Am I blogging...or am I pitching my existence?
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| High Concept Am I blogging...or am I pitching my existence? |
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Monday, May 17, 2004 The Pitch: It's like Wings of Desire meets The Andromeda Strain! If I remember correctly (and I may not) the word Tim uses to describe my palm and foldout keyboard writing arrangement is "fruity." And perhaps this is why, as a rule, the only people who get very excited by seeing me write in cafes or at outdoor tables are the Japanese, Germans, a few Dutch guys, people who were the fastest touch-typists in their high school, and an African-American of the "white people are crazy" school who couldn't believe I was actually typing. "Oh, I thought you were just goofing on people," he said after noticing there were actually words on the screen and everything. "You were just kind of looking around and, you know--" he flapped his hands up and down. I suspected what he wanted to say, but he didn't actually say it."You look like Stevie Wonder," Edi had already told me. "You kind of roll your head around to the music, your fingers bouncing up and down on the keys." "No, I don't!" "Oh, yes. Yes, you do." So this morning--excited German guy. From the opposite end of the cafe, I saw him talking to a friend while looking at me and flapping his hands up and down. I smiled at him and took off my headphones. "That would be my music of choice," he yelled over to me. "The sound of typing!" I smiled and nodded at him. On the one hand, I would completely agree with him. On the other, agreeing with him might force me to explain why I put on headphones and listened to music. No paradoxes for me, thanks. He started to ask another question as I was putting on my headphones, so I took them off again. "What?" In the end, he came over for much excited ooh'ing and ahhh'ing (well, the German version of ooh'ing and ahh'ing, which meant that he pointed and lectured about my device to me and occasionally would go "Hmmm!" in a very pleased way), and we bitched amiably about impactless keyboards, thumbpads, and the like. He of course asked about Bluetooth and lifted up a corner of his coat to show his holstered Bluetooth cell phone, and he started talking about voltage--the five volt threshold, I think he referred to it--which is the voltage that flows through a USB line and some other thing I can't remember. Like any good techie, in his two minutes with me, he managed to bitch about how "they" make you pay for all these different power sources when, if you can just figure how to power your device on 5 volts, you can do just about anything for free. After a few minutes of actually pushing his fingers on the keyboard to see if the texture and give was agreeable (it was!), he thanked me, made his way back to his table, and then left three minutes later. I actually was pretty fond of him, and became convinced three minutes in that I was talking to Wim Wenders--there was something about the steely blue eyes behind the handsomely featureless face, the colorless hair with the generic cut. It was the face of countless architects, scientists, modern painters, writers on books concerning chess prodigies and number theory--the face I always associate with Wim Wenders and his emotionally formalist epics. As he walked away, I wanted to say, "Wait, who are you?" Who was he, if not Wim Wenders? He left the cafe three minutes later, pulled out (of course) a pipe, and got behind the wheel a car of indeterminate type the color of dirty pool water. Because I've been wandering the last month or so in the wilderness of plotless, characterless writing, the essential characterness of Wim Wenders asserted a magnetic pull on me. Let me see those functional glass tables of your home, Wim! Let me see the broken-spined hardcovers analyzing the Blackmar-Diemer Gambit guttered with pipe ash! I promise to make no noise at all as you put on a Bach concerto (nothing at all like the sound of typing) and hike out over uncut grass to refill the bird feeder! And if you can somehow find it in your heart to commit adultery, or become unheathily obsessed with your neighbor, or use USB cables to power your reading lamps, I swear to you I'll be your friend for life! posted by Jeff Lester | 8:05 AM | |
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