Analog verus digital experience

 

 

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I took a road trip to the west coast with a girlfriend in 1998 or so.  While we were hiking on a pretty busy trail in the Columbia River Gorge. (I think it was Multnomah Falls).  I had the idea of "digital" versus "analog" experience.  Digital represented walking along the path, along with dozens/hundreds of other folks.  "Analog" represented the idea that we could step off the trail at any point, and walk perpendicular to the trail... and find endless wonders.  Each step of the trip could be "expanded" by walking perpendicular to the trail.

I don't think the metaphor is apt so much anymore.  I think it referred to the idea that each "moment" of a digital recording is a single "digit" of music...a pointillist moment that, added together, represents the song.  (I'm not sure why I think that the analog "song" was richer/deeper than that... maybe because it's "closer" to the actual room where the musician's played? maybe because you could hear the coffee maker in the background in the studio in an analog recording (could you? and if so, wouldn't that be in the digital recording, too?)  In any case, I have this idea of the "digital" and "analog" in my head for awhile.

On the one hand this idea is simple: it represents that there are always moments to stop and go in a new direction.  The new directions will be less-trod, but still interesting and rewarding.

On the other hand, I keep feeling like it represents something more profound: that our normal way of going about the world is ignorant of the "perpendicular paths" (the richness of every moment) that exists not just theoretically, but in actuality, in each moment when people inhabit the same space we do, and when the seasons move slowly surely. Being in a forest helps us see this, because there is a path, and there is a "not path" that you can still see.  It's not like there are multiple realities, multiple directions that we can go; it's more like there is an unbelievable richness and depth to each moment. 

Our experience is linear, along a path.  We play our line of music.  How do become more aware of the other musicians?  How do we experience not the harmonies, but the multiply-lived space?

As we walk along a path, how do we become more aware of the things along the side of the path?  And things that are 2 yards off the path, and 20 yards off the path?