny, polished spot

with a little bit of dirt

and oil from the fingers.

I like that kind of

thing that's left

on the typewriter.

I can say that there's

probably that person's DNA.

It's fun to see those

traces of people.

It's such an emotional machine.

A lot of memories and

a lot of real people

put themselves on a piece

of paper through a machine.

And I understand all that.

This is how I choose to

appreciate the typewriter,

by dissecting it and bringing

out the little bits and pieces

that are us in them.

So my favorite stuff to

do is the human figures,

because I find every

curve on the human body

in here somewhere, in

one of these typewriters.

And I like to try to

put those together.

I do that with pins

and springs and nuts.

I don't use anything apart

from what's in the typewriter.

I have learned how

to match the parts

to the corresponding

part in the human body,

just by, you know, play

and putting the

parts together and,

oh, you look like

a leg, or you know.

A very childlike way of just

having a dialogue with parts.

(rattling)

I grew up in northern Minnesota

on the Mesabi Iron Range.

I lived in a lot of trailers.

My dad never made

a lot of money.

He never had any

desire to buy a house.

I left there probably two

days after I graduated.

I wanted to get out

and now I'm in a trailer again.

(chucang)

It's kinda crazy.

As a kid, deer were everywhere.

There were times when my dad

was laid off from the railroad

and we were eating

Campbell's soup,

peanut butter from

the jar, and venison.

When I moved down to Oakland,

one of the first sculptures

that I made was the deer.

I had always told

myself I would make one.

(ambient indie music)

I've taken this deer

across the Bay Bridge

about six times back and forth.

I've shown it at

galleries, art exhibitions.

I don't like for

work to sit around

and taunt me with the failure

of not being able to sell it.

I'm a bit ambivalent about

the whole gallery scene.

Trying to work as an artist

and then sell my work

through a gallery has been

exceedingly difficult.

It's hard to take a

piece that I worked on

for maybe as much as a year,

to sell it for not

a lot of money,

and then only get half of

that not a lot of money.

So just two weeks?

Oh okay.

The best way for me to

do this for a living

is to take on the

promotion myself.

And the internet

makes it really easy,

just takes me a

couple hours a day.

I have just about every

social networking profile

that you can imagine.

I try to show a little

of what the studio

looks like every day

with images of my process

while I'm working on a piece.

People can email me directly

and I manage to get enough work

to almost pay the bills.

(engine rumbling)

(guitar strumming)

(crowd chatter)

- [Ken] When I was a kid,

about 19, 20 years old

got a job workin' in Berkeley.

It's like the whole world

opened up to me over here.

Different kind of people,

different kind of cultures.

I really found myself wanting

to go to work every day.

It lets you see the world

without going to see the world.

You know, the world comes to

you in this city over here.

The first time I

heard a black guy

with a British accent

it blew me away.

(piano tinkling)

(downtempo jazz music)

The store is open five

days a week, 12 to 5.

Couple years ago, it was

only open three days a week.

It's picking up, but

it's just not there yet.

It's just enough

to keep us going,

but not enough to keep

me going. (chuckles)

(jazz music)

I'm just hoping that

things'll turn around.

Herb and I, we have the

skills, the experience.

We have all the knowledge

of doing this, we just need

customers.

(clicking)

- Wait, wait wait, I wanna.

(clicking)

- Linus, you broke, it's ripped.

- No I didn't.

- Yeah.

- It was already ripped.

- One good thing

about them is that

you don't have to turn

them on or plug them in.

I used to have a PC, but I

did not like my PC one bit.

- There is a wonderful

way to spend time typing.

You get to think about it.

You get to romantically

sit back and ponder

what your next words

are going to be

and that is a pleasant,

tactile action.

It actually turns

writing or composing

into a very specific,

physical process

that has a soundtrack to it.

Listen to this one.

(chunking)

See, hear that heavy chunk

that you hear right there.

Smith Corona, now.

(clacking)

Little muted, a little softer.

And now hear the Olympia.

(clicking)

Crisp, a little solid

report that comes out.

That, to me, is a good,

solid work of art.

(clicking)

- It's really exciting

to come into a shop where

you're surrounded by all

these great typewriters

and your mind reels at

the different sounds

that they can make.

Certain typewriters,

you may discover sounds

that you never heard before.

(ding)

It's hard to find a typewriter

with good bell tone.

This bell isn't the loudest,

but it's got the

best tone to it.

This one, the whole case is...

It doesn't articulate

on a lever.

On better typewriters,

that bell should be loud,

it should be clear.

Now this one the bell is

kind of a more thuddy sound,

this one, it rings

really loudly.

(chiming)

This one has the best

bell of them all.

It's hard to find a typewriter

where it's a quality sound

and it can be consistently made.

(dinging)

(sustained chime)

- We are the Boston

Typewriter Orchestra

and we perform music

on old typewriters.

Old, discarded typewriters.

We're a collective and what

a shitty answer that was.

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