A Sunday escape #2
Typewriters, freedom, and a self-powered journey around the world
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Dear NE-One
Isn’t it funny, the way memory changes your perception of reality? Yesterday I was mulling over the typewriters of my childhood (the antique Underwood near our front door – pictured above – prompted this) when I recalled a photograph my mum took back in the late Eighties. In the image I’m sitting on a low chair, bent over a typewriter that’s just wider than the wooden side-table it’s resting on, and I’m completely caught up in my own world.
If I had to select a handful of pictures that capture my childhood, I mused yesterday, that photograph would be one of them: alone for hours with a typewriter, happily lost in my imagination.
I’ve always loved them. As a child I was captivated by feeling the mechanics of the machine as I rolled in the paper; that smooth coldness of the keys under fingers; that rhythm when, before I could write, I tapped out nonsense, and then later poems and stories and letters and “books”. Click-click-click-click-click ping! Slam! Click-click-click-click-click-ping! Slam! It was always triumphant, that end-of-row slam back to the left margin.
Do you know where that photo is, I asked my parents last night, describing the image in detail. I’m in the family room, wearing a black jacket. My hair’s shoulder length. I’m sitting on a yellow chair – we had two of them, remember? – and I’m wearing stone-washed jeans. I’m hunched over Dad’s two-tone-grey typewriter, the one he used before he got the electric one…
I can still feel that long-ago morning. The weak autumn sunlight; the bird somewhere outside. In my memory it’s a dove – ku-coooo-ruk ku-coooo-ruk – and I remember clearly that sharp morning coldness of soft vinyl on bare feet. I felt it just yesterday – same room, updated vinyl flooring – as I played a memory-card game with my treasured nieces.
Much to their amusement (and, when we’re playing in teams, someone’s frustration), I’m not very good at the memory-card game… and it turns out I’m not very good at remembering photographs, either. After trawling through family albums this morning I eventually found the image I was looking for. Not a typewriter in sight…
As well as typewriters, I’ve also been mulling over birds lately, as well as freedom and the concept of “home” – so I wanted to share with you three links you might enjoy…
…if you have only a few moments
(but you’ll probably linger longer)
London-based James Cook is a typewriter artist. “A picture worth a thousand words” he says of his work, which he creates, of course, on typewriters. (How does he do it? Watch the artist at work on his Instagram reels.) While he’s typed up paintings like Mona Lisa and Van Gogh’s Self Portrait with Grey Felt Hat, it’s James Cook’s panoramas and cityscapes that I’m most taken by: lots of London (Big Ben, King’s Road, London Eye, St Paul’s Cathedral, Canary Wharf) as well as New York, Chicago, Paris. If you’re looking for a piece of art that captures your city travels, you can buy a print from £40 (or, for a few thousand more, commission a piece of your own).
…if you have 10 minutes
“We love birds for a simple reason: They can fly. We see them launch themselves effortlessly up into a medium with no boundaries while we remain earthbound, and we are inspired to dream. Imagine watching land and sea unfold beneath you not through the windows of an airplane but under your own power.” The New York Times ran an essay a few weeks back by science writer Christian Cooper, host on National Geographic Channel’s Extraordinary Birder (and also, the birder from that Central Park incident three years back – you know, the Black Birder and the White Dog-Walker). It’s a wonderful piece about freedom, connection and place – and you don’t need to be a birder to enjoy it. (Although, it might just tempt you to haul out your binoculars…)
…if you have 90 minutes
Home – an outward journey inward is a documentary about British adventurer Sarah Outen who, at age 25, set out to cycle, kayak and row her way around the world. I’ve watched it three times – first time because I was about to interview Sarah for this Conde Nast story, and then again and again because there’s just something about her journey (“from London to London, via the world” – her tagline) that grips me. It’s a brutally honest and raw documentary; there’s joy, and triumph, and utter terror. There are beautiful connections with unexpected companions and of course, there’s a window into parts of the world I have never seen (and one part in particular I hope to never see…spoiler alert: tropical storm in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean). Watch the trailer here, and rent ($4.88) or buy ($9.70) the film here.
Until next week,
Narina x
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https://www.aroundtheoffice.com/Smith-Corona-Typewriter-DeVille-750-Refurbished-with-New-Machine-Warranty/productinfo/TW-SCM-DEVILLE750/
That is precisely the one I have. It’s at my parents’ house. The neat thing about the screen is that even if you could only see (X) characters, you could type as much as you wanted. Then when you hit return, it would start typing full speed, like transitioning from a walk to a hand gallop. Erasing a character meant that the the machine typed over the original character with a white ribbon. That sounded like a jackhammer. It was a pleasure to use. I’d like to get an older one or maybe one of “modern old” ones just to enjoy the sounds you describe.
I’m still thinking about the twist in your tale, which I’ve seen play out in all sorts of contexts.
I love this post. The twist is delicious. My first “big” purchase with my own hard-earned money was a typewriter. It’s a Smith Corona that has -- and I use the present tense because I can still plug it in 34 years later -- a small digital one-line screen that fits five words at most. But one can type a sentence and delete and correct on the screen before hitting return. When I bought it, that was as magical as turning on our Apple 2e. A few years later, I typed my college applications using it and went through several ink cartridges, which were terribly expensive. I can’t imagine that I could even find one today, So on those rare occasions when I turn it on for fun, I don’t dare press return. What could be worse than leaving it alone without ink?