Real Things

Not being familiar with text-speak, I have just now learned that IRL means: In Real Life; as opposed, I guess, to being onscreen. Funny, all this time I thought I was living  in the real world; that breaks to check email or chat on Zoom are simply part of it. So when I came across David Sax’s 2016 book “The Revenge of Analog”, I knew it was for me. His sub-title is, “Real Things and Why They Matter.”

So far I’ve read Part I, which is about the revenge of analog things. The four chapter titles are: The Revenge of …Vinyl, Paper, Film, Board Games.

Vinyl: United Record Processing in Nashville was in 2010 the last surviving vinyl record-processing factory in the country. No surprise there. 8-track had morphed into cassette tapes which morphed into CDs which have morphed into any music one desires, downloaded on to a device. Fast forward to 2014 when forty record pressing plants were up and running around the world, four in the United States, 24/7. That was seven years ago.  Now there are auctions where the limited number of record presses extant can bring in up to $80,000.00 apiece. One company has been selling over one million turntables a year. (remember those?)

Why was this happening? Sax cites several reasons, many to do with recording artists’ preferences. Yet what struck me was that a large portion of the market consist of teens and young adults. This digital generation, it seems, longs for something you can see, touch, and play with. Remember lifting the lid, stacking the records, even smelling the vinyl and fiddling with the tone arm until you got it in exactly the right groove? It’s about a sensory experience that’s a lot more than just sound.

Paper: The story is much like vinyl’s, with one big difference. To quote one tech consultant: “I can’t tell you how much money I’ve made…helping people recover their files saved in formats that no longer exist. That’ll never happen with my paper notebooks. Those will be able to be read for the next ten thousand years.”    I don’t know about you but I have stacks of notebooks and journals filled with ideas, reflections, memories and, yes, screeds and stuff I would rather not have others read. So that ten-thousand year survival rate is a bit scary!

Like vinyl records, the market for notebooks (real ones!) is bursting open, along with thousand-dollar designer pens and all manner of pencils and crayons. Why? Once again, it’s the younger generation that’s fueling the market growth, hungry for real things for the same reasons as vinyl: smelling that new leather or hard paper cover of your notebook, hearing the paper rustle as you flip the page, inscribing your thoughts, memories and doodles on a yellow legal pad with pen in hand. Receiving a hand-written letter or a colorful postcard is a treat. Something tangible, something to save and re-read.

Film and Board Games tell the same story: Insert the film, roll it up, fiddle with the focus, change the lenses. Then  develop it yourself or take it to a shop where you can swap photography stories and tips with the owners.  In other words, there’s time, touch, connection. Sax writes about young photographers who collect vintage cameras for reasons like these.

Someone suggests a board game. Get out the box, open the board, argue about who gets what color, distribute the tokens, the cards, the dice, the monopoly money. Then roll the dice and move the pieces.

There’s an additional benefit to these last two examples. They’re interactive. Whether you take photos of trees or animals, water or people, you are in a relationship; with either nature or with your goofy nephew posing in crazy ways.  Board games are the epitome of interaction and relationship. Here’s your goofy nephew again or your sneaky mother-in–law. (“That word is not in the Scrabble dictionary!” “You moved my Miss Scarlet instead of your Colonel Mustard”).

“The Revenge of Analog” is a book for now. After a year onscreen for school, work, entertainment or friendship, it’s good to be reminded that life is about using all our senses.  So get out and smell the spring air. Feel your boots sink into the soft mud.  Listen to the symphony of spring birdsong, delight in the small green shoots. And look forward to a time coming soon when you can once again chat with a friend over a cup of tea, laugh and argue with extended family over a board game, and then give all of them a hug.