To say I thoroughly appreciate and enjoy digital technology would be like saying Pete Rose was a decent hitter. Or Michael Jordan was a pretty good basketball player. Yeah. Understatement. But I was big time analog before that was even cool. I even wrote an analog man song about a guy who lives his life without modern tech.
Ironically I wrote and produced the analog man song on digital gear.
But there was a time when I did ALL my writing without a computer or typewriter or anything but pen and paper.
In fact, way back then, my writing media of choice were a nineteen cent Bic pen and fifty cent spiral notebooks. And I didn’t realize, then, how writing all that prose and poetry would eventually lead me here. To the land of 0’s and 1’s that turn keystrokes into letters and words.
But, way back then, my “binary system” was pen and paper. And I wrote literally thousands of poems and bunches of short stories. I gave away tons of them. And I’ll probably never see those again. But I still have a bunch of my old spiral notebooks. I guess that helped inspire the analog man song.
Oh yeah, I’d also have a couple more. But one day, when I was at work, my youngest brother sneaked a couple of them out of my foot locker stash. Because he thought he could copy some to get a better grade in his English creative writing class. Then he “misplaced them.” I got a message that they had resurfaced again, years later. But before I could go get them, they disappeared again.
Surprisingly, the brother is still alive despite the fact that the notebooks haven’t been seen since. Oh, by the way, he DID get a better grade. But I’d prefer he got a worse grade and I still had my notebooks. I know. I’m just plain cruel.
These days I rarely put a pen to paper anymore.
And there’s a part of me that misses that feel. Even though I love to type, too. But something about the flow of ink onto the ol’ paper is just a bit more magical.
It’s great to be digital though. Because then I can just copy and paste my work into another format onto another platform. And I can record the words into audio and video. And share those in a variety of ways. Yeah, this analog man is a digital dude.
Maybe none of this means anything to you. And I admit I’m just in a rambling mood this time. But maybe you can relate if you’re of a certain age. An age where your world was anything but digital at the beginning but has gradually morphed into that. If so, maybe you’ll relate to the…
Analog Man
He makes his living in that smoky ol’ dive.
He’s still believin’ that his time will arrive.
He bangs the keys out to the rhythm and horns.
He says that it’s exactly why he was born
Don’t wanna face your facts;
He’ll just keep makin’ tracks
Because he knows that it’s what keeps him alive.
Don’t use no cellphone, and he don’t go online.
Says AM radio will suit him just fine.
Still winds his watch and keeps a pencil and pad.
Ol’ black and white TV, says it ain’t so bad.
Don’t mind a little hiss. He says “that’s soulful bliss.”
And that’s what really makes the music divine.
He’s an analog cat in a digital cage.
He’s an analog letter; not a digital page.
Built his analog house from an analog plan.
Says throw them little digits in the can.
He’s an analog man.
He lights his ciggy with a blue diamond match.
Don’t play no video; he loves to play catch.
He drives a Thunderbird from ‘56.
It uses cheap gas and it’s easy to fix.
Might leak a little oil, but it don’t overboil.
And just like him it was the last of a batch.
Repeat chorus…instrumental…chorus to end
© 2003
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