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Show B Wednesday, January 12, 2UU0 THE SIGNPOST Page lJ ther Campuses On Get your poetry tap! click!) on demand Knight-Ridder Newspapers ' . ' " . SEATTLE Seattle is one of the least likely places to sit down with coffee and hear a paean to low technology. But in the universe of the three-woman Typing Explosion, that's exactly where conversations often head. Talking typewriters with these artists is like discussing wheels with hot-rodders. Names are spoken in loving whispers: the 1948 Remington Rand! the midnight-blue Royal Deluxe! The contour, finish and touch of every species is dissected, hailed for its singular qualities and its fascinations. "Let's get sentimental," says Explosion founder Sarah Ocampo. 'The writing world lost poetry when it switched over to digital tools!" Pet machines are slowly revealed: an IBM Selectric equipped with an early "golf ball." a white Brother Opus, a Hermes 3000 portable. Such equipment, with its hums and clicks and personality, forms an essential part of the Typing Explosion's mission. The Typing Explosion is composed of writers who collaborate to create poetry on-the-spot. In operation, their metier sounds hilarious: Rapidly clicking keys are punctuated by burping horns, a constant chiming of bells and the periodic shriek of whistles. But their aim. says Ocampo, is to generate an assembly line of sound, one whose secret center is the actual production of serious writing. Working together, they offer the viewer "personal" poems for the price of one dollar. The process of composition is staged as a performance, begin- Funeral for friend makes By Erica Levi Campus Correspondent-Syracuse University In January of my sophomore year of college, I sat in a room of 500 people and listened to a girl speak about her sister. I traveled long hours in the middle of the night to make it to that talk on time and had not brought pen or paper to take notes. In fact, I had left my backpack and textbooks behind. Hundreds of miles from the lecture halls I know well, I sat uncomfortably in a sanctuary' a usual place of warmth and understanding, but now a massive room of dissolution and lost faith. I could barely hear the child's small voice uttering poetry above the echoing, hollow sounds of those coughing and blowing their noses around me. The faces that surrounded me were not faces of college classmates; the bodies to the left and right of me were not The women who make up Typing Explosion sit with only the sounds of their typewriters to hear as they create original works for their clients. The group has published around 500 poems. ning when a "client" chooses the title for his or her elegy. A client must then walk from typist lo typist as the poem evolves, verse-by-verse, among them. But Explosion members do not speak as they sit creating. Instead, they signal finished stanzas with their bells and whistles. As each writer completes a verse, she plucks the poem from her typewriter, hands it off and takes up another. When a piece is finished, the trio sounds three bicycle horns. Ocampo chose to bill the group's debut appearances as performance art. carefully omitting any mentions whatsoever of poetry. Although they choose the titles of poems, their purchasers play a minimal role. They must remain obedient to those "rules" projected onto the wall. These include standing at least a foot away from the typists' action, and a prohibition of any doodling in notebooks or scribbling notes. Instead, they were two broad-shouldered companions from high school, holding my hands at my friend Celia's funeral.In back of me were the teachers who had taught Celia and me our favorite courses: English, yearbook, newspaper. The same teachers who scolded us for giggling in the back of the classroom, now sat with me and dabbed their eyes. We listened as a 10-year-old child, barely tall enough to reach the microphone, spoke eloquently about her love for her sister Celia, my petite, angelic-faced friend who slipped out of this world on Jan. 18, 1999. Celia had just returned to University of Michigan for the second semester of her freshman year. She and three friends went skiing for the weekend, and on the trip home, the car she was traveling in hit a patch of ice and careened into a truck. My friend died instantly. In January, at almost 20 years of age, I still managed to think that death only hunted the elderly, the sick, and the bad guys. (tapi J 1 1 - comments or suggestions. More than 300 titles for potential poems are in their file, typed on index cards, the waiting clients may peruse. Every poem the typists write, however, is original. For once a title has been used, it is then retired for good. So far, the Explosion has produced around 500 poems. They have performed at First Thursdays, ArtsEdge, poetry festivals, private parties and even a wedding. They have written poems for titles in French. Spanish and Swahili. Two separate publishers have also approached them, each proposing to collate their collected works. Then, Kessler heard a radio piece about onlineself-publishing. Now, they may be doing the book themselves. Their joint enterprise is becoming well-known. During the Christmas season, the Explosion had to turn away bookings. student realize random nature of death 1 knew death in very few forms. In fifth grade I dressed in black and dug a hole In my backyard for a box containing a treasured fish. In sixth grade I crept back into the room where my lifeless dog lay after he had been put to sleep. In 12th grade I stood at a podium in front of family and family friends and eulogized my loving grandfather. Fish and dogs and grandparents