My grandpa’s old desk

I’ve got an old desk in my office. It’s covered in scratches, rings from coffee mugs, and countless old stains that set into the dark wood long before I was born. It’s a plain desk. A simple square top, three drawers on the left, and a tall cabinet on the right. It’s heavy as hell and a pain to move.

It was my grandpa’s desk.

My grandpa sat at his desk and wrote with a pen, and not much else. I’m not sure he ever learned how to type.

He used it when my dad was little, and then after he passed away it sat in our basement for a while. I’m not sure my dad wanted to use it. He was close with his father, and sometimes things like that make us too sad. But a grandson isn’t a son, and so now I use it.

Every day, I sit down in front of the old wood, set my black coffee to the right, open my laptop, and work.

In with the old

When I’m organized, I’ve got a pad of paper and a pencil to the left, unopened mail near the edge, a small lamp in the corner, and an external hard drive on the other side. When I’m less organized, I’ve got all the same things, plus a bunch of extra papers, tubes of chapstick, handkerchiefs, old coffee mugs, half-empty cans of sparkling water, and a ton of other random ancillary stuff that doesn’t really contribute to my productivity at all.

I’ve used my grandpa’s old desk for about 10 years now. When I first started using it, I was working in music composition and production. The top of the desk was crammed with keyboards, MIDI controllers, USB interfaces for recording vocals, and a couple of large displays.

I remember sitting there, working late at night in our big loft studio apartment. All the lights out, the skyline of the city beyond the windows, my wife sleeping in the corner we had blocked off as a bedroom, my headphones on with the music playing, the colorful little boxes in the DAW, the soft blue and red blinking lights on the various technological gear laid across the top of the desk.

I would sit there and think about how this desk is so old and my equipment is so new. My grandpa sat at his desk and wrote with a pen, and not much else. I’m not sure he ever learned how to type. His desk inhabited the old world before computer technology, and now it lives in the new one with more tech than we know what to do with. He worked at his desk in his way, and I work at his desk in my way. The work looks different, but it’s work nonetheless.

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Photo by Geoff Garrett/Mirrorpix via Getty Images

Lost in space

Our world can feel pretty sterile and soulless these days. Not the world of nature or the world of people; family life is the opposite of sterile, and love is not soulless. But our built environment really does seem to feel kind of like a mix between Star Trek and a shopping mall.

Technology plays a big role in that. It’s not only in the architecture; it’s also in all the little stuff we are surrounded with. Our phones, our tablets, our computers, our TVs, our “smart homes,” our doorbells with video cameras, and everything else that feels slick and plasticky.

I’m writing all these words on a laptop, of course. It’s silver like a spaceship, and the keys are black as night. It’s not really a very human machine; it’s pretty cold and inorganic.

With the grain

But that old desk isn’t. It’s so worn, scratched, and blemished. It’s wood — real wood! Remember that? Remember when we used to make stuff out of it? I run my fingers over it, and I can feel the deep grain. There are a few chips on the corners. It’s so earthy and so human; it’s so real. Its realness isn’t due to the fact it was my grandpa’s. It’s just the fact that it comes from the old world, and it feels like it.

I’ve thought a lot about the impact my grandpa’s old desk has on my office and my work. There is something estranging about technology. Being surrounded by it makes us feel unsettled in a way that’s hard to explain. In a sterile world of inhuman electronics, that old wood feels anchoring, or maybe just a little warm and relatable. It reminds me of humanity in a way that my computer never will.

Of course, the family history of that old desk has its own, slightly different, impact. My grandpa died almost 20 years ago, and to use something that was once his feels like keeping his memory alive in a physical sense. It’s why we don’t bulldoze old historic buildings and part of the reason why we have museums, even if we tell ourselves they are primarily for research purposes.

I think we are all comforted by some gentle reminder of the past. It reminds us of where we came from and who we are, keeps some memory alive, roots us in time and ties us to a bigger story, and even makes us feel a little more human in an increasingly inhuman age.