How To Live An Analog Life in The Digital Age
Don't knock it before you try it
A few years ago on a walk, I threatened to hurl my iPhone into the abyss and begin a daily journal about what life was like without the rectangle that has ruined society. The journal was designed to be a book embryo. I reasoned that the tech-addicted would be curious about my journey and dreams of rejecting modern society.
I never did that, but I am oh-so-heartened to see that others are evolving in this direction. Since I never executed on the phone diet, (I’ve decided I need to live in a castle for that.) I can’t necessarily call myself an early adopter, which is fine because my phone diet was purely for sanity and creativity, rather than fame, recognition or credit.
I’m sure you remember one of Kamala’s campaign highlights: “Joy cometh in the morning!”
She was 100% right, because Substack notes and articles are gradually revealing to me that I am not alone in my tech rebellion.
, for instance just did an NBC spot as the “Anti-Tech” girl. She’s going to Paris with a 2002 dumb phone, and a weekly visit to the library to check email; a book is sure to come out of this experience for her, and read it, I will. wrote a book called “Antinet” which I just ordered, focused on reading, writing, and researching the old-fashioned way (e.g. the thinking man’s way, no Chat GPT allowed.) Intriguing, indeed.
Before categorizing me as one of those unrealistic nostalgics (like the ones who said air travel would never catch on,) I’d like to make my case for This Analog Life for each of the following categories of consumption: music, politics, food, travel, information, books, cafes, community, and events.
I’d love to hear your ideas as well. Tell me, is this movement not only real, but slowly building steam? Could it be that it’s not just The Baby Boomers who are seeing the value of spending more time tech-free, but even Millennials and Gen Z too?
My Contribution: Events
I’m a former classical musician and event producer who loves history. This positions me naturally at the heart of gathering people in no-tech environments. And I believe we all have something unique to contribute to our embryonic movement. My bold assertion is that I believe a large segment of society will be rebelling against the tech matrix in the coming years. And I believe the rebellion of This Analog Life is a defiant dismissal of instant gratification, blue light, loneliness, anxiety, and far too much information.
This movement is for the rebels and critical thinkers. It’s for the gardeners and the artists. It’s for those who want to ensure humanity doesn’t fall to the robots. If you’re still reading this post, you probably had a great relationship with your grandparents, and never sought the latest iPhone. And maybe, just maybe, you still use wax seals on your envelopes, like me.
Music
What We’re Missing: Rewarding the craft of songwriting, deep lyrics, beautiful melodies, the higher production value and dynamism of vinyl, and in-person concerts whether at a symphony hall, jazz club, or dive bar.
Why It Matters: Autotune, Garage Band, and American Idol have cheapened the songwriting process and made it all about pushing the non-talented through, and prioritizing achieving fame over the craft. Most fully committed artists I know see fame as a necessary evil, not a goal. What if your ears have lowered their standards, and your aural environment could inspire again?
Try This: Purchase a record player, and instead of paying Apple $9.99 a month to download music, go to an antique mall and buy a few records. Also, go hear music LIVE and support real musicians and independent labels. Spend a weekend in New Orleans and check out Tipitinas or Preservation Hall, head to the Aspen Music Festival, or the Verbier or Montreux Festivals in Switzerland, or simply hire the next busker who enchants you.
Politics
What We’re Missing: Critical thinking, healthy debate, and compassion. The trifecta that kept society normal in the 80s and 90s, seemed to slowly fade with the internet and social media. Most Gen X-ers still remember their parents debating politics at the dinner table without disdain, hatred, ostracization or insults. That has since changed. Kindness, apparently, does not belong in politics anymore.
Why It Matters: We have turned politics into a savage game of sports where the Home Team must win and the Away Team must die. We’ve overidentified with party like a sports team.
wisely counsels that political decisions today should be based only one thing: competence. Competence over party. We used to be able to agree on competence and merit. We used to be able to agree on the truth. We need to disengage from our neurotic obsession with party over what is right, good, and true. Newsflash: It was never about us, it’s about our children and grandchildren. It’s about thriving, surviving, and prospering.Try This: First, get off of your phones to start your Vitriol Diet. Host a gathering at a cafe or at your home where you discuss a pre-determined topic in politics. Require that people educate themselves without using any mainstream media outlets or internet. Enforce ground rules of healthy debate, kindness, and compassion. Watch debate movies like The Great Debaters or 12 Angry Men. Try reconnecting with any friends you cut off because of who they voted for. That’s a great place to start.
