Sincerely Analog
My digital relations have never worked out. There’s never enough room for me, for me to be selfishly-me. Hollow distractions from what is to be seen or how it is to be done. Too much magic and math to watch for too long. I need room for me, I have a life too. Where else am I supposed to be? My room is only so big, you know. There’s only so much space to fill with so much stuff, and it doesn’t help that my mind toils with mild claustrophobia.
HUNT’S ROOM: ANALOG ESCAPE
Film Photograph Courtesy: Jorden Bruce Peace
But my analog relations are completely mine, selfishly-mine. Out of the purest and proudest spite for the digital, they thoughtfully allow me to poison myself on my own accord. I decide when I want to see them, when I need time alone and when they should start looking for someone else’s shelves. No influence of theirs is one which I have not previously given the gold star of approval–a benefit which again makes the critical distinction of my bitterness toward the number crunchers all the more strapping. Though I didn't write it, my name has always been on it, thus I ought to decide how much slop fills this bucket of mine. Along with this satisfaction, my analog relations spew this arousing sense of a certain overpowering mineness: this thing is mine, and mine alone. I hold it tight with my hands and against my chest. It is heartening to allow something to fall under the category of ‘mine.’ After all, that is what we want out of love in life, isn’t it? For someone to be ours and for us to be theirs. We should be selfish with the objects which make up our oh so revered ‘stuff.’ Everyone has theirs, and it takes up space scattered around their construct of individual universality, and it has more value than being stuff just for the sake of being stuff, but no more than being real just for the sake of being real. Therefore, when someone asks me,”What happened to the record sleeve on your original copy of Dark Side of the Moon?” I can simply reply, “My dumbass ripped it.”
WASH SQ: FUNKY STRUT
Film Photograph Courtesy: Jorden Bruce Peace
Sure, technology does me some good. I like my chocolate milk cold, my toast toasted and automatic flushing sensors for public toilets; though I do miss the certain emphasis of stomping on the handle which acted a properly suited epilogue to the end of a potty break. Apart from the necessary easers of life, there is no need to digitize to every end it allows. Vinyls, CDs or live bands are better than streaming; wired headphones sound better, laying together is better than sexting, a voice sounds better than a text, handwritten anything is better than whatever can be produced from our pockets and a book just never seems to run out of battery. Of course, the most radical benefit technological evolution has so sincerely blessed upon me is the ability to listen to music anywhere, any time; at this point, the primary purpose of my phone could truly be fulfilled by an MP3 player.
Habitually calling upon a thinking machine to be the brain's successor while it drifts a humdrum bum, aims to numb us from our bona fide actuality. A.J. Jacobs puts this feeling I'm straining to convey to you very well in his book “Know-It-All,” the book I’m currently reading. In the opening pages he says, “The Internet’s about as reliable as publications sold next to Trident and Duracell at the supermarket checkout line.” The option is always there but it is not always better.
COLOMBIA: ECOPARQUE RÍO PANCE
Film Photograph Courtesy: Jorden Bruce Peace
At heart, if I could have mailed this to you with a stamp, I would have. This compulsion is just innate to my being. I used to knit scarves and hats between classes and during in school suspension in grade school, and I sewed a pocket on my favorite pair of pants last week. This is not me looking for a place to gloat or to convince others that they should be like me in any way, I just hope that my lathered layer of enmity for that which is digital is some yummy food for thought. But I implore you that just because technology is being exponentially woven into the fabric of human existence by the day, it does not mean that we have to wear those clothes. I assure you there is no makeshift reality worth conquering. What is here is now, you may cherish or destroy it as much you please. One will never be without the other and the two worlds are en route to converge sooner or later, but surely by then I will be buried in the land of the analog as there will be a knife in my eye long before there is any chip in my head.
Strike Out,
Orlando
Writer: Patrick Ryan
Content Editor: Gabby Macogay
Copy Editor: Reanna Haase
Patrick Ryan is a content writer for Strike Magazine Orlando and most of his free time is occupied with thinking about or watching skating videos, staring for an unnecessary amount of time into his closest and constantly flipping records in his living room to keep the voices away. You can reach him at @patr6ck on Instagram or at patrickryan1003@gmail.com.