IT'S NOT THE TOOL
EPISODE 026: IT'S NOT THE TOOL
There’s a lot of talk these days about how much better analog tools are than digital, but when we rely on our tools to render soul and authenticity in our work, when the tools get either the credit or the blame, I think we’re heading in the wrong direction. Let’s talk about it.
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FULL TRANSCRIPT
I read a book a couple years ago called “The Revenge of Analog” and in what was either an act of subconscious rebellion or just plain old irony, I read it on my Kindle. Take that, ye book-loving Hipsters. The book itself was a fascinating read and despite my unprovoked jab at the hipsters, it was one that resonated deeply with me. I read a lot of books and though I publish digital books, and have made a good living doing so, I would much rather read a real book. The experience, for me, is profoundly different than the reading of content on a digital device. I like the smell. I like seeing the cover of the book sitting there on my coffee table. I like making notes and dog-earring pages. And anyone who’s ever fallen asleep with a book on their face knows that waking up to the cold smack of plastic or glass just isn’t the same as waking to the soft caress of paper on skin.
Reading a book-book is just a deeper, more pleasing experience to me than reading digitally. But all that is really not the point, it’s just preamble to assure you, Hipster or otherwise, that I have nothing against analog technologies or experiences because in a moment it’s going to sound like I’ve got a bone to pick, and I don’t. But there is a movement afoot, in photography, and in our wider culture, that seems to be looking to analog tools as a panacea, or worse, a reason to blame digital technologies for the shortcomings of those things created by it. Suddenly digital is bad and analog is good. What’s this got to do with you? I’d like to explore that.
I’m David duChemin, and this is Episode 26 of A Beautiful Anarchy, It’s Not the Tool. Let’s talk about it.
OK, so let me back up a little bit and give you some context for this conversation. It begins in the world of photography, but it doesn’t stay there, so if you don’t know an F/Stop from a bus stop, keep listening, I’ll pivot back into the real world as quickly as I can. This whole thing is a bit of a reaction to something I read recently, it was a bit of a rant about what “digital”–and you can’t see it but I’m making air quotes with my fingers–has done to photography. Among the charges, and it was a long list of indictments, were that digital had opened the door to mediocrity in this once noble craft, that now “everyone was a photographer” and this was bad. The charges continued: digital lacks soul, is too perfect, has degraded the skills needed to be a photographer in the first place, and has created a culture of homogeny or cookie-cutter mediocrity. Analog, it seems has none of these problems. You can’t see this either but I’m rolling my eyes over here.
Why I feel the need to respond to this stuff at all is not because I feel the slightest need to defend digital technology, but in fact the opposite. I am no apologist for the digital world, nor a critic of analog. I’m most interested in the human world, in the soul-level stuff, and what I see in the rush to condemn technology for our own failings, or for that matter to credit it for the moments we manage to shine, is an opportunity for us to find the scape-goat we so often look for when our art, or whatever it is we create, fails to embody that soul, or skill, or rise above the homogeny and the mediocrity. “Digital” is not some motivated entity responsible for either saving photography or destroying it. It is not the devil. It’s just a tool.
Like every technology,“digital” (quote/unquote) is nothing more than an opportunity. It offers us new ways of doing things. And yes, that new way might include the temptation to do things faster, take less care, or be less mindful. It might open the gates to more people and a lowering of the so-called bar. But it’s only ever just an offer. It doesn’t force us. In photography, the artist who chooses a digital camera over something made 50 years ago by men with gentle beards and leather aprons, is not, by virtue of it being digital, automatically making a choice to walk away from the poetic, the mindful, the importance of craft or the transcendence of mediocrity any more than the artist who chooses a film camera is forced, by virtue of the technology, into poetry, craftsmanship or excellence. To believe otherwise would require us to believe that anything not written on a rusted Underwood typewriter, or better yet with a quill and ink, is nothing more than modern soulless hackery. I’m not even sure hackery is a word. But I blame my MacBook for that.
It is not art because it’s made with film. It’s not, well, NOT art, because it’s made with ones and zeros instead of burning silver on celluloid, which is basically what film photography is. Art is an intensely human activity and it will be made with whatever we have at hand. We have painted our art on cave walls using pigments made from berries, we've made it with lasers and paints and computers and yes, quills and ink. It has been made from wood and clay and less noble materials like plastic, glass and cement. But those are just the means and materials by which we bring that art into the world.
Art is made by us. If you make photographs with soul, it won’t be because you used film. If you write screenplays that open our eye or stir our hearts, it won’t be because you eschewed the laptop and wrote it by hand. If anything you make is deeply authentic it won’t be because the technology itself is authentic, but because you are.
