typewriter Archives - Typewriter Fox Studios

The Ring

May 31, 2025 - by Typewriter Fox

There was once a ring. She never knew about it; it was the only secret I ever kept from her. Because after that first Wayne’s City kiss, I pledged absolute transparency—I knew that was the only way that we would ever work. And I wanted to be understood as a fox of his word. The gamble was enormous. The one involving state lines crossed. And expensive pettifoggers. Endless boxes and bruises. The ones ending in too many damn sleepless nights; the ones bleeding into hot, hard days scrambling up those congested 120 miles. Pushing to build a comfortable life from a tender start of want. Those early days holding the promise of only two tea mugs, a simple kettle we both kind of hated, and a …

Share

Blog Posts

Shift Lock

March 23, 2025 - by Typewriter Fox

‘Shift Lock: A Metaphor for Changing Perspectives’ 5-9 p.m. March 27 Struk Studio 2916 Turner St., Lansing What would happen if 25 people sat down to type out their random thoughts, surrounded by art and fueled by Cravings Gourmet Popcorn? Find out on March 27 as north Lansing’s Struk Studio hosts “Shift Lock: A Metaphor for Changing Perspectives.“ The unique event is the brainchild of Jeffrey Gaff, a Lansing author, artist, collector of vintage typewriters and ramp supervisor at Capital Region International Airport who goes by the pen name Séafra Duffy. Gaff is a pugnacious, punk-rock defender of all things tangible and analog. In September, while Gaffs gonzo collage art was enjoying a minute of fame at Struk Studio, he and studio owner David Such dreamed …

Share

Misc. Art

Type In Event

March 15, 2025 - by Typewriter Fox

Typewriter Fox Studios is pleased to announce the areas first ever typewritten event, SHIFT LOCK: a Metaphor for Changing Perspectives. A collaboration of Struk Studio and Typewriter Fox Studios, the gallery will be transformed for the evening into “The Typing Room,” a live art installation where you are invited to come experience a wide variety of vintage typewriters. Custom stationery, incorporating the talents of local artists, will be available for you to write a letter, a poem, or whatever the muse dictates. There will also be a screaming of the documentary California Typewriter. And since a movie is more fun with snacks, free popcorn will provided by Cravings Gourmet Popcorn and refreshments by Toms Party Store of East Lansing. So shift your perspective and come unplug …

Share

Blog Posts / Random / Writing

Coconut Rum Diaries

October 21, 2024October 21, 2024 - by Typewriter Fox

Sunday drunk on coconut rum. Not a flavour native to Michigan. But it reminds me there are better places in the world. And that’s not nothing. So I cling to it, like a mother does her special needs child to keep him from running into the traffic barreling south on MLK. Tropical drinks downed against the backdrop of Midwestern blandness. It seems a reasonable response to the ridiculousness of it all. Because nothing here makes any fucking sense. And I’m dying to get away. Away from the stink of airplanes—yeah, I’m pretty fucking talented at kicking tin. I’ve set the early departure record multiple times. And someone up at corporate must have noticed that. Because they rolled back our scheduled departure. In doing so, I helped …

Share

Blog Posts / Random / Writing

The Escape

September 21, 2024 - by Typewriter Fox

It was a foggy start to the break. And for once, I’m not talking about the usual, self-inflicted hangover variety. A thick blanket of actual fog obscured The City, a fact noticed immediately after my two asshole cats woke me with the pointless insanity of their morning zoomies performed right across my face. A first glance out the window made me think it was time to maybe change my contacts. Those daily disposables that I habitually wear until they decide to plop themselves off my eyeballs all on their own. But no, it was just Mother Nature in her white robe. Bringing a rarely displayed layer of modesty to The City. Because for a brief moment, if you squinted just the right way with stale contact …

Share

Blog Posts / Random / Writing

Ring Around the Mitten

July 21, 2024 - by Typewriter Fox

Good morning, Michigan! So there it was again, the savage joy of yet another empty mitten Saturday. A morning spent drinking familiar grounds. Absorbing similar hits. Just fucking around, waiting to find out—all words and no foreplay make the lonely fox a grouch. Summer is here in full force. The signs are unmistakable. Everything from the constriction of humidity pressing me out of The City, to the great waves of funk blanketing fields of corn growing taller than me out beyond the limits of the city. Whatever the cause of that unique odor, it certainly helps the eventual harvest. Because great surging waves of corn shimmered as it rippled in a wind I could not feel. It looked like the fields were breathing as I headed …

Share

Blog Posts / Random / Writing

94 West

March 17, 2024March 17, 2024 - by Typewriter Fox

There wasn’t time to really think about it. I knew from experience that the moment I hesitated, motivation would evaporate. Like a lot of things seem to be doing these days. Despite my better intentions. And frankly, I’m growing pretty fucking tired of losing things. So it was up and running and out the door. Pushing hard west on 94. Trying my best to beat the traffic. But getting beaten instead by the unexpected wind blustering over from the big lake. That pinballing ride, powered by ballads, endless nicotine, and fermenting nostalgia, was worth the temporary discomfort of a white-knuckle grip. Because I could feel myself slipping. And choking on the unpalatable stench of a Capital City warming up to another season. …

Share

Blog Posts / Stories / Writing

Fear and Hiraeth in Ingham County

January 22, 2024 - by Typewriter Fox

Winter here in the land of Q.D. donut munchers is weird. Particularly the aimless, wandering weekend nights. They seem somehow more empty than the workweek ones filled with the noise and chaos of tin flying machines. When it is this still, things echo and feel brittle. There is too much hollow space for the cognitive distortion to gain ground. And that too often leads to dysfunctional choices. Because behaviors change when the sun falls behind the Mitten. Things you never imagined yourself doing suddenly start appearing in the rearview mirror of recent memory. And like the sticker always cautions, those things are much closer than they appear. Memories of pinballing inside an apartment filled with too many typewriters. Of too many hours …

Share

Blog Posts / Random / Writing

The Neighborhood

July 12, 2023July 12, 2023 - by Typewriter Fox

Go on, boy. Bang it out. Then drink it in–irony tastes refreshingly bitter on the leading edge of a fifth decade. So better to keep drinking while grinding through. Consuming the madness. Choking on the chemicalization. Calculating paths of least resistance across the face of an uncooperative schedule. Because what’s another day of mittened mania, here in the hostile land of QD Donut Munchers? Freaking out in the absence of never fitting in. Always the weird one. The one watching from the meadowed periphery of entanglement. Living out of bags and boxes. Running scared from a hunting Wolverine wolf pack of rabid mediocrity. The native predators pushing out the immigrant fox at the expense of his gentle collaboration. Pressing somehow past self-inflicted boundaries. Fingers ready on …

Share

Blog Posts / Random / Writing

Homecoming

July 5, 2023July 5, 2023 - by Typewriter Fox

Heading back again across county lines a bitten straggler. Just a dirty, exhausted Boulevard Boy limping back to where he doesn’t really belong. Not the homecoming once imagined. That foolish ideal was born years ago––an unearned right surrendered to the whims of violence. But in those adrenaline tainted moments of its birth, just the idea of that ideal was enough to help keep me alive. Because it meant that in some improbable way, I was actually wanted. And that everything I had sacrificed somehow mattered. But then came that night when I should have died. That changed everything. And afterwards, not much else seemed to really matter. Including me. Somewhere between those extremes, I was left an intimate trespasser. A sweaty nightmare …

Share