"Hank Williams was found dead in the back seat of his powder blue Cadillac on New Year's morning 1953."
Ulmer once speculated about this moment as a "what if": what if Williams, found with an unfinished song in hand, was working on a collaboration with Carmen Miranda to produce a hybrid samba-country tune?
But way-a-ait-a-minute:
"The year 1953 saw the development of IBM's 701 EDPM, which, according to IBM, was the first commercially successful general-purpose computer."
The merger of entertainment and computing, the mix I call celebritacy, may have its origins in 1953. Using the "what if" principle of invention made popular by Marvel Comics, I propose my own what if: what if Hank Williams was in fact writing computer code for IBM based on country music?
It’s a proposal I suggest in order to refocus the new year, to enter into a different kind of new year’s resolution, one focused not on personal ambition but rather on disciplinary speculation. What if we resolve to reform our understandings of new media and writing? Speculation, I note, is itself a new media principle (in addition to others) which shifts the topoi-driven methods of argumentation from fixed places to moving entities, questionable “open source” points of composition. Driven by my own disciplinary frustration, I use this 1953 new year moment to remember that Williams’ “Your Cheatin Heart” is one of 1953’s biggest hits. Not just Williams’ version, but pop crooner Frankie Lane’s as well. Lane’s cover of Williams anticipates the rhetorical move of appropriation, another new media principle. Thus, as Williams sat dying in the back of his Cadillac, could he have been contemplating how appropriation might play into IBM’s future?
That a musical moment leads me to such speculation should be of no surprise. Early computing, as imagined by IBM, used musical terminology to describe and create memory systems. The drum is one notable musical item. The overlap in meaning, the puncept, another anticipation of new media composing, no doubt was on Williams’ mind as he attempted to use this new code for memory purposes (how to remember and revisit compositional ideas? Drums, man!). Jazz drummer Art Blakely has already arrived on the scene, drumming his way into compositional practices with his first album, the one recorded at Birdland. Williams appropriates this bit of knowledge, as he will be appropriated by Frank Lane, and proposes a writing system where computerized memory is “drummed” rather than written. It’s a revolutionary idea. Williams is further encouraged by early promotion for the 1953 film Jungle Drums of Africa.
A sign! he thinks. The tropes of exploration (“an intrepid explorer and a missionary's daughter embark upon a perilous journey through Africa in order to get the rights to a uranium mine”) and technology (uranium the core of nuclear work) fit into his work for IBM. Of course, the film settles into obscurity, as does his eventual code which merges the principles of country music (loss, heartache, deception) with new media (film principles of cutting/editing), and music (drumming). “It’s a new year for writing,” Williams thinks as he pens his ideas to paper which becomes as lost to writing history as the film’s relevance to film history.
