Postal Strikes and Existential Crisis(es)

To My Youngers,

So the post office went on strike last Friday. Not the old-fashioned sandwich-board, oil-drum-fire, scabber-filled, country-stalling general strikes of old, but instead a rolling strike meant to (hopefully) inconvenience us enough to (hopefully) make a point. I’m still trying to decide if it will be (has been?) effective at either.

My favourite response to this ‘whole ordeal’ (if we can even call it an ordeal at all…) was a friend’s facebook status: “Oh no! A Canada Post strike!? That will totally affect my daily life. Just like when the typewriter factory went on strike and all the monocle franchises shut down.”  I think it pretty perfectly sums up the first reaction of your average Canadian (right down to the self-effacing take on so called ‘important things’). I found the post pretty durn funny, but I don’t really know how I feel about the strike itself... A few people responded with good reasons why they were upset about it (not receiving pay cheques, trouble invoicing or mailing out merch) but on the whole everyone seemed to agree- Not only was this rolling strike not really going to affect most of us, it is just downright humerous.

I myself bemoaned having to use a fax machine to send some government-type forms (like being forced to watch a movie on Betamax), but in all honestly, I was a little sad that I wasn’t more upset at the temporary (if spottily temporary) inability to send actual physical things through the mail. I can be a bit of a neo-luddite at times- I own three typewriters, a super-8 projector, a tape deck, and a collapsible overhead machine. I love old things. I love old technologies. I love winding film, and watching for cigarette burns, and setting type by hand. But I also love being able to talk to my cousin on skype even though he lives halfway across the world. I love being able to take my entire music collection with me anywhere I go. I love viewing vlogbrothers videos and being inspired by my modern metropolis. I love being able to watch Dr Who the day its aired on BBC and not having to wait weeks and weeks to borrow a tape of it recorded off of a friend’s Space channel… I’m sitting on a cliff on an island in the middle of a lake, writing this on my laptop and posting it online- Can I really simultaneously do that and mourn the loss of the importance of the postal service?

Is it possible for us to still value a method of communication (in the original sense of the word, everything from roads to photographs, to mail, to texting) if it ceases to be the most useful method? Is there an actual place in the world for things that no longer have a use? The obvious answer, logically speaking is ‘no,’ but that just doesn’t seem to be right. What about Art, and Film, and Music, and Literature? What about Bicycles? What about Chocolate? What about… everything that makes life interesting? But how do we tell what’s what- what’s worth keeping and what just isn’t?

I think that the rolling postal strike has made a point, but I’m not sure that it was the point they were trying to make. Maybe we are at a place where physical mail just isn’t really needed anymore.  Maybe my former thoughts on importance and usefulness are antiquated and no longer reflect my view of the world. But the idea of not having a National Mail Service makes me pretty sad, just like the idea of closing down all the typewriter factories and monocle shops. But what if their time has simply come, and all the being-sad-about-it in the world isn’t going to stop anything.

Then again, vinyl hasn’t sold this well in over thirty years…

-E

Analog Love

To my elders,

"

Quick kid quick, so harsh and cynical

Touches stricken, cold and clinical

What a transformation to behold

But I don't like this new, I want the old..."

That is the opening verse to the song Happier by A Fine Frenzy.

Now, I realize that the last line there is about a person, but I am taking it to refer to life. Well, no life exactly, but how fast things change, and how much of a complete turnover has taken place over the past 10 to 15 years. When I was in high school, we passed notes in class. Because text messaging didn't exist yet. Not that we had cell phones anyway. I once told this story to an 18 year old who responded with "How old ARE you?!"

In High School, I took photography class. Film photography class. I developed my own black and white film and printed it. I even wound my own rolls of film in "the baby" (which is what our teacher called the roller. It has a picture of a baby on it. Because it was to be treated like one. Gently). It wasn't perfect and there was a lot of trial and error (especially since my light meter didn't work) and it took a long time to get a handful of good photos. You had to go with it and hope that the Dark Room Gods would smile on you and not ruin all your film. That some of the super cool photos you took would actually turn out. You couldn't just click something and check a screen. Editting involved waving your fingers between the enlarger lens and the photo paper while exposing. No two prints looked alike. It was creating art just to print a snapshot. And it isn't perfect. Far from it. Farthest from it, possibly. But analog just has so much... life in it. It is so human. I has feeling and emotion. It isn't just bits and bites and 0s and 1s (parsel tongue sudoku!!!). Its light and colour and reflection and shading and grey scale and foibles. It is dust marks and scratches and all those things that make you take note of how much time and energy and effort went into making it. Digital is too perfect.

I am not a luddite. I got a walkman in 6th grade that was waterproof, just in case. I got a discman in 10th grade when they were actually good enough to bother spending the money. I've had an iPod for 6 years. And by "an" I mean 2. I still have the first one, the buttons just don't work anymore. It is a Mini, after all. But I also have a record player and a collection ranging from jazz and swing that I inherited from my grandfather to the classic rock albums I stole from my dad's collection, the used original Ziggy Stardust I bought for 9£ in Edinburgh (which has such a huge wobble you can hear it as the record plays), to new prints of The Shins and a ridiculous collection of Less Than Jake 7" singles. Some with matching images printed into the records. My collection started with a 1$ copy of "Bridge Over Troubled Water" by Simon and Garfunkel that E and I picked up at a Value Village and has grown, mostly through used record stores, however used records stores everywhere I have ever been. I have records from quite a few of the places I have been to, and let me tell you, flying home with vinyl is not that fun. I get really worried its going to break because no one remembers what vinyl is or that it is housed in cardboard.

What really got me onto the Analog Love thing though, was Polaroid cameras. But more on that another time. For now, what you need to know is that The Impossible Project is completely awesome, Polaroids are beautiful, and that seeing the beauty in the world, in simple, mundane, regular, everday things, is worthwhile.

I don't like the new, I want the old.

-K