Food
What We’re Missing: Bringing food to neighbors for no reason, family style eating with no phones at the table, not enough farmers or homesteaders, real nutrition found in whole food, slowing down, family food rituals, real local food producers are much more advanced than agri-businesses. The latter will make you sick and then Big Pharma will then try to push their synthetic drugs on you. What if all you needed was nature for both prevention and healing? What if…
Why It Matters: Our dependence on pills and quick solutions has essentially crowded out God’s nutrition which was already perfect and complete. We wouldn’t need any drugs at all if we got the first part right: Eat what nature provides without the chemicals — and do it in multi-generational groups.
Try This: If you want to live This Analog Life with food, you’ll have to grow something, give up fast food, stop eating at restaurant buffets (way too many germs), and begin sharing your food with your community through farmers markets or randomly with your neighbors. Eat seasonally and locally, host no-tech dinner parties, spend some time with a French or Italian family learning their grandmother’s recipes.
Travel
What We’re Missing: Slow travel, immersing in different cultures and customs, transport that takes longer but allows you to see more (trains are healthier than planes which cause radiation), itinerary checklists are crowding out elaborate stories and memories. Check out my Slow Travel podcast website The Quest Express, here.
Why It Matters: Travel is the best education, and when done right can both open the mind and soften the heart. New environments can magically create new eras and flourish us into becoming the next version of ourselves. If we’re too worried about how our trip will make an Instagram feed look, or making sure we “get this done,” then all we’re signing up for is a Cortisol Smoothie in Venice and a Heart Attack in Hawaii which no one needs.
Try This: Try travelling on a short trip without an iPhone. Yes, you can still hail a cab at the airport, you can ask locals how to find the grocery store, and you can even hear when grandma is getting robbed by a couple of thugs. You will experience more. Bring a DSLR or Polaroid camera, if you must, but avoid all the tourist traps and hang out with the natives. Take a historical experiential train like the Venice Simplon-Orient-Express. Try a European Viking River Cruise tour of castles, or write a book on the island of Lopud, Croatia. The more random, the better.
Information
What We’re Missing: An attention span that can finish a book without 30-second notification withdrawal symptoms. Depth. Comprehension and focus. Intellectual rigor. Like a pre-veal calf being stuffed with food, we’re stuffing our craniums excessively, remembering little, and probably applying about 5-10%. Calm, clean, focus left with the iPhone. Multi-tasking is our new Golden Calf, and oversubscribing is glamorous. You have 47, 562 emails in your inbox and nothing but junk mail at the end of your driveway. Something is very wrong.
Why It Matters: We are sabotaging our learning and sowing seeds of confusion and distraction, not real education and implementation. We’re over-entertaining ourselves with a tsunami of words, and not in a good way. We can’t even hear ourselves think anymore.
Try This: Start reading the classics. Don’t read two books at once. Go on an internet scrolling diet for at least a week. Write with pen and pencil. Buy a typewriter. These tools will slow everything down and that’s good. Go to a no-tech cafe (easy if you’re in Amsterdam), start an in-person reading club at a cafe without iPhones. Slow down and just be.
Books
What We’re Missing: It is heartbreaking when 50-year old book shops are forced to shut down. Only a few remain, and it’s either our own fault or Amazon’s fault. Perhaps both. Since the iPhone became our constant companion, we started reading less, finishing books less, and thinking much less. Our knowledge is becoming a shallow pool of chauffeur knowledge and sound bytes, which will not necessarily entertain at the next party.
Why It Matters: Each generation is supposed to get smarter, not dumber. Why did our grandparents use bigger words, and why does someone with a “great vocabulary” seem as rare as an albino elephant? Our brains are being rewired to be lazy, as we’re outsourcing all of our knowledge. If we don’t get serious, we’ll be doomed to “let me look that up on Google or Chat GPT” which could gravely threaten our survival when the internet goes away.
Try This: Read a book, cover to cover. Alternate between reading a fiction or non-fiction classic that your grandparents read, with something compelling that you’d like to read. Finish it. Talk about it. Replace your nightly iPhone ritual with a book, a candle, a pen, and a highlighter. Join a book club. Write an essay about what you read. Write a book and surround yourself with nature and culture while writing the first three chapters. Do this and you’ll remember the Golden Age can be recreated by you.
