the emotional texture of analog media

there’s something about holding a thing in your hand.
a weight, however small, that says: this happened. this mattered.

i’ve been thinking lately about tapes. not metaphorically, just… literally. the cassette i kept rewinding in ‘98 because track 7 reminded me of a boy who never liked me back. the way it clicked, hissed, rewound like it was catching its breath. the mix i made when my friend’s mum died — everything soft and wordless i could find, ferried across town in a cracked jewel case.

same with VHS. birthdays recorded over soap operas. family holidays blurred at the edges. the way your dad’s voice sounds on tape — younger, uncertain, laughing at something you’ve long since forgotten. watching it back now feels like time reaching both ways at once. like memory bending. like grief disguised as grain.

there’s a texture to these things.
not just physically — though yes, the clunk of a tape deck, the ridges of a polaroid, the scratch of needle meeting vinyl — but emotionally. a kind of analogue ache.

you can’t skip ahead.
you have to listen in order.
you have to wait.

and that waiting does something.
slows the blood. makes space. allows feeling to arrive whole instead of cut into pieces.

in contrast, digital things feel slick, instant, immaterial. they’re everywhere and nowhere. photos stored in clouds. playlists that evaporate when a server crashes. our lives increasingly made of files we’ll never touch.

and yet, the box under my bed still holds a mixtape from someone who once knew me best. a printed photo where we’re all squinting in the sun. a letter i never replied to but read at least ten times.

these aren’t just objects. they’re containers.
of time. of longing. of something more tender than nostalgia.

maybe it’s about loss.
or maybe it’s about the refusal to forget.

either way, analog keeps asking something of us:
to remember slowly.
to hold things carefully.
to let them be a little broken, a little worn, and still — worth keeping.