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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How To Stop Killing Conversations
Talking is hard. People are confusing. Making friends is difficult, and interacting with coworkers is tortuous.
You want to make friends, you want to reach out, but it's hard and every time you start a conversation it dies, or limps along until both you and the person you're talking to are looking for excuses to kill it and put it out of it's misery so you can both escape the increasingly awkward situation.
As an introvert who has suffered a lot of social anxiety in my time, let me share a few tricks I've learned over the years going through hundreds and thousands of excruciatingly painful conversations until I found something that works. I've kind of distilled the process.
ALWAYS ASK A QUESTION!!!
The first thing is to always leave your partner an opening. You need to let each other talk for a conversation to get off the ground, but it's more than that, really. You need to actively encourage each other to talk. The best way to do that is to ask questions.
Here are two examples of an introduction:
Example A
You: Hello.
Them: Hello.
You: Nice to meet you.
Them: Nice to meet you too.
Example B
Y: Hello, nice to meet you, how are you?
T: I’m doing well, yourself?
Y: I've been really well. How are you liking the weather?
T: I'm so happy the weather's finally getting cooler, I'm looking forward to pumpkin spice season. Do you like lattes?
Do you see how in Example A the conversation wasn’t going anywhere? It just kinda died, because there weren’t any openings for new topics, whereas in Example B, there were openings to keep the conversation going.
But what do you do if your conversation partner is as socially inept as you were two minutes ago and doesn't play along? All is not lost.
Example C
Y: Hello, so nice to meet you, how have you been doing?
T: I'm doing well.
Y: That's great, are you enjoying the nice weather, then?
T: Yeah. I'm glad it's finally fall, I'm looking forward to pumpkin spice lattes.
Y: I love pumpkin spice lattes! Pumpkin spice anything, really. I recently got the best pumpkin spice candle at the shop down the road, have you been there?
Even if they don't leave you an opening, you can usually make one. It may be difficult, especially when they don't give you much to work with. This is where having a go-to script is a life-saver--me, I always default to talking about the weather, so when in doubt, you can do that.* The important thing right now is to keep fostering the conversation, so once you bring up the weather, segue into a question. When they answer the question, make a brief comment or observation from your own experience and build off of that comment or observation to ask another question.
"But I don't want to make it about me. Doing that's bad, right?"
This is why that questions are important. If you haven't been asked a question, you kinda have to make it about you, you don't have a choice. But to keep from being an attention hog, follow up your shared experience or anecdote with another question.
Example D
T: I love pumpkin spice lattes
Y: Me too. I had the best pumpkin spice latte the other day at the cafe down the road, have you ever been there?
Now you've circled the conversation back around to them again, and you aren't taking the limelight. Sharing an experience is so important, you're trying to show that you understand, that you sympathize, that you relate.**
This really is the most important element of being a good conversationalist. You have to keep asking questions.
The one other thing I will touch on is introductions. DO NOT get into turn based combat.
Example E
Y: Hello
T: Hello
Y: Nice to meet you
T: Nice to meet you too.
Y: How are you doing?
T: I'm fine. You?
Y: Me too.
This will kill any possibility of continuing a conversation. Instead, get it all out of the way all at once, if at all possible.
Example F
Y: Hi, it's nice to meet you, how are you doing?
This is good, but this is better
Example G
Y: Hi, nice to meet you, how are you liking the weather?
Don't ask how they are doing, or if you do, before they can answer, follow it up with your placeholder (weather etc.) so they have to say some thing like
Example H
T: I'm fine, and I'm really liking the weather.
or
T: Not so great, the weather sucks.
Either of those options are much easier to work with than your basic "I'm fine."
Usually, if you can get past the introduction, you can get a conversation going. And then, even if you don't end up hitting it off with the person you're talking with, you at least don't leave the conversation feeling like you've died a thousand tiny deaths.
In fact, if you get past that introduction, you may have just made yourself a friend.
Remember folks, basically everyone around you is more afraid of you than you are of them, and in this benighted age no one has been taught conversation skills, so we are all pretty much in the same boat. (Unless you were born an extrovert, in which case we are all deeply envious and would probably kill you if we didn't need you in our sad and lonely lives so much.)
Have grace for one another, and for yourselves because talking with people is difficult.
Go forth, and stop killing conversations.
*If you are one of those awful people who likes to brag about how you hate small talk and only want to talk about important and meaningful things, I have one question: Do you ever have a conversation that lasts long enough to become meaningful? I thought not. Small talk is an important skill. Develop it.
**This is how you deal with sad or difficult situations too. When you want to show you sympathize with someone going through a hard time.
Example:
Y: How are you doing?
T: Not very well. My dog died last week.
Y: Oh, I'm so sorry to hear that. My own dog died last year and I still miss her a lot. How are you handling it?
Now you've circled the conversation back around to them again. You aren't making it about you.
If y'all want, next time I can share how to extricate yourself from a conversation.
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