DeDigitize or Die?

Finding intimacy in a digital world with an analog soul

The sounds of microscopic lightning bolts were released into the room.

Fiiiiiizzzssssssssssssst…

The glistening black disc slides from the sleeve with precision and elegance. Flipped between the hands and penetrated laying down on the mat, turning.

Turning like a well-turned orbit of stars and planets, ready to be seen, heard, and enjoyed.

Ever so softly, the arm reaches as a bride searching for her husband in the dark, landing, delicate, finding the groove, the spin, the sound, the pop!

Music starts. All the senses are engaged.

Time.

Imagine the world without vinyl. I cannot.

I also cannot imagine life without cassette mix tapes, 45s, and 8 tracks in the car.

This isn’t about nostalgia and how better things used to be, it’s about the physical intimacy required to engage in life before the digital age was born.

To listen to songs in my youth required finesse. It required me to decide, seek, touch, and engage with many physical things. What I didn’t understand then is that when I was doing these daily things with others, the time required grew me closer to them.

Now, I just say, “Hey Siri, play Rimsky-Korsakov: The Invisible City of Kitezh, Death of Favronia” and there it is. No longer do I have to find the groove, set the needle, and prepare the exit. Likewise, when my mind ultimately forgets the name of something, I can just say, “Play something from Hayden’s opus 20…” and the song will play.

Most of the time, I am alone in this venture. Expanding my never-ending dialog to myself without anyone to share it. Or even care to.

I mean, who wants to hear the dissonance and elegant transformative unity of Montsalvatge’s Concierto Breve? Likewise, few folks want to jam with the Brecker solo from Mike Stern’s “Common Ground”? It’s only a life-changing experience and as a saxophonist expresses my own sound and heart for the horn.

No… we just enjoy the quick, miss the talk, and then realize there is something missing.

Each other.

So, we run to social media, to share these lonely intimacies with a digital world that may or may not care. We compress our strongest quality, our creative and shared space, into a two-dimensional space saying, “Look at me! Come see what I’ve seen!”

No one can ever see.

It isn’t possible.

When we think we see, we just relive a lonely experience that we must now try to share. It falls flat.

This cycle continues with every aspect of our lives. We create, experience, enjoy, and it’s over. As we look around and over our shoulders, we scurry to the social platforms to engage, get the dopamine, and find some small hope in purpose, yet we never do.

Just faceless, touchless, cold expressions of life not real stare back at us.

What is the answer to this? Is it to buy vinyl? No, I have hundreds, but no one wants to sit with me. I have six horns, but no one wants to hear me play. I have thousands of books, but no one wants to talk about them. We’ve come to the place where we’ve become needy and don’t know it. We are seeking but have nothing to find because it doesn’t exist, and we don’t even know what we’re looking for.

The answer is to begin a conversation.

This conversation will bring an embrace that transcends our very lives. This is writing.

DeDigitzie The Details

I have more pictures and books in digital format than could fit in my home. So I am learning to have an analog mindset within a digital world.

While I enjoy the tactile, everything comes up digitally in the end. What my generation will leave when we die is the final touch-filled experiences of life with others. We will forget to tell of what we have in those odd, bulky days, of storing, cleaning, and managing the analog: time.

I have a lot of time in these things and each touch is tethered to a soul.

I remember listening to Huey Lewis through my Pioneer 18s with my friends in high school. Putting some Charlie Parker and John Coltrane as loud as the system could bare so my grandmother would come over from next door to have us turn it down. I remember getting a scratch on my thriller album and having a time with my best friend buffing it without making it worse. We did it.

I remember the quality hours spent combing through Turtles looking for that one album and having a tag-team approach to finding it. When we did, we yelled, “Got it!” and convened at the checkout.

The time we used to spend together in creation, we now spend on social media showcasing.

So, bringing this back to the point… we need to write.

I don’t believe we will ever socially be intimate again. People will find dopamine in brief romances, logistical partnerships, and sexual encounters, but I don’t think we will ever find that intimate experience that gives way to love and laughter, building closeness and shared lives. At least not as a whole. The brains between our ears are being rewired, and if we are to stay grounded to what makes us truly human; real physical connection, then we can at least write.

Writing about things forces those around us to either ignore us or spend time with our thoughts.

When I write, those who find me interesting will engage. When what I have experienced leaves an impression, these people will engage, write back, and find an investment of time, even if not face-to-face, of my heart and passions.

Writing finds an audience.

An audience finds friends.

Friends find life.

Life untethered lives.

So, get out your pen, paper, and heart, and let the words flow. I am not advocating for anything here but I feel like writing, as a community, will bring intimacy back in a digital world that is getting faster as we speak. Finding ways to engage in the digital is going to be the key to our human intimacy.

We can’t go back.

But we can build.

I help people understand how to live life well. Find hope, peace, joy, and purpose… let me know if you want to talk about that.