Cafes
What We’re Missing: Babies are not getting the attachment and emotional reinforcement critically important in the first year of their lives — much less the first six years. This early affirmative feedback, through attention and facial expressions, is the template that creates solid mental wellness or anxious attachment styles/neuroses. If I see one more baby desperately looking for its mama’s response while she is texting and smiling to herself in line for Peet’s coffee, I will cry. We are missing human communication and connection. The iPhone was not it.
Why It Matters: We’ve sentenced ourselves to cyber-bubbles and Apple is the prison warden. We’ve deluded ourselves into thinking we’re connecting and living, but without corneas and auras in our stead, we’re not connecting, we’re dehumanizing ourselves. Cafes, whether the lavish 18th century Caffe Florian in Venice, or Amsterdam’s Offline Club which regularly meets for no-tech environments, should experience a resurgence. One customer who attended a no-tech cafe in Amsterdam reported: “I was recharged.” No charger needed.
Try This: Join or start your own Offline Club. Go to the cafe with a group of friends, no cell phones. Start traditions like a weekly Tuesday afternoon or evening meetup, or Sunday afternoon cafe girls’ meet to people watch. In other words: get out of the house and leave your phone at home.
Community
What We’re Missing: Not as much volunteerism. Not many bowling leagues. Spiritual and religious communities have taken a beating. Churches, synagogues, and mosques once served as meeting grounds for not just worship but socializing, teaching, and civic engagement — look at those numbers. It seems that only multi-million dollar mega-churches have replaced them, which aren’t necessarily revitalizing local communities — especially when the pastors are flying private or wearing Gucci on the regular.
Why It Matters: Social isolation and the loneliness epidemic is proof that virtual living was not the panacea we once thought. The shift to online spaces has fundamentally altered the nature of community building. Zoom meetings are not more effective than Town Halls. In the digital age, interactions are fragmented, superficial, and highly curated. Human beings are wired for connection in physical spaces, so by reducing this practice, we’re sabotaging ourselves and our future. Without consistent real-world interaction, people miss out on opportunities for empathy-building and trust formation - the bedrock of any solid viable relationship. Emailing and texting will never create that bedrock.
Try This: Volunteer once a week just as an experiment. Join or start a book club, knitting club, or political club. Don’t wait for religious holidays. Visit people again instead of texting. Go to your local church, mosque, or synagogue. They will be glad to have you, and you will weave new threads in your community and more opportunities to give. And yes, this might be a better place to meet people than on Grind or Bumble. Join anything with a regular in-person meetup.
Events
What We’re Missing: Events outside of the home to look forward to. A reminder that the human race is out there, not in our screens. Inspiration, meaning and purpose. By attending more virtual “events” we imagine we’re somehow getting ahead, gathering more knowledge, saving time, meeting people we otherwise wouldn’t, and cutting down on travel costs. While these things may be true, the ROI on living online has drained, not energized us. It is not delivering the manna.
Why It Matters: We are a herd species, which means it’s not natural to be scrolling into oblivion. Events create memories, whether a party, simple potluck, a movie, a swing dance contest, or a gala ball. In medieval times there were masked balls, trade and craft fairs, and religious feasts/celebrations. These events were foundational both for commerce and matchmaking. These events began families and increased wealth. These events served as Prozac. When was the last time you “looked forward” to a webinar or opening a dating app? We must reconvene with society.
Try This: Go to one local, state, and national event that aligns with your interests. Attend a drive-in movie near you. Research all the upcoming festivals within a 60 mile radius of your home and bring some friends. Not sure where to start? Start in the areas of food, arts/crafts, religion, boats, and music. Or attend one of my upcoming salons as a community member, artist, or investor/business partner. The next salon I’m hosting is for a wide variety of artists: Miami, May 16-17th. DM me now to get on the waiting list or apply - only 30 artist spots and 25 community tickets available.
When in doubt, commune with auras, and gaze at corneas and all will be well.
P.S. The event series I am launching for analog communities is made up of well-established artists.
If this sounds interesting to you, I invite you to join my other Substack “A New Salonnier” which is designed as a touchstone for my new salon communities.