at some point it's just like. do they even fucking like the thing they're asking AI to make? "oh we'll just use AI for all the scripts" "we'll just use AI for art" "no worries AI can write this book" "oh, AI could easily design this"
like... it's so clear they've never stood in the middle of an art museum and felt like crying, looking at a piece that somehow cuts into your marrow even though the artist and you are separated by space and time. they've never looked at a poem - once, twice, three times - just because the words feel like a fired gun, something too-close, clanging behind your eyes. they've never gotten to the end of the movie and had to arrive, blinking, back into their body, laughing a little because they were holding their breath without realizing.
"oh AI can mimic style" "AI can mimic emotion" "AI can mimic you and your job is almost gone, kid."
... how do i explain to you - you can make AI that does a perfect job of imitating me. you could disseminate it through the entire world and make so much money, using my works and my ideas and my everything.
and i'd still keep writing.
i don't know there's a word for it. in high school, we become aware that the way we feel about our artform is a cliche - it's like breathing. over and over, artists all feel the same thing. "i write because i need to" and "my music is how i speak" and "i make art because it's either that or i stop existing." it is such a common experience, the violence and immediacy we mean behind it is like breathing to me - comes out like a useless understatement. it's a cliche because we all feel it, not because the experience isn't actually persistent. so many of us have this ... fluttering urgency behind our ribs.
i'm not doing it for the money. for a star on the ground in some city i've never visited. i am doing it because when i was seven i started taking notebooks with me on walks. i am doing it because in second grade i wrote a poem and stood up in front of my whole class to read it out while i shook with nerves. i am doing it because i spent high school scribbling all my feelings down. i am doing it for the 16 year old me and the 18 year old me and the today-me, how we can never put the pen down. you can take me down to a subatomic layer, eviscerate me - and never find the source of it; it is of me. when i was 19 i named this blog inkskinned because i was dramatic and lonely and it felt like the only thing that was actually permanently-true about me was that this is what is inside of me, that the words come up over everything, coat everything, bloom their little twilight arias into every nook and corner and alley
"we're gonna replace you". that is okay. you think that i am writing to fill a space. that someone said JOB OPENING: Writer Needed, and i wrote to answer. you think one raindrop replaces another, and i think they're both just falling. you think art has a place, that is simply arrives on walls when it is needed, that is only ever on demand, perfect, easily requested. you see "audience spending" and "marketability" and "multi-line merch opportunity"
and i see a kid drowning. i am writing to make her a boat. i am writing because what used to be a river raft has long become a fully-rigged ship. i am writing because you can fucking rip this out of my cold dead clammy hands and i will still come back as a ghost and i will still be penning poems about it.
it isn't even love. the word we use the most i think is "passion". devotion, obsession, necessity. my favorite little fact about the magic of artists - "abracadabra" means i create as i speak. we make because it sluices out of us. because we look down and our hands are somehow already busy. because it was the first thing we knew and it is our backbone and heartbreak and everything. because we have given up well-paying jobs and a "real life" and the approval of our parents. we create because - the cliche again. it's like breathing. we create because we must.
you create because you're greedy.
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Ok but I’m still gagged by the choice of the white dress covered in her spilled ink for the TTPD set.
The way it’s almost certainly meant to reference a wedding gown just like the music video and how that ties into the narrative of TTPD in general.
The way so many of these songs are about how she’s been wronged and how she’s angry.
The striking image of her floating around on stage unleashing her anger in Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me, or her collapsed on the platform in Down Bad begging to be beamed back up to the space ship. Very much giving dying on the altar waiting for the proof (in both meanings). She’s the jilted lover and the runaway bride. She’s the old widow who goes to the stone everyday and she’s the girl heading towards a shotgun wedding if she keeps this up. She's the unhappily married woman whose life is turned upside down by a man beyond her reach, with the chasm between them widening the longer the set goes on. And then!!! she's taken away (held back?) by the nurses at the asylum -- the crazy wife being committed for hysteria!!! (Actually I don't know what order that comes in in the set -- I'm going to have to find better videos.)
She said that the TTPD set is Female Rage: The Musical, and a lot of that is "I'm pissed off you let me give you all that youth for free." She sacrificed her youth to her demons and to people who never had her best interest at heart. She sacrificed her youth to bad actors who wanted to ruin her. She sacrificed her youth to men who traded promises of commitment for their own safety.
So to see that all symbolized in the white gown, saying "I love you, it's ruining my life," is so powerful. By the time we get to "The Smallest Man," she's covered up in the band (or army dress?) uniform, those dreams finally dead and buried, marching to her own memorial service. They all finally kill her, and her dreams of her future.
IT'S A LOT. A LOT A LOT A LOT.
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"Tell me again."
