Every so often I will wake up to a song called "Automatic," sung by Miranda Lambert. It's not a song I choose to wake up to, but since it frequently plays while I'm getting up, it's often the first thing I hear every day. I hate the song.
The song itself is all about everything being better in the good old days, though given Lambert's relative youth the good old days in her case are not exactly a long time ago. The song is filled with waxing nostalgic about things that were not great in the first place, like "standing in line for gas." The entire song is romanticizing things that society has discarded for mostly good reasons.
The frustrating thing is I can understand preferring to do something in a less convenient manner. I mean, I drive a car with a manual transmission because I find it more fun. I understand the desire to make things from scratch rather than just buy it from the store, and the inherent rewards of honing some potentially old school skills in the process. I intend on building a cloud tank this summer to try to make some old school visual effects, for the sheer fun of it.
Lambert's song could get to the root of that, be about the joy of doing things on your own and honing unique skills. But since it focuses on minor inconveniences, it doesn't actually get to the root of the idea. I don't savor the experience of driving more when I have to pay for gas inside rather than at the pump. It's just a different way to get the money to the necessary people, and if anything taking longer to pay for gas is just keeping me away from the experiences down the road which I am actually going to enjoy. Crank windows don't make the air outside sweeter, getting rejected over text isn't more or less of a disappointment than getting rejected over the phone. It's just a different way of achieving the same ends, and the more convenient option is generally preferred because it's one less thing to get in the way of actually living your life.
It misses its own points too. It says Polaroids are better than digital, but Polaroids were the quick and easy alternative. An artistically minded person can spend more time manipulating and enhancing digital, making something unique, similar to dark room techniques with traditional film. Film and digital can both benefit from extra time. Polaroid, by contrast, is set and stone and immediate, it is everything Lambert is otherwise lambasting in the song.
I hate the song both because it's trying to glorify inconvenience, but it doesn't understand why doing things by hand is often more rewarding. Baking from scratch, building your own furniture, even writing and recording an original song, all of these activities involve honing a skill to create something suited to your tastes. The end result is better not just because of the work that went into it, but because you're the one creating it, and every step of the way your choices and your skills have influenced the final product. Creating something on your own means you've made something which contains your personality, and while you can just buy things and enjoy them, something you've made entirely on your own is inherently worthwhile and rewarding. However, instead of focusing on that, Lambert writes a line about crank windows, and that is frustrating.
