I’m trying to read “6 analog trends that are good for the soul” (WaPo).
Choosing the less-efficient way of doing something, especially things we do for pleasure, can help us reassess our relationship with time and forgo the constant need for productivity….
Do you have a relationship with time? Would something analog help you restructure it? That’s the idea here. Do your high-tech devices cause anxiety about how your life is slipping away as if it’s nothing of any substance, and would holding a real book — smelling it, turning the pages and all that — help you reestablish yourself in reality?
Other analog things that might help:
Using a film camera to take photos that you will need to get developed, so that eventually you’ll see if any of them came out decently enough to show — physically show — to another person (assuming you still have other people — actual analog people — anywhere in your analog vicinity).
Send some real letters and postcards. Wield a pen. Stick on some stamps. Notice an address that is a real place on the face of the Earth — a house number and a street name.
The article suggests collecting old magazines, and quotes one guy who buys old issues of “Popeye, a Japanese men’s magazine.” We’re advised we might get out our scissors and snip out pictures and glue together some sort of collage. Creative! Compared to “digital mood boards,” something analog is “more immersive and powerful,” yielding “new moments of synchronicity or intrigue.”
Ha ha. I’m starting to wonder if this analog business is about grounding us in reality or making us even more wacky. We emerge from our all-encompassing digitality to commune with the tangible objects and we just get goofy over them in a this-means-something-this-is-important kind of way….
Back to the list of analog things that might… do whatever these analog things are supposed to do.
There are vinyl records, of course. We do vinyl here at Meadhouse. It is meaningful to hold the album covers — including some that I held in my hands when I was a teenager (talk about a relationship with time) — and to handle the discs carefully and to relive their old scratches and pops. We buy new records too — that is, new records by old Bob Dylan. It’s eventful to play them.
There’s also the idea of picking something — anything, preferably small and ephemeral, like matchbooks or bookmarks — and making that what you think of as a collection. It’s your mind that really counts here — or, if we are to take the headline seriously, your soul. You collect these objects and mentally engage with their tangibility, invest them with meaning, and the idea is to save yourself.
The words “talisman” and “amulet” come to mind.