Tag: Norman Mailer

Lost art of typing

The BBC has a piece on Japan Love Affair with the Fax Machine. Older population has gotten used to that technology (which allows for hand-writing). For years, I have used email except for  Thank-you notes in writing. I can reasonably predict that even typing (as we know it) will be a lost art (speech recognition will be in) I-pad, I-phone replacing IBM Selectric.

The late Andy Rooney was seen inseparable with his typewriter. So was American literary giant, Norman Mailer.

Something about the man and his tools. We think as we type. The neurons are hard at work, one character at a time. The sound of those banging keys is rhythm to our ears, which then reflects each thought. A feedback loop. We know you are out there in the ether. And that you are lonely. We, writers, are too. Awake at night, half-sleep during the day. We are commanded by sudden thoughts. We are mere instruments and Irises.

Via fax, chat, text, tweet and type, we send out an SOS. That we were once here, alive and breathing, waiting for validation. Each, with love, hope and fears.

Love unceasingly. Hope never fails and fear as basis for survival.

We invent, reinvent and reshape this known universe in our likeness (while we are byproducts of earlier version).

Confined, reduced and restricted, we try to liberate ourselves by any means we can. We imitate others, read their works, copy their findings and their maps.

From Magellan to Mandela, we know they are out there, not taking injustice sitting down.

Yes, some did not play by the rules. But most do.

In the end, humanity benefits and makes progress as a whole.

Rilke advises the young poet that he should dig deep inside, where it’s dark and vulnerable.

We each carry that river of doubt. About our tomorrow, about the unknown and unfamiliar.

We want change and continuity at the same time. We are paradoxical.

A little progress, yes. But not too much. Because new pieces of hardware displace old ones, we end up making frequent trips to the Salvation Army or Goodwill, where their electronic section kept piling up with industrial waste. Among those, the fax machine.  Somewhere along the way, I hope to run into an IBM Selectric. CSI of the future will learn that our civilization once have a love affair with bulky stuff, fax machines made in Japan, and used in Japan.

Machine run

When I logged in, it’s auto-filled.

The Machine says, “if it’s routine, let me handle it”.

It’s permeating: embedded in the chip, in the code and in the company.

This morning, I saw a group of photographers with long-lense cameras, shooting what appeared to be a lotus (Vietnamese Buddhist Temple in Orange County, CA).  At least, they appear to be taking practice shoots.

I have seen people holding up the I-pad, I-phone for every day shoots. Now Amazon is entering that hardware space as well. And of course, Facebook.

Watch out Samsung!

After all, one of the Japanese companies started out making toasters.

Then it diversified.

What does it mean to us? We would have less chores to work longer hours to be able to afford those convenience.

It has been like that always. The loop.

We don’t want to get caught using a typewriter these days (unless we hang out with Norman Mailer and Andy Rooney).

Wait until Foxconn completes its assembly line with full automation!

It will be just a private-label exercise.  Intelligent device and manufacturing.

This time, the invasion of machine will be second to none.

Back in the 50’s, machine barely got into the home (bulky but they lasted a long time).

Now, we can take it in the car, into the office and back home. Even the machine got climate-controlled by other machines (A/C).

When it gets plugged-in, it talks to the cloud, updating its latest version of open-source. Machine gets smarter by the day, while man gets complacent.

Little by little, we are pushed to the edge (the edge of decline), joining the rank of the expired and expandable.

Machine will generate an auto-filled, auto response to our job inquiries. If any consolation, machines (fax, typewriter, film camera) also get displaced by other machines. No man or machine are indispensable.

Flaubert et moi

Actually this is about the redemptive aspect of literature.

Set in 1843, Flaubert‘s character rode the psycho-somatic roller-coaster. The result: Madame Bovary set him apart from his Romantic contemporaries. He started the school of Realism even though he never admitted it. Bovary got married, Bovary got bored, Bovary had an affair and a brush with death but recovered just to fall into the arms of another man.  Finally, bankruptcy and death. But Bovary wasn’t the character. It’s Flaubert’s attempt at depicting French country side and country living of his time (Like Roger Altman‘s films, the place is the main character).

