My Quarantine Project

Preface

I wanted to enter this writing challenge on photo editing, but felt I had nothing to contribute. I am 48 years old, and I sure tried to keep up with technology at first. It has changed so quickly over the decades, though, at some point I simply gave up trying — probably somewhere around Mac OS 9.

Last spring when the world flipped upside-down, I found myself spending a lot of time alone. It was the perfect time to make art, but I was feeling that old challenge of not knowing how to use technology to help produce what I saw in my mind's eye.

I had all of these photos of poems I had written from when I was busking with my typewriter. Most of the photos were pretty terrible. I took them with my iPhone 8+ and never even thought to clean the lens. I was just documenting the poems, making sure the words were legible — I didn't imagine I was going to want to do anything with the photos themselves.

The backstory

In November 2019, I traded a deer onesie for this manual typewriter.

I was unemployed and living out of my fancy SUV at the time, looking for ways of generating income. I'd met folks throughout my travels who supported themselves busking with their manual typewriters, and I thought I'd give it a try.

In college I was classified with an "unspecified" reading learning disability. Spelling is hard, and I knew I was going to have a challenge producing poems without typos. So rather than calling myself a poet and trying to sell "poems", I set out to do "live typewriter readings", instead.

I asked people to take a few deep breaths with me while we made some good eye contact, and then I typed whatever was there. Sometimes if nothing came through to my fingers to the paper automatically, I'd ask for questions or a few words to guide the writing, and then I'd riff from there. The typos, I told people, added meaning to the download.

I wrote hundreds of poems this way, and made enough money to eat and put gas in my SUV. I typed poems off my tailgate, in public squares, in front of amenable businesses, and by invite at private parties. I do this in modern times over the phone, on video conferences, and through requests by email and Instagram.

The book idea

By March 2020 when everything began to shut down, I had over 300 images of poems I'd written! Most of the poems I typed, took a single snapshot, and then quickly moved onto the next person wanting a "download".

The only documentation I had for most of them were these photos. There was good stuff that was salvageable, but it's not like I could make a simple photo book of them unedited, it would look terrible.

So, I put all of the photos that felt salvageable onto a flash drive, and took it to my local print shop. I didn't know how to put multiple photos on a page, so I just asked them to set it up for me.

Making the book

Sitting with these printouts I reached my first real challenge. I didn't have a paper cutter, or sharp paper scissors, or a steady hand.

By April 2020 I was subletting a tiny office space in Ashland, Oregon. I'd moved all my stuff out of my SUV and up to the office, and I was trying to make do with what I had. I remember getting the stack of these photos back, trying to cut them with my old utility scissors. It seemed to be going fine until I put my reading glasses on and saw how rough the edges were.

It wasn't what I wanted.

Pacing the office, I kept questioning my beliefs. Did I really not have something that would work? Then I remembered — my expensive heavy black fabric scissors! I had sold my serger and no longer had space big enough to be working on fabric arts, why was I feeling like I couldn't use them on paper?

So, after promising future-me we'd buy brand new fabric scissors should we ever get back to working on that, I took the little piece of reminder fabric off the handle and dug into the pile. It turns out well cared for fabric scissors cut paper, but they are REALLY sharp so it's extra hard to control the cuts. They are finally dull enough now to cut as precisely as I want them to, but they didn't in the beginning!

Sitting with this pile on my floor I wondered exactly what I was going to do with it. I imagined someone layering the poems with images on interesting backgrounds in the imaginary computer program I had in my head. I could kind of see what it would look like all nice and polished, but thought I had none of the skills to make that picture in my reality.

I quickly realized few of the photos would stand well on their own and reproduce properly, and made an executive decision.

I cut the poems apart.

There's a meme that was in my head, "You can't be doing it wrong if no one knows what you are doing."

No one knew what I was doing, including me! So I couldn't be doing it wrong. And so I worked on playing in the same way I had the year before with fabric.

I take stuff apart and then do some collage alchemy with it and it turns into something no one (including me!) expects.

The results

And on and on the pages went! When the poem photo didn't look good, and my fabric scissors and new fancy edge scrapbooking scissors couldn't make it work, the glue sticks made it work!

