technique

Gents,

Do you put much stock in the apparatus by which you produce your writing? I know this shit has been batted around at least as long as Sam Clemens’ admiration for the typewriter. The speed and accuracy of the typeset word was essential, so says Beninger, to contain the complexity of the emerging modern corporation in the context of a guilded age society run on horse drawn carts and very little standardized information sharing.

But I digress. I want to address the phenomenology of writing, how it’s experienced, what gives it substance, what validates the time spent ‘creating’ in words ideas that are richer and perhaps much more synesthetic as ideas before being put through the labor of communication.

I am reminded of Hunter S. Thompson’s technique for writing. He set up shop in his kitchen. He preferred to write in a high-traffic and non-private space. He also learned how to write by literally typing out, word for word, the books of authors that he admired.

I am reminded of Slavoj Zizek’s commentary upon his authorship where he basically stands at a computer and pecks with one hand as he edits the notes that he wrote down. He points to the fact that he fools himself into writing by producing complex ideas in his note taking, which then become the stuff of his books with little work in the transition. I’ve done the same. I think I’ve witnessed Michael do the same as well.

Then there’s this.

“According to Wired magazine, McCarthy's Olivetti Lettera 32 typewriter was put up for auction at Christie's. The Olivetti Lettera 32 has been in his care for 46 years, since 1963. He picked up the used machine for $50 from a pawn shop in Knoxville, Tennessee. McCarthy reckons he has typed around five million words on the machine, and maintenance consisted of "blowing out the dust with a service station hose". The typewriter was auctioned on Friday, December 4, 2009 and the auction house, Christie’s, estimated it would fetch between $15,000 and $20,000; it sold for $254,500.[12] The Olivetti's replacement for McCarthy to use is another Olivetti, bought by McCarthy’s friend John Miller for $11.[13] The proceeds of the auction are to be donated to the Santa Fe Institute, a nonprofit interdisciplinary scientific research organization.”

What makes a creator so beholden to one’s artifacts? What makes the habits so persistent? I keep coming back to this over and over—neuroconsolidation. We build a repertoire of habits upon which we hang newer experiences. I would consider the idiosyncrasies of human behavior to be the outward signs of the brute natural limitations of neurology. One’s inability to remember some things can be a consequence of one memory’s place too close to another, creating an inhibition. I’m reminded that to remember George Orwell’s name, I’ve stored it in the shadow of another famous person’s name, Orson Wells. I rarely remember George’s name first, but I’ve grown to find ways of dealing with the limitations of how I’ve established remembering. I find it poetic that I've resorted to some newspeak workaround to recall the name of a famous writer whose very preoccupation was modern power elites' desire to control the masses through their ability to think and speak.

Enough for now. Drinking gets me thinking.