Max hums, moving his hand in slow circles along Daniel's back, feeling his chest move against his side, his face hidden in the folds of Max's t-shirt.
He bows his head, pressing a kiss against Daniel's hair, shifting against the hotel's pillows until he's comfortable again.
"It's going to be sunny," he says, voice low, letting Daniel's curls tickle his lips and nose. "It's going to be sunset, orange, the trees all golden in the way you like."
Daniel's back shifts under his hand, his fingers twisting in Max's shirt.
"We'll be sitting in chairs, because you have old man knees, and would complain about sitting on the floor."
He twists away from the halfhearted poke in his side, then settles back.
"They will be those garden ones, the ones with the straw?"
"Wicker," Daniel corrects him softly, voice scratchy.
"Yes, wicker." He tugs Daniel even closer, not knowing how it is even possible. "With pillows, so you can curl in them like a little cat."
He smooths his hand down Daniel's back, like he does with Sassy, when she stretches out beside him on the bed, similar to how Daniel is now. Does it again when he feels Daniel's shoulders uncurl slightly.
"We will be drinking your weird beers, the expensive ones that taste worse than all the others."
"Craft beer isn't weird," Daniel argues, just like Max was expecting him to. He sounds like there's something stuck in the back of his throat, and Max kisses his hair again.
"It is weird, Daniel. Beer does not need to be that expensive."
He gives him space to reply once more, but Daniel doesn't.
"We will drink your weird beer, and we will talk about that time we ate pasta in your hotel room."
It wasn't just one time, but Max knows he doesn't need to specify. They're both thinking about the same one, illegal spaghetti ordered from room service, hidden from their trainers, sauce on the corner of Max's mouth, cleaned by Daniel's thumb first, Daniel's mouth later. And even if they aren't thinking about the same, it doesn't matter. Every plate of pasta shared, in every hotel room, would matter just as much, stepping stones in their story, just as important as that first kiss.
"And it will be rainy," Max continues, voice even lower. His t-shirt is damp, stretched by Daniel's tense fingers. Daniel's back is shuddering, even when he holds him closer and closer and closer.
"It will rain, and you will have a blanket, because you always get cold, even more when it is humid."
The thing that was in Daniel's throat is in his too now.
"We will talk about how stupid everyone was. We will say it was all unfair. But we will not be angry anymore, because it will not matter anymore."
Daniel's hair smell like Max's shampoo, even if he usually doesn't use it, because he hates how dry it makes it feel. Max can taste salt on the back of his throat as he shifts his head slightly, trying to at least keep his ears dry, now that his cheeks are a lost cause.
Daniel's breathing is a stuttered rhythm against his ribs.
"We will cook eggs," Max pushes on, pressing every word against Daniel's skin, hoping every one feels like the i love you that it is. "Because we will have chickens on your farm, like a real farm, so we will be good at cooking eggs. And you will drink your wine, and sing your songs."
His voice breaks, sudden betrayal, just as Daniel trembles in a sob, but Max pushes through. They've both always known how to push through.
"And I will ask are you happy and you will say yes," he says, making it sound like a promise, because it is a promise. "And we will not regret any of it."
He knows they won't. Not the angry moments, not the painful moments, not the annoying little moments they will never even remember. They will take all of them and throw them into the jar of their lives, little pebbles, and colorful marbles, and shards of glass smoothed out with time and love and distance, all mixed together.
"We will sit on your chairs, and they will have nothing, and we will have us."
He holds Daniel closecloseclose, because he's never learned how to let go of the things he cares about, has always clung to things with his teeth and desire bared, and he has no intention of starting now. He has no intention of starting ever.
Even if this is not the way he wanted things to happen, he doesn't believe in letting go, especially when it comes to Daniel.
He swallows, clears his throat to try and dislodge the tight knot of feelings there, raises a hand to swipe his thumb along Daniel's wet jaw.
"We will have chickens, and a garage full of dirt bikes, and I will ask Grace to teach me how to make the pasta sauce you spilled all over the carpet when you were five."
Daniel nods against his chest, fingers relaxing. His breathing is still uneven, Max's t-shirt is still damp, but he can feel him going lax against him, relaxing bit by bit.
"We will," Daniel murmurs, voice shaky enough it sounds closer to a question.
"We will," Max tells him, firm. Would be happy to tell him again and again, until Daniel's voice doesn't shake on it anymore. "We will eat so much food, and we will become fat, and we will be happy. We will."
Daniel nods again, then shifts, wiggling in Max's hold until he can properly climb on top of him, pointy elbows planted on the bed, above Max's shoulders, trembling fingers tracing the wet lines on his cheeks, red-rimmed eyes soft.
When Daniel kisses him, they both taste like salt, exhaustion and the future.
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