Little fingers playing with the future. A letter from an old Olivetti

The eighteen-month-old took hold of an old Olivetti Studio 44 he had unearthed from a forgotten shelf. He enthusiastically strikes the keys all at once until the ascenders of the letters cross over. Then he discovers the key that makes the carriage move backwards quickly, with a ‘drin’: ten, twenty times ‘drin’.

Giò has fallen in love with a typewriter. I can picture myself as a little girl, sitting at my father’s Lettera 32, a sheet of paper on the roller, intent on trying out every key; the type bars would get stuck together for me too, and I’d have to unstick them with my fingers. My fingers blue with indelible ink.

I greatly admired my father, who typed extremely quickly. I spent a significant portion of my life using Olivetti typewriters. The first time I was dispatched by La Notte, Milan’s afternoon newspaper, to cover a news story, I returned and stood watching the others as they typed frantically: in the vast newsroom, the din was like that of a machine gun. I could only type with two fingers, and, feeling ashamed, I went home.

I soon learnt to type quickly under the imperious gaze of the chief reporter – the paper had to go to press. My fingers, now long and nimble, kept tapping away: elderly woman found murdered in the bathroom, a body in the Navigli, the whole repertoire. That keyboard was like a fate I hadn’t actually chosen for myself; it had simply fallen upon me. I believe I became a journalist simply because my father loved me.

However, time and again, the Olivetti typewriters would malfunction under my fingers. Time and again, at the crucial moment, the ribbon would run out: my clumsy attempts to rewind it would leave my fingers covered in ink once more. And what about those pieces with whole lines of &&&&&&&, used to cross out a wrong sentence?

Pliocene. Back in 1981, La Notte was set in a printing house using lead type. I’ve gone from lead to AI. And now, as my daughter’s child gazes in wonder at an Olivetti – something they’ve never seen before, a magical, archaeological contraption – I smile but watch their fingers thoughtfully. They’re as small as mine were back then, when I was already playing, without realising it, with my future.