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Archive for the ‘Creativity’ Category

I, Not Robot

Posted in Creativity on 21 Jul 2022| 2 Comments »

Some things I object to on principle. Things that are just . . . wrong. Things that shouldn’t be. Things that cheapen or degrade ourselves or others.

This week’s example hit me—appropriately—as I was scrolling my social media feed, a place where devaluation and degradation are becoming the norm rather than the exception.

Normally, I can shrug off such assaults. Performative outrage, shameless puffery, sycophantic fawning, lickspittle tirades, blatant misinformation, misguided memes: these take up a growing fraction of the non-advert portion of my feed, but it was the advert portion that got my dander up.

To the extent of which I am capable, I have turned off ad-tracking. This doesn’t stop me from seeing adverts, but at least it eliminates (okay, reduces) the creepy, Big Brother-esque, “we’re watching you” feeling I get when I ask my wife where the hammer is and then see an advert for ball-peens on Facebook. Sometimes, though, just sometimes, I’m presented with an advert that is somewhat relevant.

This time it was an advert for Jasper. “Artificial intelligence makes it fast & easy to create content!” I was informed. This software has “read 10% of the internet” and would help me create blog posts, social media interaction, and marketing copy up to “10x faster.” It would even help me write a novel that is “original and plagiarism free [sic].” 

—[shudder]—

Usually I do not engage with adverts (except by mistake, via clumsily executed clicks) as this only provides fodder for the tracking I try to avoid. In this case, though, I was overcome by a looky-loo train-wreck revulsion/attraction impulse to investigate some of the literally thousands of comments appended to the post. 

Let me pause for a moment, as my state of mind, whilst preparing for a dive down this rabbit hole, is pertinent.

I appreciate a well-crafted phrase or sentence, revel in a paragraph that takes me on a little journey, and marvel at novels filled with allusions, metaphors, contextual layers, and well-orchestrated plotlines. Conversely, whenever I read poorly written prose—be it long form or in a short news article—prose that cries out for an editor (“An editor! An editor! My kingdom for an editor!”), I die a little inside.

Yet there I was, faced not only with the prospect novels published without the benefit of an editor, but without the benefit of a writer. 

With the burgeoning of algorithms and “artificial intelligence” (quoted here, because it’s not a true intelligence, artificial or otherwise), there are dozens of products and services like Jasper, all of which tout the same credibility-stretching boasts. Write a novel! In the style of your favorite author! In a language you do not know! In mere hours!

To be honest, this kind of algorithmic assist can only help some of the novels I’ve read, but in general, it’s the end-state of our own dumbing-down. Quality no longer carries currency, if this becomes the norm. All we need now is another service that will read this dreck for us (because I sure don’t want to suffer that way).

Eventually, I perused a few hundred of the comments that people (I’m assuming they were actual people) made on the Jasper advert, and I was shocked. All of the comments I read—and I mean all of them—were derisive, often with replies to comments that piled the ridicule higher and higher. 

So, there is hope for us. We may not have the collective gumption to oust autocrats, defend democracy, treat women as fully actualized humans, or deal with a planet that’s on fucking fire, but at least I know that a large portion of us think that reading a book written by an algorithm is a stupid, laughable idea.

k

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07Jul22

Posted in Poetry, Writing, tagged , , , , on 07 Jul 2022| Leave a Comment »

lazy bumblebees 
ride from bloom to fragrant bloom 
in yellow jodhpurs

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Fraught

Posted in Hi Tech, Poetry, tagged , , , , , on 16 Jun 2022| Leave a Comment »

sure we are like gods
we created a machine 
that fears its own death

(more…)

