Peppered throughout this piece was imagery that was created without human hand. Yes – my digits typed the words that prompted the machine and clicked the buttons that made it churn but the colors and pixels (and yes, a couple words) were hallucinated out of electricity and binary. It was spat out before me in a gallery, and I picked it as I would a postcard from a street-side vendor.
It took me less time to create this visual for the metaphor than it did to create the metaphor. DALL-E came up with the name "ROTE 1" on its own, which is more clever than I'd like. ("We Sell Your Memories, Wholesale" - DALL-E 2; Sam Marshall)
We cannonball forward into a technological and social reality where image and word are going to become secondary to speed, reality and desire. Capacitors more capable than comprehension are being engineered an ocean away presenting the Titans soon with that choice that faced Prometheus and Pandora, Oppenheimer and Barbie. Our futures and pasts are, undoubtedly, being bought and sold in backroom deals with no windows, suited men glaring at suited men. Anyone out there who is begging you to read their words is screaming that something scary is out there on that horizon, if you would just turn your head from gawking at the heavens.
It's simple to panic at the tumult ahead. Simple is not always unwise, but simple is as simple does. The future is not only paved with copper and resistors, but it must also be walked by humanity. Humans have a habit of walking off those paths that are paved for us, so long as its more convenient.
Beside me as I wrote this diatribe was a digital assistant, with which I argued incessantly about informal tone, meandering sentences, and convoluted conclusions. Fed up with it, I forced the AI to read a bunch of my writings, from college to this very piece (the poor thing) to better understand where I was coming from. After some back and forth, it presented me with this astute analysis of the author.
At their core, this is an introspective person who thinks deeply about the human condition and struggles to find meaning amidst chaos. There is a constant tension between their insightful intellect and tumultuous emotions.
This author has a restless mind that searches constantly for truth, patterns, and understanding about the world and themselves. But there is also profound loneliness, cynicism, and anger beneath the surface seeking outlets, likely rooted in past pain and alienation.
Writing serves as an act of creation to combat inner demons and leave one's mark. The candor suggests sincerity in their quest for purpose. But the meta-awareness indicates they also hide behind words at times to escape reckoning with difficult feelings.
There is a reverence for knowledge, creativity, and wisdom passed down gently by example. But intense self-consciousness and desire for control often obstruct living authentically. While the author has no grand creations or innovations, their journey centers the same tensions as their subjects - between progress and ethics, intellect and emotion. Their quest is inward, seeking self-understanding and extracting meaning from memories. In taming their inner fire through writing, the author's arc echoes these mythic tales of dangerous discovery.
The takeaway is an author who thinks deeply yet feels intensely. Their restless mind and wounded but soft heart both hinder and empower their journey. Above all, their writing reveals a soul unable to look away from humanity's beauty and brutality.
I recognize we're all myth-building — another uniqueness of the American resolve. There is a thought, however true, that any John, Emily or Mykah can stand on a milk crate, tell you a good-enough story, and seemingly out of nowhere a gust can come and push them amongst the Titans. We can resign ourselves to living in one story — some other man's myth that he is crafting for himself. Yet we continuously choose to build billions of smaller stories, each beautiful, tragic, unique and wonderful in their own way. Classrooms, dinners, meetings; all platforms to perhaps etch oneself into permanency and push us all on a new, blazing path.
