The Pursuit Evoked by the Revival of the Analogue

Scanning across the noisy elementary school cafeteria, my eyes fed a growing confusion and frustration that morphed into an angry isolation. The rows of elongated tables were erupting in a symphony of joyful screeches which can only be the product of unfiltered, utter delight of a child. As cellophane lids were skinned off of boxed Lunchables, I felt the draw of time stretch as I watched eyes widen and deranged smiles stretched across faces as evidence of unrestrained gratification. Placing a hand on top of my lunchbox in a futile attempt to hide its contents, the anticipation germinated a hailstorm of self-doubt; unavoidably, the lunchbox lid would eventually secede to lunchtime hunger. 

In the mid 1990’s, during what I consider to be the moment of peak acceleration for convenience foods, unwrapping a homemade egg sandwich decorated with tomato, alfalfa sprouts on toasted bread was considered to be an act of unfathomable shame, equivocal to social suicide… at least that was the case in my childish 12 year old mind. It seemed like everyone was enjoying the flavorless joy flowing out of the cornucopia of conveniently packaged ready-to-eat lunchtime meals designed to conjure up a surplus of disposable time back home. Convenience had seeped its way into the everyday lingo, every single conjugation of the word turning into an irrefutable quality that only a madman could reject. 

By definition, convenience is “the state of being able to proceed with something with little effort or difficulty”.

The wheel, convenient.

The steam engine, convenient.

The microprocessor, convenient.

Meals devoid of nourishment?

For some reason which I still do not understand, we were convinced that time spent in the meditative states of selecting ingredients and preparing our meals were a waste that greedily ate away at our most valuable asset, our free time. Even above our health, our peace, our identity; we desired more of that savory nectar called leisure time, the savior that would break the shackles of obligation and offer us a tantalizing gift, freedom. 

I get it though, with so much technological progress buzzing around us we started to feel an itch which we blamed on an histamine provoked by chores. Guided by a noble pursuit to release us from the bonds of repetitive daily motions and experience the pageantry that derived from the rise of the age of the internet, convenience was turned into a soulless metric, another component of a zero sum game at the expense of sustenance, at the expense of our humanity. 

Enabled by advances in food technology, we were able to remove a little, add just a tad and have something similar enough at the end; what we didn’t know was that the effects would be measured in decades. 

Some fought the tide, stepping across the television screens and into our world. Cooking shows aired on public access television such as the likes of Julia Childs with her love for eloquent french cuisine, Martin Yan with his cleverly named Yan Can Cook series, and even the young Martha Stewart in her unique soft uplifting style. Rather than delivering sermons explaining the ill effects of our decisions and preferences, they simply opened the curtains to their kitchen window and went on about their lives allowing us to walk up to the windowsill and observe the soothing pleasure that filled the space; granting us access to unfiltered thoughts and genuine expressions of delight. 

Although, we were too young, too busy, and frankly incapable of understanding the message. Now, we have finally found the bitter notes that underline the initial intoxicating sweetness of the nectar that lingers on our palate much beyond any welcome; we find ourselves spending our leisure time retrieving our health, our peace, our identity. The revival of the analogue, the resurgence of the homestead lifestyle, slow foods, fermentation and the crafts are no consequence of a recursive nature of capitalism but a genuine plight to recover our humanity as an element of nature not despite it. 

The cost of “being able to proceed with something with little effort or difficulty” has become too great a burden to accept the fleeting gratification and subsequent withdrawal of convenience; effort has become the therapeutical antidote that heals wounds caused to our bodies and souls by decades of consuming meals abundantly convenient devoid of nourishment. 

Julia Child´s baritone chuckles of delight hushes the electronic buzz ringing in our ears welcoming us back, like an ever forgiving grandmother, to the kitchen’s medicinal properties. We now understand what we saw from the windowsill and view our meals under a lens polished not by commerce but by sincerity and purpose; no longer seduced by fleeting convenience, but in search of that human connection to our ingredients and life sustaining nourishment. As we gravitate towards farm to table and sea to fork, we increasingly journey beyond the alphabetical aisles of convenient super markets and reroute our digitally synchronized lives for a stroll set to the ticking hands of analogue to browse dockside markets in search of local seafood, etching ever closer to effort. 

Once thought to be mindless tasks, the cathartic properties of the repetitive motions involved in preparing our meals grant us access to a realm where fulfilment vibrates like a tuning fork beside our ears. Back in the soothing warmth that emanates from the heating cast iron awaiting its turn, and the pot gently simmering next to the kettle; we find that the kitchen offers a gift greater than any intoxicating pleasure; true freedom found through purpose as there are few pursuits as noble as nourishing those we love. 

With every drop of a peal of a garlic clove, the breakdown of a fish, the mincing of an herb we return to the natural rhythmic flow of a quintessential energy that awakens at the break of dawn to dive the frigid depths, farm our coasts, and set out to pursue the ocean’s treasures. 

The homestead lifestyle, slow foods, the crafts; a trend? 

A pilgrimage returning to our humanity as a part of nature.