Someone had given me an old calendar and I fell in love with this page from it, and that poem above felt like a good fit. After hours of looking at it and trying different things, this page came to be.

The cover

To my surprise, someone I had written a poem for on the beach in San Diego reached out and told me she'd made some art out of a poem I'd written for her!

And to my delight, she gave me permission to turn it into the front cover of my book! She had transcribed the poem I typed for her at the bottom of her art, and included my typo and all kinds of symbolism. It's printed on legal size paper here because I initially thought I was going to hand-bind the pages (somehow?) and eventually decided a 12"x12" scrapbook with plastic sleeves was going to make more sense.

So, I got out my trusty scissors and glue stick to turn this page into a 12"x12" front cover. I found the photo I took of the poem I wrote her and cut it apart. I wanted people to see the form it was in when I wrote it, so they could see how cool her art was. And then I realized if it was the cover, it was going to need the title, and my name — and credit for Constance, too. So I got my typewriter out and took my snacks out of this grocery bag, and typed the title. Each little piece came together until it was a cohesive cover for my scrapbook book!

Ultimately my office sublet came to a close and everything needed to get packed back up into my SUV for a new adventure. So, at 36 pages, I called "Downloads from the Universe: Vol 1" complete. It feels almost like an oracle book, where you can ask it a question and flip through it and get an answer. I'm pretty proud of it.

When I sat down and looked through it, I realized that no one else could have made this book for me. People I showed it to in my travels loved it, and loved how weird it was. I was grateful I let myself get back to the basics. I let it all happen without trying to corral it or censor it. It feels alive because of it.

Unforeseen Technical Difficulties

In July 2020 I dropped my precious book off to the amazing Korbin Bennett-Gold to be scanned and to get it printed. He did a terrific job capturing the texture I was in love with on my pages. I gave him notes like "this page in the proof feels dead" and he made it feel alive again — tech wizardry stuff.

The way I designed it didn't make it easy. I like to play with edges, and didn't think about the barriers of technology when I made it. I didn't understand what it takes to bring something from the analog world into the digital realm and back to analog. If I had, I would not have had so many of the pages go edge to edge.

I didn't know about bleed lines, or how printers don't do precise cuts on projects like these. I could write an entire book on what I didn't know I didn't know about the project.

I found out the hard way that 12"x12" is a standard scrapbooking size, but isn't a standard self-publishing photo book size. We found a company that would do it, but my cost on it was $87 with the discount code we'd found.

And I cried when I got the proof.

My sentimental attachment to my work was palpable as I flipped through page after page that was cropped by the printer unbecomingly. I had fallen in love with the book, and especially with this page. There's something about the way each page was framed in my original, something about the relationship to the page edges that matters to me — and much of that nuance was lost in translation.

The tiny bit of the bottom being cut off ruined the effect of the page for me, and I still can't articulate why.

Current state of Vol 1

I have refunded everyone's money who preordered printed editions of Vol 1. They just aren't happening. We tried reducing the book size to 7"x7" to get the cost down. It wasn't terrible at that size, but not everything was legible, either. 10"x10" is probably a good size, but we didn't find a company that works in that size at a cost that made any sense.

I am hoping the project finds a publisher who loves my book and wants to help make sure the magic gets retained.

A digital version of Vol 1 does exist, both in PDF and as an ebook. Both are available by sending me an email asking me to send it to you. Donations are welcome, and you can find a preview of the book and links to PayPal and Venmo on my website www.philosopherbonnie.com.

Vol 2

I always knew that there was going to be a "Downloads from the Universe: Vol 2". I assumed it was going to be a separate book, but given the printing costs, we decided to combine the two. I feel like if I have to charge $100 or whatever for the book, I want it to be a hefty coffee table book.

It's getting there, 57 pages collectively so far! It would be done by now, but I have been distracted by writing challenges!

2022 Update:

"Downloads from the Universe: Vol 1 & 2" now exists in a 8.5" x 8.5" paperback, with a brand new front cover! It has a registered ISBN and everything!! It's available through my website philosopherbonnie.com.

Thank you to everyone following me through this journey! Being witnessed is so nourishing <3