California Typewriter Page #7

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- One of the things we

sat down pretty early with

in the BTO and decided, was that

none of us were going to

try and quit our day jobs

to make the BTO work

as a legitimate band.

And that was sort of

a really liberating decision.

You know, make enough money

to keep us in typewriters,

beer, the occasional pizza.

(orchestral clicking

and dinging)

(percussive clacking)

We don't want to destroy these.

We are using them

as an instrument.

We are repurposing them,

(audience clapping)

but our intent is

not to destroy it.

(crowd cheering typocide)

I murdered one and I have

to find a new typewriter.

You feel like Pete

Townsend, I guess.

He destroyed the guitar, like,

sh*t, we'd better

get it signed fast

so I can have another

guitar to destroy.

I mean, I've killed

three typewriters now.

Each one of them has

its own personality

and spirit and soul.

- We had the two Smith Coronas

that had a really nice

case slide on 'em.

- Oh god, yeah.

- And those two have

since become inoperable,

in pieces.

And there's an entire song

that we can't play now,

because we haven't been able

to restock those two typewriters

to that specific mechanics

of the case slide.

(melodic furious clanging)

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- We spend a lot of time really

crafting all of our songs.

- We do some covers.

We set up Gil Scott-Heron's

The Revolution will

not be Televised

and it's now the Revolution

will be Typewritten.

And we do a cover of...

- We're working on a

cover of Rain and Blood.

That's Slayer.

(rhythmic clacking)

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(ticking)

I was at somebody's

house years and years ago

and saw, framed on the

wall, a thank you note

that Noel Coward had

written to somebody

he had had lunch with.

And this was in 1930-something.

And I thought,

Okay, Noel Coward actually

typed out on his typewriter

and sent it to somebody,

has then lingered around,

and then somebody bought

it at some auction

or something like that.

But that piece of

paper is still with us.

And I think that that

is, deep down inside is,

the interest that I have in it.

Anybody with one of these

can create a document

that will physically

last forever.

And if the idea on

it is a good one,

the idea can last forever, too.

- Everybody knows the

feeling of having lost

digital data.

Nothing is worse than losing

digital data as a writer.

I've never lost

something I've typed.

10 years from now, is any

of the computers gonna read

the stuff that we've saved?

I have no idea.

But this still absolutely

human compliant.

It's human compatible.

You don't have to

upgrade to look at it,

you just have to make sure

it doesn't light on fire.

That's all you have to do.

- I type over everything,

I don't bother with white out.

I don't bother, I don't

try to correct it,

I don't make multiple drafts.

If I make a mistake,

I just will maybe

(clacking)

X it out like that.

- I think there's a

great value in mistakes.

It's their value for history

and how things are made.

(birds chirping)

You see the perfect

finished text of a speech

that a president of the

United States makes.

How much editing did the

President do on that?

How much of his speech

was not written by him?

Which words they changed, which

sentences they crossed out,

that's extremely interesting.

You see, the process

of what it took to get

to the finished result.

With a computer,

no manuscript like that

will be around anymore.

Future historians are going

to have nothing to work with.

There will be no diaries,

there will be no letters.

So how will we know

what they really thought?

What the processes were?

(gramophone playing)

- As the benefits of this

revolutionary machine

became clear, there

was a real shortage

of trained typists,

people did not know

how to operate them efficiently.

The first typing school ever

opened in New York in 1881

and it was at the YWCA,

there were six woman enrolled

and it was a six month class.

Every woman who was trained

to type got a job immediately.

The type writer was what

the typist was called,

so the woman was

the type writer.

And there was this huge

groundswell for the first time

of women entering into the

man's business environment.

They were paid less than

men, but it was still

a larger salary than

they had been paid

when they worked in factories

or as a school teacher.

Sholes didn't get

any financial gain

from success when it came,

but he was very satisfied

that his invention

had provided new

opportunities for women.

He saw it as a means

of emancipating women

and getting them into the

workplace in a new capacity.

(patriotic music)

If I could time travel,

I'd love to go back to

Kleinsteuber's machine shop

and to see Sholes, I mean

to actually see him there,

a breathing, living man.

If I could've spoken to Sholes,

I would've shook his hand,

I'd want to feel

his palm in my palm.

I'd look him in the

eyes, see his face alive,

not just a photograph.

I'm not too sure what I'd say,

there'd perhaps

be tears in my eyes.

(patriotic music)

I would suggest that we

have a beer together.

I'd want to tell

Sholes a bit about

what the 20th century was like,

I'd wanna tell him a

bit about the computer,

the personal computer.

I'd want to tell Sholes

that the Qwerty

keyboard was still there

(jazz music)

- When typewriter manufacturers

were designing the typewriter,

they wanted to make

something sexy.

Create something that

people could relate to

and wanna put their fingers on.

(clacking)

I'd dreamed about

creating a woman.

Like a full scale nude

woman for a long time.

Something archetypal,

something that would show

the sensuality, the curves,

and the lines that I found

in the typewriter parts.

Yeah, but not unnaturally.

It's very difficult

to put things together

in a way that

emulates real life.

Just the right size.

It's too sharp.

In trying to create her beauty,

it's helping me bring out

the forms in the typewriter

that I think are the most

beautiful and most sensual.

I used a bell and a platen knob

for the lips, because it has

the little vertical lines

that look like the

cracks in the lips.

Two of the ribbon spool

covers from a Royal

get set up as the pelvis.

(clunking)

One of the sexiest lines is the

curve of the pectoral muscle

just above the breast,

and that exists

in a lot of typewriters.

Royals have those,

Olympia, Underwoods.

They're suggesting breasts.

When I'm in the

thick of creating,

my body disappears,

physical pain disappears,

and it's very meditative

in that I'm not thinking

about the bills I have to pay

or what day of the week it is.

I give that trance state

more time in my life

than any other time.

Any money that I've

made doing this,

that's what that all pays

for, is that time for me.

Being in that state.

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