Reflections on Returning to an Analog Creative Life

And How to Avoid Digital Hell

She asked me why I was making so much noise, when our 9 week old puppy had finally decided to nap.

When she came in the door, I was holding an Apple computer over my head, a series of cords dangling from my mouth, trying to reach something else with my foot.

She backed out cautiously, and I kept working.

Instead of doing the work I'd scheduled for myself, this insane ritual of shuffling around items in my office went on for an hour. I moved plants, books, and typewriters from one shelf to another. I removed my filing drawers, and put them back. I tucked cords into holders, and then ran them behind shelves. I changed the bulbs to be warmer.

What was I doing?

And then, after a series of seemingly random moves, some of which made the space feel worse instead of better, it occurred to me;

I'm redesigning a life build around the citadel of my own soul's awareness.

A little voice in my head said: move the computer. Don't have the whole space revolve around a screen.

I wedged the computer behind a shelf, and waited. It looked better, but there was an emptiness there. Now I could feel more light pouring into the window.

The voice didn't respond, per se, but I knew what to do.

I choose a typewriter. In this case, a 1957 Groma Kolibri, in rare earth tones.

With a Mont Blanc pen that I received as a college graduation gift. With 4x6 cards for Zettelkasten creation.

***

Here is the focused set up:

I propped that up where the computer once was.

You see, I'd used a typewriter for years, but not as the center of my reality. As more of a glorious escape from the necessities of life. As a peripheral oddity. Sure, I’d run to it for long writing sessions, though something about it not being the primary tool never quite sat well with me.

Oh, how wrong I was, hiding away the essential thing and displaying the non essential, mass produced commodity in its stead.

I choose to be an outpouring of the soul, rather than a consumer of mediocrity.

To create something great, I need to take in great things.

To solve big problems, I need to cut out the useless arguments and political diatribes. The savior complexes that live and die by what others do.

No. It's trap!

I choose to broadcast my essential nature out into the world, in various media, so that the world ripples back its answer, and that reflection, that echo of all that I am... well that becomes my life. A halting, aching, haunting melody. Awkward at times, but its mine. I die knowing that I sung.

What I notice is that there are less cords. I am happy with this. I think about a Zoom call I have on another day. I set that thought aside.

A typewriter has a few natural companions. People mention pens and watches. People mention record players and books. People mention stationary and pencil sharpeners.

I place a few of those in the space.

I've recently retreated into a wrist watch again, after literally a decade of wasting time checking the phone to check the time. Every time I wonder what time it is, I've suffered a ten minute distraction, and I've made myself permeable again.

I am again committed to being a guardian of my senses; gatekeeper of my destiny.

And this ritual gesture is the foundation of what comes next; a better life that revolves around my own creative genius, whatever form that decides to take, however many naysayers threaten me with commodification and anonymity.

Hell, I've already embraced that; swallowed it whole, shit out fame.

I'm in love again with the human experience. I write again, after a few lost decades.

At first, I'm dumbed-down, like Google wanted. Then I start to feel a warmth rising in the chest cavity; a rumbling in the loins. I need to commit to learning to spell again. I get an Oxford English Dictionary and I read it with the magnifying glass (yes the huge one, 12 volumes or whatever it is).

I have faith that if I get out of my digital stupor, others might follow, and even if they don't, life is better all around anyway.

I regret being a digital idiot for years. When someone called me, or reached out in the flesh, I’d text them back. I’d hide behind a screen.

I become a fierce and formidable thinker, and the vehicle I use to preserve this space is an analog tool that was supposed to have died a few decades ago.

I love that, don't you? To pick up what is supposed to be dead and to create with it. It throws dirt into the face of the throwaway culture. The computers that wind up in the ocean, in the depths, where upon the shore, on a balcony, there is a man writing his memoirs on a machine from 1923 that shows no signs of dying.

I love to write on a machine, an undying machine, from a certain year. It sings of old wars tearing the Earth to pieces; of courageous souls putting themselves back together again. Of steel moguls rigging the game and profiting either way.

I don’t know what your definition of hell is. For me, it is sitting on a screen while life passes by outside the window. Missing my daughters growing, my wife aging gracefully, my friends telling their sordid tales of youth, my own parents’ entering new stages of life.

It’s ok to miss things when one is working on what matters most; it is not ok to miss life because of the lure of trivalities. That’s my complaint.

So now my office is set up for real creation. It reminds me of my old artist studio from the early 2000’s, when I had just a few tools lined up on a worktable.

Slow down to speed up. Make it less efficient and harder. Do less, but better. Earth the words. Witness the evolution in realtime.

What shall we create? What impossible problems shall we solve together?

Write on,

Steven Budden Jr.

The Classic Typewriter Company

PS. I’m putting together a guide to this analog workflow and a paper newsletter; you’ll hear more about that soon.

The Zettelkasten, where every thought gets a card. In this case, a hand made paper card, either typed or written in cursive. (yes that thread is on the esoteric consequences of medicine).