on writing

on creation on spectacle on performance

though i try to avoid it (even now i can’t avoid it; it insists on capitalization; it insists it knows what i want to write better than i do), inevitably, insufferably, unfortunately, i’ll find myself with some new acquaintance or a concerned homie or maybe it’s someone at a reading with their hand in the air high enough to scratch god’s kneecaps, someone tipping forward—damn near falling out of their seat to ask their question—which i appreciate, which i’m thankful for since it means a job well done—in any case, someone will ask me, “yo, josé, what do you think of AI?”

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it’s not a bad question, and if i could answer it however i wanted, i’d be delighted because to answer the question, i’d have to talk about Calumet City and Wentworth Junior High, and if there is a machine i’m a sucker for, then it’s probably a Time Machine, so it’s true: back in 2001, there was a huge debate about AI and Kobe Bryant. i was no longer watching basketball closely. my heart was still broken by the break up of the ‘98 Chicago Bulls, whose games i followed in the newspaper, or if they weren’t on the west coast, on television (if they were playing on WGN or NBC and i could watch without a cable subscription), so i was unfamiliar with the young hoopers taking the league by storm. and i was a baby and uninterested in basketball beyond Chicago and already the seeds of my poetry were being watered—this grand myopia, this insistence that everything i needed to write was right in front of my face, this self-imposed restraint—so when i was asked by one of my classmates, “yo, Jose, what do you think of AI?” i was unprepared.

the way i remember it (which is probably wrong, honestly), Mohammad loved AI, and that made sense since Mo was a little short and AI was a relatively small man humbling giants. i don’t remember if there were boys in my classroom that supported Kobe over AI. in my memory (which is most definitely wrong), the girls loved Kobe. because i was a shy kid and still unconfident in my command of the English language, when i got dragged into arguments at school, i picked sides based on the people arguing and not, necessarily, my opinions. Mo was one of the best basketball players in our school. he was short, but he had a good handle and was the most consistent shooter. i was always happy when we ended up on the same team. we usually won.

so i said AI was better than Kobe.

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but, to my dismay, that isn’t the question i get asked. the question i get asked is about artificial intelligence—the other AI.

i do my best to answer (i’m a professional, after all). usually, i’ll say something like language learning machines are just a dialed up from of autocorrect, and autocorrect reacts to the names of my loved ones with red squiggles that indicate a mistake has been made, so why would i trust something like that with my thinking and writing?

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that answer doesn’t satisfy me.

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here’s an alternative: this past weekend, my wife and i took my brother and his wife to a jazz show at Jazzcultural to see the Donald Vega Sextet. it was awesome. if you’ve never been to a jazz show, you should make it a point to go. jazz shows are like poetry readings to me: the same notes, the same songs, the same words, performed in the same order will produce wildly different shows depending on the audience, the time, the performers, and the location of the stars. Seriously. Listening to a song by a jazz artist on your headphones at home is cool, but experiencing it live is transcendent.

while watching Carly Maldonado play his conga solo, it hit me, why i remain skeptical of artificial intelligence despite the rapid advancement of the technology; despite the mass consumption of water the technology requires; despite the vulture capitalists funneling billions into AI & thereby insisting on trying to make ‘fetch’ happen: what the dorks (respectfully (i count myself as a dork)) don’t understand about the production of art.

those arguing on behalf of AI (imagine! couldn’t be me) will say that given enough time and data, an AI bot will be able to produce rhythms with passable similarity to Carly’s congas, and i am willing to concede that they are correct. that’s the problem. they’re correct, and still wrong.

what they fail to understand is that art is not a product. perhaps, AI bots, will prove useful in the composition of emails, but that doesn’t mean it can write a poem. or a movie. or a song.

from my perspective in the second row, it looked like Carly was playing his solo with his eyes closed. if his eyes weren’t closed, then he was definitely looking away while playing, his chin pointing at the wall stage right, but his soul miles beyond in some place he couldn’t explain except through the music he was playing. i was raised catholic which means I don’t go to church anymore, but i know when i am in the presence of god. watching Carly move a little bit of heaven with his hands was a holy experience. that’s what the bots can’t replicate. they can get they can get the rhythms, but they can’t get the music. cuz what makes Carly’s work special—what makes any great artist special— is not just the product they grant us, it is their labor, their journey, their mistakes and triumphs, their performance, their style, their flair—it is inseparable from the work produced.

they can reproduce something like a product, but they can’t reproduce the work.

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back to working on this novel. it’s a (mother effing) journey, but i’m embracing it and moving with it. paso a pasito.

peace