RUDIMENTS, pt. 300
Making Cars
Long about 1964 I really did
fell in love with the Russian
dissident movement - Samizdat
it was called - hand-published
manuscripts and critiques of
the society, hand-copied, or
printed and surreptitiously
distributed. It got lots of people
in trouble. Yuli Daniel, Andrei
Sinyavski are two who come
to mind right off; of course,
along with the biggies,
Alexander Solzhenitsyn and
Andrei Sakharov. I don't know
what I was doing among the -
a know-nothing American kid
reading the fringes. But they
fascinated me, as did their
movement itself - the ways
and means of their distribution,
meeting, exchanging information,
eluding authorities. It was a
quite thrilling world, and one
I was quite caught up into for
a while. I liked the purity of the
ideology, even though, in truth,
I knew little about any of it but
through hearsay. These fellows
went through hell, labor camps,
exile, forced march, Siberia,
deprivation, punishments and
beating too. Still they stayed
with it all. That took guts. All
I saw was a certain kind of
Russian (Soviet) guts - enough
to be able to withstand engulfment
and physical horror. The was all
well before the days of any sort
of computerized resources, and
linking to look-ups and the rest.
This was all secret and done
surreptitiously, like the old
networks of revolutionaries
in the 1800's. A typewriter was
really stretching it. There were
odd things about too which I did,
in turn, see in NYC later, including
my friend Paul - silent typewriters,
or at least, as in Paul's case, varied
and self-invented ways of silencing
or at least greatly diminishing the
type-cackle of a late-at-night
typewriter. There were ways, as
weird as they sometimes looked :
corrugated boxes, wide enough for
carriage movement yet covered
with towels and stuffed with
cotton, to muffle. Paul was an
inveterate all-night typist, or at
least until he conked off while
typing. There were always
apartment neighbors who were
complaining about it. The pre-war
buildings of the upper west-side
had really thick walls, granted,
but somehow certain things got
through, and not everyone had
the luxury of a fancy and large
apartment. My friend Jeff Gordon,
(deceased now) along with his
wife Juanita, on w87th Street,
had a beauty of an apartment -
wide and thin\ck and expansive,
and grandfather'd in for rent-control,
at some purely ridiculous, nay
miraculous monthly price. All
very old-world, while, by contrast,
Paul usually ran from one studio
apartment to the next, rickety,
cheap, ground-level or one level
down (we often saw pedestrian
feet walking by, at head height).
I always figured the below the
ground location would help
alleviate the typewriter noise,
but it never did seem to.
-
Those Russian guys had it
50 times worse, at least, and
a good portion of them died
for it. The best way in and
out was paper and pencil,
and probably still remains
so. That's about as basic as
you can get, and easiest to
hide too. Everything past
that point just gets complicated
- phones and telegraph and all
that fails miserably. Memorization
too was useful. There's a book
now, from about 1980 or so,
called 'The Memory Palace
of Matteo Ricci,' I think it is,
about a man in extreme
situations who memorizes
things by keying them to
visual memories of chairs
and furnishings and all.
Fairly complicated, but
he was able to 'scan' an
imaginary room he'd
created in his mind, and
every item he looked upon
conjured up, by his
memorized 'key,' a
different object or set
of objects or words
and phrases, for him.
was pretty cool, and
these old Medieval
and pre-medieval guys
were really, really good
at it - compensating,
as they were, for the
utter primitiveness of
all other available
communication. Which
when you think about it is
pretty down-right amazing,
seeing what a mess we
made of even that
(communications) in
those 1950's days. The
idea than was that all people
were at heart cheery and easy
and comfortable. Which is the
opposite of the way things are,
but that was part of the dumb
illusion of that time. I've never
been a phone person, and don't
use one. I guess I don't ever
for any marketers profiles, of
anything, except maybe for
jerk pills or 'bad-attitude'
syrup or something. But, that's
another story entirely - how
people get me so wrong.
I'm a goofball, basically, a
happy, cheerful guy - but
everyone things I'm a dark
block, a true negative. They
should know me - all I ask
for comfort is the Truth, and
maybe a toothbrush. Both are
carry-on luggage; real easy.
But, back to the 1950's, the
question had to be 'how are we
going to get people interested in
having phones - not just phones,
but more than one phone. Household
phones - one for Mom in the
kitchen, maybe a Princess phone
each, upstairs in the bedrooms,
for Dawn and Stella. They even
named them 'Princess Phones.'
how crazy. Never before, by
the way, did people have to pay
for talking. Imagine that! It
was another barrier to figure
out to break. Just more work
for the merchandisers. Phones
later got as weird as society did -
20 foot chords, I can recall
mother having, so she could
almost be three rooms away
and still keep that darn call
gong.
-
One last thing on this, (it
started out, remember, about
those brave and mortally
endangered Russian dissident
guys way back). It's that whole
man-up thing : you see when I
see a guy on a phone, first
thought that crosses my mind
is, 'hmmm, I wonder he he
also wears a bra.' Sorry, fellas,
but phones are for girls. Strictly
female - the first time a guy,
including Alexander Graham
Bell - picked u a telephone,
and got in that horrible habit
of babble, that was the end of
the world as I knew it, or
wanted to. Face it, boys, there's
NO news to relate, and neither
are there any real issues of phone
concern that should be of interest
to you. So, as soon as you're done
with the call, put the phone down,
stand up and walk out of the
manicurist's chair, and quit looking
at boyly magazines that tell you
how to take care of your skin.
(If 'girly' mags, why not 'boyly?').
About as archaic as a dinosauer
egg. And j-u-s-t l-i-k-e ME.
Signed, R. Chaic.
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