analog
By jp 30 May 2002
so, I think it’s finally happened.
<p>since as long as I can remember, I’ve been the 29th century digital kid. the first time I thought about the functionality of the human body as a 6 year old kid, I decided robots were way better, because all that circutry garanteed functionality without all that mushy messy stuff maybe going rotten or not working right. it just always seems that digital/electronic was cleaner, more permanent, and more consistent than anything maleable. chemical. analog. digital was the way to go.</p>
<p>this carried over in all sorts of ways that are really kinda funny for me to look back on. little ways, like the fact that I’ve never owned a tape, ever (went straight to CDs when I was in 7th grade). or that I’ve never owned, nor do I really know how to read analog timepieces (the hands always confuse me. the ones with no numbers on the faces – forget it). but bigger ways too. I hate driving, because it’s an analog process. you start, there’s all this intermediate time, and then you’re there. I hated that. e-mail became my instant addiction as soon as I started using it, because it was sent and then immediately recieved, with no real fuzz in between. digital. I always hated sending real letters and packages, cause it was always such a process. and even in interpersonal matters, I was able to separate my emotions into black and white and place myself on one side or the other for any situation. things like getting heartbroken for the first time threw me for a loop, because there was how I felt, how I needed to feel to move on, and there was this crappy transition that drove me nuts. waiting to move towards some emotional state end point that I could already appreciate and anticipate, yet somehow had to wait through some uninfluenced grey area in between was agony. worse than the distress of the actual situation. wierd, right? </p>
<p>my whole thought process was always represented in polarized opposites; here/there, like/dislike, accept/reject, need/discard, what have you. similarly, my approach to problems has always been extremely goal-oriented. some would call this a male trait, but after alot of thought (and realizing that my thought process is essentially female by modern psychological standards), I don’t really agree with this. I think it’s more a function of my binary thought process, rather than some Y-chromo function. the goal/endpoint/extremity obsession came from the idea that things were cleaner, simpler, better when they were on or off, black or white, up or down. homework was either not started or finished. a bill was paid in full or it wasn’t at all. a dispute was settled or untouched. I either loved someone or didn’t. I was, in effect, not only trying to be a robot (29th C Digital Boy =29CDB), but I wanted to world within my grasp to be streamlined into an optimized environment of binary switches. transitions take time, and waiting is inefficient. therefore, if something is either here or there, it’s defined, solved, known. if something is in flux, who the hell knows what’s really going on.</p>
<p>the strangest part of all this was how much it played into things with other people. I’ve been admired and cursed for being able to polarize my emotions so easily. if I got dumped, I’d slam the toggle over from romantic to platonic, or in one case, from love to detest. and my entire interaction would change with the person. just like that. if something was amiss in a relationship with a friend or significant other, I’d want to sit down and hash it out right there and then, in its entirety, untill something was defined that gave resolution and a future direction to whatever had gone awry. and it played into other stuff too. </p>
<p>you can see how this could drive someone insane. but somehow it didn’t. I really lived like this. for decades. </p>
<p>I think it all started with mark. </p>
<p>he’s been the analog boy (AB) for years. and to my 29CDB self, this was kinda upsetting. now, mark and I share many, many interests, get along well, and look way too similar for comfort. but this one area really separated us. on the superficial level, I was all minidiscs and CDs, whereas he was in love with tapes and vinyl. I use photoshop, he’s into stencil art. etc etc. but on a deeper level, I bear the unmistakable mark of the 29CDB, in that I’ve always been concerned with keeping things on one side of the fence, or the other. whereas his sheep are all in some constant state of floating back and forth, sitting on the fence, sneaking under it, etc etc. it always seems like things in his ballpark are all in progress, whereas the exact same things in my realm where either completely explored or not at all. </p>
<p>then I bought a record. seemed innocent enough. I mean, come on. it was the 1977 pressing of music from star wars, by the fucking electric moog orchestra. how could I help it? </p>
<p>he pounced. gave me his old turntable, opened me up to that wild world of hurt that is analog music. and I took it all, hook, line and sinker. I’m in love with the shit now. and while I’ve always loved music, and records are wonderful, as silly as it sounds this minor change threw alot of things into the grinder for me. let’s take records as a metaphor everything about life. consider first that I used to be a CD-based organism. zero seek time, identical results every time the same track is played, a degree of permanence to everything. now look at records: every single one out there is different. two things that are supposed to be the same aren’t. furthermore, everytime it’s used, it gives a different result. furthermore, it’s manipulatable. with CDs, you play a song, it starts, it ends, you listen in between. with records, speed them up, slow them down, spin them backwards, skratch them up, whatever. it’s the in between that’s the interactive part. </p>
<p>so I’ve been taking apart things in my life, one by one, and making them analog. this idea that things must be hither or yon in any number of respects has got to go. I’m teaching myself how to enjoy the trip. sometimes, the ends are nice, but the means aren’t by definition a pain in the ass (even if they are). and the ideas of permanence and gratification based on instant completion of an objective are equally confounding to an analog thought process. things change, things slow down and stop without reaching the end, and that’s all part of the game. </p>
<p>these aren’t mutually exclusive ideas, they’re two parallel ways to describe the same medium. again, like music. same shit, different approach. such is my life. formerly a pure digital stream, now seeking definition in an analog mode. I’m pulling my own plug in different situations to test if I’ll merely stop the needle in the track, and pick it back up when I’m ready, or if I’ll kill power to the system and have to cold boot and start over. somethings in my life are better served by a digital process, but for the first time I’m appreciating that some things are best enjoyed as analog. it’s integration, not replacement. </p>
<p>there’s only digital/analog converters I know of. I’m curious to see what type of music a digital/analog hybrid will makes. </p>
<p>we’ll see.</p>