In fact, some critics overheard him said, “Madame Bovary, c’est moi”.

Feeling hemmed in and enveloped by a flat country side which to others  might be heaven – wife of a country doctor  etc…but to our character, it’s an oppression.

She longed for the return of the glamorous “Gastby type”.

Flaubert held up the mirror to show us ourselves, the mirage we invented and dreams projected (which essentially our shadows in the cave).

I had no preconception before reading that piece of art.

Having finished it, I still have no post-conception of it.

It just was. Human nature.

The illusion of a better find around the bend, of Moore’s Law that keeps multiplying to infinity . This is antithetic to Flaubert who was known for his dis-taste of machine.

I wish I could read it in French.

But the English version is Flaubert enough. I understand more about escapism, nihilism and “the journey is a reward” .

The illusion that one can control and change destiny.

As fate would have it, Bovary died a wretched lady and her doctor-husband stayed on in the very town she had detested.

Back then, in that setting, writers must be autocrats to afford deep researching of the characters and setting of a novel.

What would he do had he been born in this century?

Like Norman Mailer, he perhaps would stick with the typewriter and not Twitter.

Meanwhile, what would we do being born in early 1800?

We would die younger, hence the longing for escapism must have come sooner.

Would we want to switch places with them?

Are our qualities of life surpassing theirs?

How about the index of misery?

Perhaps Flaubert breathed cleaner air, but according to his character,

still oppressed and constricted.

The take-away from Madame Bovary is ” le mot juste“. Flaubert would read out loud, finding the right word that tickles the ears.

Again, I wish I could have read it in its original language.

One thing I appreciate about Vietnam: you can go to a bookstore, and buy translated books from Russia, France, America or South America.

Someone, somewhere in this “belong-to-bottom 15” of miserable index, is trying to look up le mot juste, to do justice to an author’s intent.

When they found it, they would not let go of it. So would I. Everything (word) has its place and time under the sun. Flaubert’s place has so far been secured in French literature . If Madame Bovary got digitized though. Flaubert would have hated it.

My list of Influencers

Despite their flaws (who doesn’t have one please cast the first stone), these are the people I look up to:

– President Carter with his commitment to build housing for the poor

– President Clinton out of that place called Hope

– Jim Elliot, the late great missionary who died for his cause

– Danny Devito who despite his “short-coming”, managed to secure a starring role in Taxi

– Nelson Mandela, there is no need to elaborate here

– Cheryl Crow for touring and making it as an artist in a predominantly male rockers club

– Norman Mailer for speaking out and writing up monumental pieces of literature

– Charlie Chaplin, who saw the inhumanity of the system, and in the process makes us laugh without a need for words

– Robert Redford who started Sundance Festival to encourage young film makers to step up to the plate

– Kevin Costner whose ambition has been unmatched, and he has lived out his role in Water World (not oily world)

– Hillary Clinton who personifies multitasking, self-reinventing and America itself

– Steve Jobs who got booted out of corporate America, but somehow, turned crisis into opportunity, the Yin into the Yan

– John Travolta, the comeback kid to become the star that he meant to be in Pulp Fiction and still counting

– George Harrison and Eric Clapton, to have their sweet guitar “gently weeps” for Bangladesh flood victims

– and most recently, senator Kennedy, who could have just kept quiet and sailed around the world for 40 years.

Each one of us take a play page from the many “sparks of divinity” without knowing it.

They inspire us, and show us new heights.

No, they are not naive. They know the costs and consequences of their action.

But they also know the opportunity cost of their inaction.

While  TIME and Forbes lists are updated annually,

Our pantheon of the gods need daily update.

Like our heroes, we are to use talent and technology for social change.

In the process, we better ourselves,.

Silicon Valley has come to you. It’s up to you to start meeting “gentle people” online.

No wonder TIME People of the Year a few years back was YOU. The burden is now on YOU.

Become my new influencers as I yours. We do need each other to make it through this world and leave behind a better one.