Analog vibes only

In the evenings, when the neon dive of the digital world fades at the edge of my pupil, I light a candle. The flame, gently swaying to the rhythm of my breath, brings the room to life, as if something ancient and kind awakens within the walls. This isn’t light — it’s presence. As if Fire itself, the original one, the one that brought warmth to the first cave, decided to sit beside me.

Analog vibe only. It’s not a hipster mantra, not nostalgia for vinyl or film — it’s a return to the body. To the leather of skin, the pulse of blood, the breath we forget when we spend too long gliding across screens. When fingers no longer feel the grain of paper, the weight of a film camera, the texture of a wool coat from a quiet vintage shop in Lisbon.

The digital is a current; the body is a riverbed. Without the riverbed — a flood. I walk the streets in that coat, discovered by chance among the timeworn hangers of a Lisbon vintage shop, where it smells of orange peels, old wood, and Atlantic salt. The pockets are like portals, holding forgotten notes from other lives. Clothing not just made of threads, but of stories. And the body in it is not an object, but a participant. It lives, it hums, it warms and is warmed.

With the body comes the source — not metaphorical, but physiological.

Research from the University of Rochester shows that regular physical contact — hugs, handshakes, closeness — reduces cortisol, the stress hormone, and activates the parasympathetic nervous system. Face-to-face communication — eye contact, facial micro-movements, the unfiltered human voice — restores what digital overload erodes: a sense of connection, safety, and existential realness.

Music played on vinyl is not sound — it’s a pulse. Photography shot on film is not documentation — it’s resurrection. Reading poetry aloud is not information — it’s incantation.

And my voice — like a ray through the gloom,
I shall not vanish, I shall arise…

— Velimir Khlebnikov

We will not vanish, if we stay in the body. Analog vibe only is not a rejection of progress. It is an anchor cast deep. A candle in the cave. The hiss of film where a moment leaves its imprint. A conversation under the moon. A pause before a word.

Fire, body, cloth, music, skin, breath. The source is not in the cloud. It’s beneath the skin.