I Miss Ask Jeeves

This weekend in Austin we’re getting those beautiful overcast skies that make you want to stay inside and watch movies. You know the kind — the sky is gray, the air is quiet, and suddenly the idea of leaving the house feels completely unnecessary. Honestly, I’m looking forward to it. A rainy weekend, a couch, maybe a blanket, and a good movie is one of life’s simplest pleasures.

Which brings me to something strange I’ve been feeling lately.

I’ve had this sudden urge to buy a Blu-ray player again.

I know, I know. It sounds ridiculous. We live in a world where essentially every movie ever made is floating around in the cloud somewhere, available instantly on demand. But lately I’ve been thinking about physical media again — Blu-rays, CDs, tapes. You already know how I feel about vinyl. There’s something about holding the thing in your hands, sliding it out of a case, placing it on a shelf, that makes the experience feel more intentional somehow.

Maybe that’s why I never really got on board with e-readers. I’ve always been a book person. I like pages. I like margins. I like the weight of a book in my hands. Something about the physical object slows the experience down in a way I’ve always appreciated.

Lately I’ve been wondering if this renewed interest in physical things is connected to how much of life now exists online.

The other day I was scrolling through old photos — as one does — and I stumbled across a picture my mom had sent me years ago. It was our very first computer setup at home. The thing was glorious in that late-90s way: a giant CRT monitor, the beige tower with a CD drive, and a little external desktop microphone sitting on the desk.

I posted the photo on Instagram, and my mom texted me a little while later saying she remembered exactly why she had taken that picture.

It was the first time we logged onto AOL.

When she said that, I swear it felt like someone kicked a soccer ball into my stomach. Pure nostalgia.

Because suddenly I remembered something that feels almost impossible now: the internet used to be a place you had to go to.

You sat down at the computer. You logged on. You browsed around for a while. And then eventually you logged off and went back to the rest of your life.

It wasn’t everywhere.

Some of you reading this probably don’t even remember that era, which is a slightly strange thing for me to realize as I write it. But there was a time when the entirety of human existence wasn’t digitized and living in the palm of your hand. You couldn’t ask a robot to proofread your paper. You couldn’t instantly Google whatever random thought popped into your head.

You had Ask Jeeves.

And boy did Jeeves take his time.

If you wanted to watch a show, you checked the TV Guide and waited for it to come on. If you wanted to hear a record, you put the record on. If you wanted to go online, you physically went to the computer.

Now everything is immediate. ChatGPT this, Google that, ask Siri something. Instagram, Reddit, Facebook, LinkedIn, TikTok — an endless stream of information and noise that follows us everywhere we go.

And don’t get me wrong — I love technology. Truly. Having access to the entire history of recorded music at the press of a button is still something that feels miraculous to me.

But I also think something subtle has changed along the way.

We’ve trained ourselves to expect immediate results. If we try something once and it doesn’t work right away, we assume we’re not good at it. If we can’t master something quickly, we move on to the next thing.

Creativity doesn’t really work that way.

The things that end up meaning the most to us — learning an instrument, making art, building something with care — tend to move at a much slower pace. They require repetition. Patience. Time spent failing quietly before anything good starts to emerge.

I suppose that’s part of why I’ve always been drawn to slower things.

Books instead of screens.

Vinyl instead of playlists.

And, in many ways, the kind of music I make.

Ambient music, at its best, isn’t really asking for your attention in the way so much of modern media does. It’s more like an invitation. A small pocket of space where things can unfold a little more slowly.

Which, now that I think about it, might be why the idea of buying a Blu-ray player again suddenly feels appealing. Not because I need one. But because the ritual itself feels nice to imagine — choosing a film, putting it on intentionally, letting the experience unfold without scrolling or multitasking or checking my phone every five minutes.

Maybe that’s all I’m really chasing.

Not nostalgia exactly.

Just a slightly slower rhythm.

And honestly, that’s probably the same instinct that led me to make the music I make in the first place.

If you’d like to hear the newest piece of that, my new EP drift is out now.