The Modern Analog

The Modern Analogue

Ink is my blood,
the life that flows from my mind
to my fingers,
to the sharp point of this pen
scratching this paper’s surface.

It is the blood of a thousand thoughts,
a million synapses,
a hundred tears.

And here, within the volume,
I will write,
to collect this blood in between the lines of the pages
treasured, safe, secure.

I live in a dichotomy of my choosing. I write on a thoroughly modern device but also prefer the visceral delights of a fountain pen on paper. It’s somewhat emblematic of other aspects of my life as well: a modern car with an antique 60’s era garage trophy Triumph, and a farm in Ireland with horses and donkeys countenanced with a managed apartment in suburban Massachusetts. I laugh each time I reflect on this because in my mind this isn’t exactly how I imagined my life would turn out.

To be fair, I think there always was the assumption that I’d write or have something to commit to paper, digital, or otherwise. As much as I’m loathe to publicly speak, committing thoughts to paper was an easier path to tread, allowing for greater expression than the instant-on requirements of in-person conversation. Of course, as I’ve matured in body and mind, the interpersonal side of communication has improved as well, but there was a distinct learning path that had to happen there as well. That took practice, a dedication to the oratory arts (if you will), and a lot of blood-pounding-in-my-veins moments. I still don’t prefer it to paper but, I get by.

We each have these stories of our formative years and our paths to where we are today. While I’m certainly glossing over twenty-odd years of lived experience here, I’m assured that many of us aren’t currently where we expected to be. There’s a chaotic beauty in this, however you choose to look at it. The fact that we can be here, at this moment, telling and reading each other’s stories in the digital space is a marvel of human progress. No longer do we need to circulate paper newspapers, glossy trade rags, and letters. Books don’t line our shelves like they used to; rather, they occupy those discrete ephemeral spaces in the digital corridors of our Kindles.

We’ve traded the kinesthetic for the senseless and banal.

This isn’t to say that all of our modern contrivances are worthless. I can type faster than I can handwrite, and speak and transcribe even faster. I can commit words to a story in more meaningful ways with fluid editing than I ever could accomplish with a typewriter or white-out. We can communicate in ways that were impossible a scant twenty years ago, move volumes and libraries of data in the blink of an eye. We’ve progressed in meaningful ways and it’s something to celebrate.

As with most things, I urge us to look at the balance of things: to not forsake the histories of how, what, and why we’ve done because something new has come charging to the fore. I find that embracing and learning both the new and the old gives a special kind of resonance to what we choose to create of and with this life. Perhaps in the analog devices and moments of our past there lies a solution to our ever-increasingly complex and nuanced world.

May it ever be so.