I should start this piece by making it clear that I don’t believe in star signs and horoscopes. However, I am curious how myths and fables inform the narratives we use to make sense of the world. I was born a Gemini, apparently, and my mother always told me, “You have the ability to be two different people at the same time.” I've carried this narrative for a long time, and whether it comes from the stars, a story my mother told me, or the story I tell myself is a moot point. It feels true.
I see this dual perspective in my relationship with digital and analogue tools. I have always loved computers and technology. I got my first computer (a ZX Spectrum) when I was fifteen years old, and technology has been my constant companion for the following decades. For a person who was brought up with three channels on terrestrial television, the digital world still feels like a miracle. At the same time as I was exploring Basic programming and Atic Atac, I was obsessed with nice paper and Rotring Isograph technical pens. These were the pedigree horses of the pen world, high maintenance, expensive and likely to die on you for no obvious reason. You had to buy special inks, promising irritation and burns if you got it on your skin, make sure the pen never dried out, and shake them repeatedly before you applied the ultra fine nib to the page.
I have followed this parallel path of digital and analog tools for most of my life, switching between the two seamlessly. The tools have changed, the Rotrings have been replaced by fountains pens, a less demanding tool, but an anachronism in the world of ultra smooth gel pens (I like both). The ZX Spectrum has been replaced by a multitude of desktop and laptop Macs. These are tools that form part of my daily life, but I’ve noticed over the last year that the parallel paths have started to diverge.
I still love the digital space, but after some concentrated effort with pen and paper, I think I have made a choice to favour one path over the other. For me, analogue is better.
Digital has made my life easier, but the quality of the thinking and the output is … different. If I write a creative piece on the computer first, it just doesn’t ring true. If I start on paper, then create a digital version, the quality is better. I think there are several reasons for this: handwriting is slower, and it gives your brain a little more time to think; it’s also a physical experience, nib and paper working together to capture ideas and thoughts. In the past, I avoided handwriting because it was “slower”, because I was in a productive mindset rather than one that privileged ideas and quality. The analogue route produces less volume of work, but it’s clear that the overall quality is better. It brings a different approach to the process.
With digital tools I am focussed on getting it done, with pen and paper I spend more time trying to make it better.