MFT: Clipboard History Chrome Plugin

Clipboard History is a plugin for Google Chrome Browser. It is one of those plugins that make your life a little bit brighter. Its purpose is very simple - to keep track of input to your clipboard. You know, just in case, you never know what may happen. We all have episodes of copying some text and then losing it because of switching to something else or being distracted. This plugin helps to avoid that particularly bland feeling of frustration that comes after realization of losing some piece.

Clipboard History plugin can seriously help you to collect and navigate through every little piece of information you have copied - sometimes over prolonged periods of time. If your job involves taking bits and pieces of information and arranging your thing - it is one of your best friends (i once reconstructed the structure of a lost article with its help). With Clipboard History turned on - you don't have to worry about losing any copied piece of information. Instead of slipping into oblivion right away - it stays in a safe place just a click away for a while.

But it is not just a handy tool for some mundane clickety-clack ack ack ack - it is also rather powerful tool for creating poetry.

Here's my story. Today I was surfing through reviews and analysis for "Freddy Got Fingered" (post coming soon). It wasn't much of interest but at the end of a session i clicked on Clipboard History in order to wipe cache clean (it gets clumsy otherwise). But before clicking the button - i saw something i wasn't expecting. I was looking at the bits and pieces of the words that were taken here and there over the course of the day mashed together chronologically. It was disjointed, radiant hodgepodge. And it was absolutely ridiculous and in the same time absolutely fabulous. It was sacramental something completely different.

Here's how it went:

Towel blowing nothing
Nails the muse tune
gums bleed tacitly
Low nose exhaust the detrimental dripping
silence sniffing
Tse Tse Fly - does Braaam! 

Huzzah! It is a poem and it was made unknowingly while i was doing something else. I can't express the feeling of discovery that exploded in my brain. I never thought of using Clipboard History that way before.

In many ways Clipboard is a treasure trove of unexpected imagery created by sheer force of juxtaposing displaced bits. It is multi-layered thing.

First of all - it is an elaborate development of an automatic writing method. The way it takes the mind out of equation is astounding - it doesn't. You just need to do your thing for a while and "elimination of all rational thought" will occur naturally.

Not only that but it also combines automatic writing with found poetry. If being precise - it is not exactly found poetry. It is more of finding poetry inside the text and then fulfilling its potential by combining with other bits.

You can take a step further and start an elaborate text copy collage rampage. This savage spitting of CTRL+C's can result in really loony piece of text completely free of rational composition.

Aside from automatic writing, it is good old lettrist detournement. The entire makeshift method is based upon copying words, phrases or sentences that user found interesting. These bits and pieces are then mashed together into one tangled piece inside Clipboard History's purgatory.

However, it is also technically an act of appropriation. If you think about it, copying words from other sources in order to construct your own text is a legitimate appropriation. However, due to taking the bits out of context into a clipboard limbo and their subsequent combinations - the fact of appropriation is basically anulled. The bits are moved beyond that. In many ways - defamiliarizing and displacing words gives you a chance to reconsider them and uncover its hidden meaning.