About a year ago, I made a decision to stop submitting to literary journals. I wanted to see how the industry (that’s a bad word for an artistic ecosystem that hardly pays anyone) would respond to the fact that AI was already making very human-seeming pieces.
I don’t think that’s been resolved. It’s just a new point in the honor system. Borrow, don’t steal. Use AI for research, but write your own material (otherwise, what’s the point?) Click here to affirm that this piece was written by the interplay of experience and operating system native to you, only to you. This makes me think, for some reason, of Rives saying “I am the emperor of oranges, I am the emperor of oranges, I am the emperor of oranges. Now follow me, OK?”
That makes me think of the King of Carrot Flowers (Jeff Mangum, Neutral Milk Hotel), and the King grows up to be the Emperor. The boy and girl from We’re Going to Be Friends are the same boy and girl from 13 by Big Star. Alex Chilton sang The Letter when he was just 16 (now he stops at traffic lights, but only when they’re green [I’d like to teach the world to sing]). Point is, anything AI can do, we can do slower. AI does it because we say so. We do it because we have to. Our brains seek resolution, our dreams try to even things out (Dreams by the Cranberries is mostly D and A. So is Breakfast at Tiffany’s and Lucky Man, and I think I had a dream about Tom Petty last night).
I fell asleep listening to the 7 new Springsteen albums made from old stuff in the vault. I woke up to James McMurty and Alex Amen, who maybe got there via the algorithm. So I hit “like.”
I wrote a few things in the North Woods last week. A few things on the gravel road out. I lived a few things I’d written before, learned what they’re really about...
love & mercy.
Chris Cocca 