Category: writing

Native to You

~ Chris Cocca ~ Leave a comment

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.

Love & Mercy

~ Chris Cocca ~ 4 Comments

It’s been a minute since I’ve posted here. 14 months or so. A lot has happened since.

There was the whole Biden thing. There was Harris. There was an election. There was (is) what’s going on in Gaza. There is Urkaine. There is Iran.

Brian Wilson died.

Henri Nouwen’s reminder is still there: ““If you know you are the Beloved, you can live with an enormous amount of success and an enormous amount of failure without losing your identity. Because your identity is that you are the Beloved… “

I’ve just spent time in the Boundary Waters. That sounds like the name of a Nouwen book, actually. The boundary is meant to be between the US and Canada, but there’s a lot more to it.

Be good to others. Be good to yourself. Get help with the details.

(love & mercy)

Buber and Brautigan

~ Chris Cocca ~ Leave a comment

I have a theological degree, but that’s not what this post is about. And we can’t reduce what Buber is saying to a single line, however pithy. But it does remind me of Brautigan’s beautiful “I Was Trying to Describe You To Someone.” They’re sort of saying the same thing.

“When two people relate to each other authentically and humanly, God is the electricity that surges between them.”
Martin Buber

r_brautigan

What Do You Enjoy Most About Writing?

~ Chris Cocca ~ Leave a comment
Daily writing prompt
What do you enjoy most about writing?
View all responses

For me, I’d have to say it’s the near-constant rejection. Or maybe the discourse on the platform formerly known as Twitter.

Ha ha.

Seriously, though. Writing is its own reward. The process. Figuring things out, creating a voice or a tone or a character. Describing something with images and meter. Using creative neuro-pathways. All of it.

Right now I’m also enjoying these.

On this Day in 1970 (Or, When We Gave a Damn About Mass Shootings)

~ Chris Cocca ~ Leave a comment

(Also posted on Substack)

53 years ago today, Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young recorded “Ohio,” Neil Young’s response to the Kent State killings 18 days prior. It seems almost quaint, the idea that a mass shooting would spark this kind of visceral reaction.

We’re told, often, that everyday citizens need AR-15s and the like for self defense and that they’re especially needed in case the government starts doing things we don’t like. We’re told this, often, by the same people who uncritically support every single action the military industrial complex takes at home or abroad. We’re told this, often, by the kind of people who probably thought what happened at Kent State “should have been done long ago.”

Gotta get down to it
Soldiers are cutting us down
Should have been done long ago
What if you knew her and
Found her dead on the ground?
How can you run when you know?

I was born ten years after Kent State and graduated high school the year before Columbine. The assault weapons ban passed when I was in eighth grade and expired when I was in my 20s.

I asked Canva Magic Write (basically, a marketing AI) to tell me if mass shootings increased since the ban expired. Here’s the pathetic response:

So I Googled it. Here’s a pretty clear answer from, appropriately, the Ohio Capital Journal. Decide for yourself.

I’m not saying anything close to “let’s repeal the Second Amendment.” But we can’t keep running. 53 years ago, the “soldiers cutting us down” were 28 members of the Ohio National Guard who shot 67 rounds into a crowd of unarmed students in 13 seconds. So too, the massacre’s apologists. Today, the people cutting us down are deranged lunatics with easy access to the weapons of war. So too, lobbyists; so too politicians. So too anyone who bemoans (the very real) mental health crisis in this country and then shoots down any attempts at comprehensive healthcare reform, slashes budgets to earn gold star ratings from think thanks, claims falsely that creating a continuum of real care is more costly than letting these things trickle down in the streets, at workplaces, at schools.

What if you knew her and
Found her dead on the ground?
How can you run when you know?