Mon, 04 September 2000
Casually pondering tapeworms
I just got back from the annual Labour Day arts and music festival held in Seattle Center known as Bumbershoot. The place was crowded but amongst the "Literary Section", we found some performance art who called themselves "The Typing Explosion". After waiting for a half-hour in line, one uses an old mechanical typewriter to type up a title to a poem (you also have the option of picking a pre-canned one they had in a card-filing cabinet). You then would hand the card (along with a dollar bill you stuffed into an old coffee can) to the first of a trio of women dressed in 1950's style secretarial dresses. They in turn would begin crafting a poem based on the title you've selected using old electric typewriters. I was actually very impressed with their creativity. It's sort of like improv poetry set against the backdrop of a post-WW2 office environment complete with 5-min union breaks every 35 minutes. Here's the result of my submitted title:
