I am fascinated by typewriters.
I’m sure that if I was born in the era where typewriters were the norm, I would not be as fascinated. But, I wasn’t and I am.
Is it because the sound they make is so sharp and loud? You can’t escape the tap-tap, clackity-clack, clang-clang, ding of the typewriter. Even the electric ones have a specific sound. You know that one is writing. Or is it just because I can actually hear – not just feel – the typewriter as I’m typing?
Sometimes a laptop seems so, well, cold and distant. With handwriting, it’s there. Forever. With a typewriter, it’s there. Forever. Even if you white-out what you’ve written – or even erase – there are still traces of that word. A computer will lose all traces of that word you wanted gone – unless you save it. Even then you can still save over that file.
I love technology.
Now, I definitely do not advocate for no technology. My day job is full of technology (websites, apps, rapid notifications, hello?!). I have a laptop, a tablet, and a smart phone. As with most people, I definitely love the easy access of the internet and the world it can offer to you within seconds. I love finding motivating quotes and changing backgrounds on the screens. Tweeting and creating images that go with my blogs and stories. All of it is at my fingertips… and yet, the imagination as you hear the clacking of the typewriter is not there. The anticipation of the Polaroid picture that may – or may not – turn out as you like. With a phone, or digital camera, you can simply delete if it doesn’t turn out as you wanted.
My husband doesn’t see the point in my typewriter(s) and Polaroid cameras. “What do you use them for? They are gathering dust.” He states (quite often). Yes, I go more towards the easy of technology that I have grown up with (and I would love if someday, the computer will type out what I am thinking as I am thinking it… my stories would flow so much easier and faster as my brain writes the stories a lot faster than my hands can type or write them out). But at the same time, I search for even more older technology that I can collect (what I’m wanting now: new Polaroid camera).
I want my work to last.
Doesn't everyone?
But some days, I like to pull out my typewriter – either the 1947 one that my husband gave me, or the electronic 1983 one I have, and write a letter, or a story on it. And my husband cringes each time I take a Polaroid picture – obviously thinking, “there goes another $1 in film." But I want it to last. I don’t want the easy deletes. I want to go back and look at that picture or grimace over a grammar mistake in a written story. Vintage, it may be, and hipster, quite possibly…but I like it.
I’m a vintage technophile – or techie who loves all kinds of technology.
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