Art is about you, and how you make art is about the way you choose to use your tools. Some people will work better with analog tools, some with digital, and some with a mix of these things. Some people prefer the nostalgia that comes with older tools. Or they prefer the way they collaborate with those tools, and when that collaboration is a good fit, and feels right, it makes sense that what we create will be better and more fully us. It too will feel right in a way that working with other tools won’t. The experience will be different, which is what the book, The Revenge of Analog seemed to be all about. Everyone said film was dead. It’s not. They said the same thing about vinyl. This morning I was listening to the 1983 album Synchronicity by the Police on my turntable, and I love the experience of vinyl. But I don’t think the songs Every Breath You Take or Tea in the Sahara resonate with me because they’re playing on an LP. They’re brilliant, resonant songs to begin with. All of this talk about technology and tools and the idea that analog technologies might be our artistic or creative salvation is because the great temptation with tools or technologies of any kind is the same as the belief in muses: it offers us the chance to blame external influences for our failures. And the reason I feel so compelled to discuss it and take up 15 minutes of your day in doing so, is because I think that the moment we refuse to abdicate responsibility for what we make, how we make it, and how much of our souls we pour into the making, the sooner we can get back to making art. The sooner we recognize that soul and meaning are found within us and not in the tools we use, the sooner we can get back to attending to those things and seeking them in the places in which they will be found.
But there’s another thing too, and that’s that this knife cuts both ways and there’s a snobbery that finds its way into these kinds of discussion, about which I can do nothing, but I can tell those of you who feel that you’ve been let off the hook and can’t make good, meaningful, resonant art because you don’t have the latest (or the oldest) and you can’t afford the Leica or the RED camera or the new laptop, or whatever tool is seems more authentic or that thing that all the pros are using–none of that matters. If you can’t make music with the violin in your hands you won’t have the foggiest idea what to do with the Stradivarius. This should give us tremendous freedom and relief. It should place the great joy and opportunity to create and make art, back where it belongs. With us. It should free us to use our tools rather than being used by them. It should help us transcend the tools entirely, much as we love and need them.
I think the return to embracing analog technologies is a good thing. I think it is a recognition that digital technologies, on their own, are incomplete. That they promised us things they couldn’t deliver. I think it’s an acknowledgment that we don’t just want high tech, we want high touch. We want things that are uniquely human in our art and creativity that can only come from the human wielding the tool: warmth, soul, the poetry of imperfection, and the ability to touch and feel tools that perhaps have a little more heritage than the plastic and steel thing we hold in our hands, just newly off the boat from offshore factories. All of these things are good. But don’t be fooled into thinking that they offer us hope for a brighter creative future.
That old camera, that thrift-store typewriter, the old acoustic guitar with the dents and the dings, didn’t come with built-in muses and they are not a get-out-of-jail-free card. The person who owned it before you struggled no less with their creative life than you do. Putting their old tools into your newer hands won’t change much for you. And if it does, if it somehow unlocks that thing lurking within you that suddenly frees your creativity and brings your art to life, I promise you, it was there to begin with. Like Dorothy in Oz, we’re all looking for the wizard (whether that’s some analog tool or the latest and shiniest digital offerings) when it’s the ruby slippers we’ve had all along that will take us home.
By now I trust you’ve picked up on the fact that this episode isn’t about whether you use digital or analog technologies, whatever your craft. It’s about where we put our creative faith. Time spent blaming our tools is time we are not engaging our imaginations to overcome the limitations of those tools. It’s time spent not embracing their intrinsic constraints. The world is full of true believers, some in the promise of digital. Some in the hope of analog. Both risk missing what the heretics know and celebrate: that neither offers creative salvation. The art is in you, not the tool. And if you’re easily distracted by the promise of those shiny new tools, or you’ve grown weary with them and are hoping to find the magic in some older process, you’re not alone. I know I’m painting with some pretty broad brushes here, and I know that our relationships with our tools, whatever the craft, are not always simple. I just want to remind you that you are the source of that art, and when our art lacks some truly vital thing, like the authenticity that’s become such a catch-word lately, it won’t come from our tools, new or old, and it can’t be purchased. When what we make overflows with life and feels right, that comes from us. We have barriers enough in the creative life; believing that either the credit or the blame for what we make lies in our tools will only shackle us further. What you have is enough, it always has been, because you are enough. And if it’s not, If we are not, there is no tool in the world that can help us.
Thanks so much for being part of this with me. I’m humbled by the letters and reviews I’ve been getting. If these short conversations are helpful to you I’d love to hear from you and you can do that by dropping me a note at talkback@beautifulanarchy.com. I release new episodes of A Beautiful Anarchy 3 out of 4 weeks, but if you still want your fix on those 4th weeks, I’d love to send you the latest issue of On The Make, which is my monthly chance to encourage you in your everyday creativity by email. Just go to aBeautifulAnarchy.com, scroll to the bottom of the page, and tell me where to send it. I’ll also send you a copy of my eBook, Escape Your Creative Rut, 5 Ways to Get Your Groove Back. Hey, while I’ve still got you, would you do me a favour? If these podcasts are something you think others should hear about, would you mind sharing them? I’d be grateful for anyone you send my way through social media or word of mouth. Just send them to aBeautifulAnarchy.com, they’ll find their way from there.
Thanks again. Until next time, go make something beautiful.
Music in this episode: Acid Jazz (Kevin Macleod) / CC BY-SA 3.0