Becoming More Analogue in a Digital World

As I get older, I seem to be becoming increasingly analogue.

This may seem slightly ridiculous, because I spent my entire career of more than 45 years selling the latest and greatest new tech idea! I also spend a considerable amount of my life sitting in front of a computer. So I’m hardly a Luddite.

And yet recently I’ve started buying CDs and vinyl again. I’m printing more of my own photographs. And I seem to have developed an unfortunate enthusiasm for vintage camera lenses. Thankfully they are significantly less expensive than modern lenses.

There are now several pieces of photographic equipment in my office that were new when I was an undergraduate in the 1970s.

Then there’s music.

Almost every album, song and band I could possibly want is available instantly through streaming. It is extraordinarily convenient and I subscribed to Spotify and iTunes when they first appeared.

But I soon realised I was paying less and less attention to what I was listening to.

Unless something grabbed me within 20 or 30 seconds, I’d move on. Half a track, try another album, skip that, discover something else — and twenty minutes later realise I haven’t actually listened to anything at all.

When I put a vinyl record on, something changes.

I browse my collection and choose something that suits my mood. At the time of writing this, it’s Emerson, Lake and Palmer, especially their first album from 1970.

When the opening chords of the first track, ‘The Barbarian’ blast out, I’m a sixteen-year-old again.

Streaming has made music feel increasingly disposable to me. When I buy a record, I’m not just buying a piece of music. I’m buying a physical object with a history of its own — a cultural artefact.

My vinyl collection includes some valuable pieces like Axis: Bold as Love by Jimi Hendrix, Cream’s Wheels of Fire, Led Zeppelin I, Pink Floyd’s Meddle and many others. Although they are worth much more than what I paid for them, I’ll never sell them. I love the sleeve notes, the cover art and the fact that I’m holding something connected to the music itself.

Photography is similar.

Modern lenses are extraordinary. They focus instantly, are astonishingly sharp and have been designed to eliminate precisely the optical imperfections manufacturers spent decades trying to overcome. They can cost thousands. Believe me, over the years I’ve spent a small fortune on such gear.

So naturally I’ve started buying lenses made fifty years ago.

My Super-Takumar lenses were made in the 1960s and early 1970s. They’re beautifully made, all-metal and entirely manual.

I have to turn a ring until the photograph looks sharp. Sometimes I even get it wrong.

They flare. They’re softer than modern lenses. The backgrounds can have a character that an optical engineer might regard as a defect. I rather like all of that.

Perhaps I’ve reached the point where I don’t necessarily want a photograph to be perfect. I want it to feel like something.

Slowing down enough to focus the lens myself changes the way I make it. I look for longer. I take fewer photographs. Occasionally I don’t take one at all and that feels increasingly important.

The same thing happens when I print a photograph.

A digital image doesn’t really exist anywhere. Well, obviously it does, but it sits on my hard drive amongst thousands of others and occasionally appears on a screen.

A print is different.

I have to decide that a particular photograph deserves to exist on paper. Then I print it, hold it and perhaps live with it for a while. It becomes an object.

None of this means I think things were better in the ‘good old days’. I have very little interest in retreating into the past. At my age, I’d much rather remain curious about what comes next.

I’m not planning to start writing my essays and novels with a fountain pen. Although I do use one to make notes and scribble down ideas.

Perhaps what I’m rediscovering isn’t analogue technology at all.

It’s attention.

Digital technology has made an extraordinary number of things effortless. Mostly I’m grateful for that. But effortlessness isn’t always the same thing as enjoyment.

Sometimes choosing one record, manually focusing one lens or making one print demands something increasingly scarce.

You have to pay attention.

And perhaps a little inconvenience isn’t such a bad price to pay for that.