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As We Pass

Posted in Culture, Poetry, tagged , , , , , , on 09 Jun 2022| Leave a Comment »

in the passenger seat,
on a narrow country road,
my window rolled down,
the scent of warm grass thickens the air

beyond a low fence,
a gathering in black wool,
silent but for ritual words,
meaningless intonations of finality

as we draw near,
time congeals like aspic,
heat rises in dreamlike waves,
flowers wilt in reverent clumps

the surrounding faces
are strangers whom I know,
fugitives on the same path,
dogged by the same relentless pursuers

pain, sharp-edged,
a new reality that dawns
as the loved one stolen
is set into the receiving earth

near the center
one mourner stands,
brow blank, eyes questioning:
Who am I, without you?

as we pass
time releases us,
our hearts resume their muffled beat,
and we yearn for the peace of simple things

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Grief is a Small Room

Posted in Creativity, Poetry, tagged , , , on 02 Jun 2022| Leave a Comment »

Grief is a small room

one door: closed
one window: shuttered
four walls
ceiling

room enough for
me
one chair
a thousand thoughts
and a million questions
that begin with

Why . . . ?

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Red, in Black and White

Posted in Creativity, Writing, tagged , , , , on 04 May 2022| Leave a Comment »

My youth plays out in monochromatic Super 8, all shadows and light, soundless but for the clacking whir of the projector, each jumpy image spattered by specks of dust that flash past, gone before they even register in the mind.

Around me, I see the shining, sun-bleached hills behind our houses, wild land laced by the trails I hike in adventures that are my haven, my freedom, my escape. I see the black-and-white blurs of schoolmates as they race their Flexi-Flyers headlong down the sloping streets. I see my family—mother, father, sister—wave and laugh, speaking silent words to whomever runs the camera, as they go about their daily lives.

All is shades of grey, wan and distant.

In my home, though, moving past the dark stain of lawn, the walls of pale grey stucco, and the brightly trimmed opening of the doorway, beyond the shadowed living room where children dare not tread, through the kitchen with its charcoal-colored wood, and into the chiaroscuro of the family room, there is a red chair.

It is red. So red.

It stands in the ashen jumble of the room like an open wound, colored the red of blood, bright and arterial, shiny as a skinned knee. Upholstered leather is nailed to its frame by rows of brass tacks that glint in the streaming sunlight, their rounded heads faceted by the hammer blows that set them.

It is an old chair—I do not know a time when it was not there—a holdout from days before my birth. Wing-backed, claw-footed, it is large, its arms stained by the grip of a thousand hands. Here and there the leather is a bit dry and has cracked, revealing tufts of excelsior and batting. It creaks when I climb up, as if complaining, as if I am an unwelcome intruder, and perhaps I am, for it is my father’s chair, and his alone. I curl up in its empty embrace, breathing in its captured aromas of Old Spice and Bond Street.

And on this day, this one day, it is the chair in which my father sits and, for the last time in our lives, gathers me up in his arms, in his warmth, in his scent. It is the chair in which he tells me of my mother’s death. 

After that day, I do not know what happened to that chair. I still see the wall of books, the ancient davenport, the old B&W television on its tubular stand, the corduroy love seat, the sliding-glass door that opens out on the too-bright patio, all these I see in the flickering cinema of remembered youth, but there is a dark spot, a lacuna, a patch of emotional blight where the chair once stood. After that day, I do not remember it being there. I do not remember my father ever sitting in it again. I have excised it from my past, wished it out of existence. 

In my experience, time does not heal, but it does teach. Sometimes it teaches us to understand and adapt, while at other times it teaches us how to cope and survive. The disappearance of that red chair is just such a lesson, learned during the sixty years that separate me from that day. That chair, the cauldron of my earliest grief, has bled out, its color used up, the power of its memory spent.

And I can live with that.

k

 

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We Are

Posted in Poetry, tagged , , on 28 Apr 2022| 8 Comments »

We are:
falling raindrops
drifting snowflakes
crystals of ice

Alone:
insignificant
small
powerless

Together:
an ocean, carving the earth
an avalanche, felling all in our path
a glacier, grinding stones to dust

We do not have this power
We are this power

Do not give it
to those whose thirst
exceeds their capacity
to care

We are

k

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