I felt a degree of sadness when, after 40 years of editing radio documentaries in analogue, I had to abandon the old tapes. The new digital technology was challenging and exciting.
An Unkind Elegy to Analogue
Hard-worked partner of forty years,
Your empty spools, like eyes, reproach me.
Long ago I was captivated by your subtle magnetism,
Your tiny amplitudes enhanced by copper alchemy and glowing valves
Informed a wireless nation.
Driven by deadlines your tapes squealed in sped-up excitement,
They babbled in tongues or growled reversed vowels.
But your sound lacked vision,
Only skilled ear and hand could perform your sightless edits.
But sorcery and occult art
Gave sight to sound, and SADIE’s start.
Bewitched, bothered and unsure,
I apprenticed to the sorcerer.
Eye of newt and toe of frog,
Click of mouse and-
Oh my God!
Myriad streams on glowing screens
They mock your meagre channels.
Adder’s fork and blind worm’s sting,
Razor’s cut-
I’m editing!
From slow-witted analogue I took flight,
became an acolyte of gigabyte.
No more arthritic solenoids or faulty brakes,
A SCUSI disk is all it takes.
Fine-tooled relic of a bygone age,
Your voice has too much tape hiss.
But I have found a cleaner sound,
With a rainbow-hued enchantress.
SADIE is the name of the digital editing software we use at Radio New Zealand.
SEXY SADIE
Siren SADIE, at my touch, your cool green undulations turn passionate red.
Trim editor reveals your naked wave-form zoomed on bordello bed.
I fumble with your hot keys seeking climactic edit but double your breath instead.
Wrong click! And my passion is an anarchy, stream on stream of rainbow hue,
La digital donna è mobile- where is the analogue constancy I knew.
But a curled arrow icon rewinds my sins–UNDO UNDO UNDO.
© Jack Perkins