get old: I learned that early on. But I was caught off-guard that night I answered the phone while watching television in my apartment. I was not prepared to hear another friend whisper that my 5-foot-tall, adorable, big-mouthed, platform-wearing, vivacious, intelligent friend, the one who promised in my yearbook to love me always and forever, had died. It took me nearly that whole week prior to her funeral to figure out how to get home. My mother didn't want me driving considering the circumstances. I couldn't miss too many classes my first week back. I was miserable and in pain and felt cheated and guilty. For a long Chinese arrest of scholar chills freedom By William G. Durden Knight-Ridder Tribune The Christmas Eve arrest of a Dickinson College librarian and scholar Yongyi Song for historical research in China signals a chilling challenge to Americans in general and the world community at large. Mr. Song, a Chinese native with permanent residency status in the United States, was to have received his U.S. citizenship upon his planned return from Beijing in September. Instead he and his wife. Helen Yao. were detained by Chinese security in August on suspicion of violating that country's laws pertaining to classified documents. Ms. Yao was released and returned home in November.The author of two books on the Chinese Cultural Revolution, Mr. Song had gone to China to collect information that was freely and publicly available in Red Guard newspapers, magazines and books published in the 1960s and 1970s. By its arrest of Mr. Song for research that is routine elsewhere in the world, China strikes directly at a fundamental premise of democratic principles that is. the free exchange of thoughts and ideas. Most mature governments establish classification criteria for information, which it deems sensitive. Any information that is potentially harmful to government is clearly demarcated, and transgressions in its access and communication are clearly articulated and, thus, understood. One knows where one stands. But evidently not in China. That country subjects its citizens to a dangerous guessing game time I had fallen out of touch with Celia, and had only been talking to her again since November 1998. We e-mailed and chatted over the computer - discussing what we would do when we saw each other over winter break. 1 never saw her. We talked numerous times over the vacation, but she always called and wanted me to come over as I was climbing into bed. and when I called, her father would tell me she was out shopping or out with friends or cousins. Celia had so many people in her life who cared for her. She was so giving. She was small but she was strong. She had even lost her own brother when she was younger. Now her parents had to bury a second child. That is all I thought of as I threw a single rose onto her coffin and shoveled dirt into the void where she rested. Her parents had a "sharing session" at their house the night of the funeral, and friends sat around and told funny stories about her. Her parents made Inquiries into the stories they only knew portions of - we spilled the where an unknowing miscalculation may lead to imprisonment and potentially, in severe cases, to death. When truth casts such a long shadow, human and societal instabilities are inevitable. China's actions are also a direct challenge to the foundation of academic freedom, an American concept but adopted by most countries worldwide. Academic freedom guarantees that schools must be sanctuaries for students and scholars to seek truth with immunity. Academic freedom, however, is not a pursuit germane only to colleges and universities. It is the basic freedom of people everywhere to seek and receive accurate information that will help them understand their pasts and direct their futures. That China directed this assault on intellectual freedom on a professor and author from Dickinson College is somehow prophetic. Founded in 1773, the college is named for John Dickinson, whose "Letters from a Pennsylvania Farmer" decried the lack of freedoms (information being one of them) enjoyed by colonists under British rule. Mr. Song is following in Mr. Dickinson's tradition. British should not have dictated to colonists, and we Americans should not dictate to the Chinese standards for their control of information. What the Chinese do is up to the Chinese. Yet if China indeed seeks to become a full partner in the world's trade, cultural and intellectual endeavors, would it not seem reasonable for it to adopt freedom of infor- mation policies and practices more in keeping with those shared by other members of the world community? We think so, and the prompt release of Mr. Song would be a positive step in that direction. truths about all the situations that girl managed to get into. The feeling was warm, the emotion was strong, and the mood was uplifting. I guess as a psychiatrist, Celia's father realized that this storytelling time would provide her friends with a sense of closure and a catalyst for healing. But still 1 think of her. and want to know why that little daredevil was kidnapped by death from her family and friends. I want to call her and hear her laugh. I want to put our hair up in pigtails again and take pictures of us acting childish. I want to sit beside her again in our high school yearbook and newspaper classes and learn about layout and feature writing. We already thought we knew so much about newspaper then, but until 1 got to college. I didn't know that the obituary page was the most widely read page of the newspaper. No classroom prepared me. though, for the day I would have to see my own friend's face on it. |
