The Clacking

To spite a friend, and several of my enemies, I recently begun using a typewriter. My friend, whom I detest, and possibly my enemies, towards which I feel naught but ambivalence, guffawed at my collection of instruments (it is vast beyond imagining) and said “You, who need so many tools, cannot even match my skill with but the one of my trade.” I assumed at first he meant the pen, and as I proceeded to count out the various colours and kinds of pen available he bellowed out in anger and smashed his wordmachine down upon his lap, where it became embedded in his thigh. “The typewriter you fool! The pen is obsolete, and the pencil even worse.” and with that limped from my sight.

I retreated back into my barn, detouring slightly via the mechanical contraption emporium, and immersed myself in the music of this so called “language” with: my newly bought utterance transcription tool; seventeen thousand sheets of paper; a stool (for me); a slightly higher stool (for the robotic word producer). And then I began, merrily, to type.

At first it was disastrous, unmelodious, cacophonous, preposterous. Nonsense and gibberish surged forth onto the paper, somehow twisted and stunted by the process of transformation that took place between brain and page. Instruments of the musical kind operate delightfully at the speed of thought and mind but this device constricted, contracted, congealed, until eventually the process of conscious thought wheezed, seized up, stopped.

“Perhaps,” I thought rather cruelly, or not cruelly enough. “This is why words suit Ted’s desiccated brain, a single thought seeping out of it daily, like a glacier calving into a dead and dying ocean.”

Of course I persevered, the power of spite knowing no bounds. Day 2 – Awful again. Day 3 – Abominable. Day 4 – Appalling. Day 5 – I fought with a wasp. Day 6 – Victory attained. Day 7 – Unagreeable. Day 8 – Sort of neutral in flavour. Day 9 – Things improved. Day 10 – I sang a song.

But I sang not with my voice but with the pressing of my fingers on the bony keys, the clack of the levers, the shuddering of the stool, the ringing of the bell, the scratching of claws on wood, the fluttering of the paper as it twisted and turned and whipped back and forth in the whirlwind that consumed us (my barn is located in Kansas).

Each letter had a unique clack, therefore each word was its own chord, each sentence a melody. I said out loud my name, the first words I had verbally uttered for some time, but I could no longer understand what I heard. “TOE. BEEEE.” It was appalling gibberish. I typed it out. CLACK (T). CLACK (O). CLACK (B). CLACK (Y). It was beautiful.

(Unfortunately due to the limitations of written language I cannot adequately convey the subtle differences between the clacks, so have had to resort, ironically, to the very letters that when spoken no longer held any meaning.)

I gave up on speech in disgust and devoted myself to the typing of words. Over the next several months (Days 11-93) I composed a symphony greater than any I had previously managed. I was just reaching the end when I was rudely awakened by a scratching at the door. I went outside and discovered Ted trapped under a bale of hay, pawing weakly at the barn to try and catch my attention. I believe he had been there for several months (his typewriter was still embedded in his leg, at any rate, and his clothes were the same as when last we fought).

“Ted,” I said. “I must show you something of great import.” I snuck back into the barn and then returned with my work clasped reverently by my trembling phalanges.

BEHOLD THE MOON, I read. LOOK UPON ITS MAJESTY WHILE YOU STILL CAN

The lack of punctuation was Ted’s own fault, distracting me in the throes of my passion. I realised then that spoken words had returned for me to meaning, the music of the machine retreated, that this work would no forever be unfinished, bereft of the correct closing mark that would have elevated the work beyond mere greatness. But at least I had shown my friend that I could master his degenerate language, safe in the knowledge that he could never master mine (Ted is both tone-deaf and lungless).