my typewriter’s O key doesn’t sit level with the other keys. it still types fine, so writing on my typewriter doesn’t require I adhere to some Oulipo-style constraint; I wouldn’t even be able to type “Oulipo” at all if that were the case. not that I’m writing this post on my typewriter anyway. some things, like blog posts, I don’t draft as intensively as others, so I can’t be bothered to go through rewriting them onto a hard drive. but doing my writing away from the endless distraction machine of the internet, away from any base-level surveillance, away from the ease of editing afforded by word processors, is something I’m growing to see as necessary if I want to write anything that will outlast the internet.
I opened up my typewriter yesterday to blow out the dust that had accumulated in it with compressed air. mine’s an Olivetti Lettera 22, a model known for being low maintenance: Cormac McCarthy said of his Lettera 32 that the only thing he ever did to keep his in order was blow it out with a service hose. but when I opened mine up, I noticed there was a broken spring loose, and some investigating revealed this to be what causes the O key’s misalignment. so now I need to find a single tiny spring, which is not something easily come by, it turns out, since most hardware like that is sold in bulk. I suppose I could have several dozen spares on hand, but I doubt I’ll ever need that many. maybe I can find one to steal at the hardware store. unfortunately the typewriter repair shop near my place of employment is no longer in business.
keeping my typewriter in good shape will be important as I start building momentum on some longer projects. it’s also important that I start weaning off devices connected to the internet, that is, if it’s important to me that I take a posture counter the dominant culture, and if I want to not waste so much time. there’s a kind of lazy critique popular on the Left that urges people to break away from “productivity culture,” an obvious symptom of the Protestant work ethic underlying capitalism, in favor of “doing nothing” or something, I’m not sure exactly what. as far as I can see, there’s no “doing nothing” on this side of death, so I want my living activity geared towards the things that matter to me. I happen to like being productive. what I don’t like is having my productivity sapped by technology harvesting my data, or having my labor exploited by wage-based employment. that book How to Do Nothing works towards some kind of way of being that isn’t entirely dominated by productivity culture, but I seem to remember that Jenny Oddell doesn’t endorse “just logging off” because it seems like, irresponsible or not possible, my memory of the book is a little hazy. I just know that her plan for “resisting the attention economy” ranked among Barack Obama’s favorite books that year, so I’m skeptical that she really offered anything all that radical.
this past weekend I visited the Hammer Museum for their exhibit commemorating Joan Didion. I have plans to write more extensively about the exhibit and my feelings about the state of curation practices as inspired by a local gallery that recently opened up in Ventura. as such I don’t want to say too much specifically yet, but that essay is really an expansion of some of what I’m feeling here. the pithy way of putting it right now is that, it’s kind of ironic that an exhibit about Joan Didion made me wistful about the lost counterculture of the sixties, given that Didion was not exactly fond of hippies. neither am I for that matter, but it’s undeniable that at least then there was a viable option for refusal that is not so easily seen nowadays, an alternative that really did seem alive with possibility at the time, even if the counterculture ultimately sold out and gave way to the Nixon-into-Reagan era.
I’m not someone who believes that neoliberalism or whatever we’re calling it has totally foreclosed the possibility of an alternative–“capitalist realism” is a problem, but I often critique Mark Fisher for projecting his clinical depression as ontological fact. what that means though is that it’s on me to start thinking about ways of opening alternatives.
any way of living counter to today’s hegemonic monoculture will involve resistance to the culture’s primary motor, surveillance. for starters, this means making good on the threat I’ve long made emptily: getting off social media. I’m not doing that immediately, so if that’s the only way you interact with me you better reach out for some other way to keep in contact or else it’s sayonara suckers. I’m posting this to my Instagram as fair warning. I’m accepting whatever difficulties this makes for me socially and professionally as an artist. I intend on pursuing publication still, but without totally submitting to the demands of the attention economy. this isn’t for the sake of being some contrarian edgelord either; it seems, like art itself, to be a matter of life and death.
I do not mean to be a nostalgic reactionary, or a mere Luddite, scorning social media and clacking on a manual typewriter. but they’re the best first steps I have, and in taking them, I feel a power growing within me.
currently I’m reading The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentlemen. it’s testing my reading comprehension but I’m having a hell of a lot of fun with it.
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