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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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Marina Tsvetaeva, excerpt from Poem of the End, Selected Poems (trans. Elaine Feinstein, with Angela Livingstone)
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"Well, let it pass; April is over, April is over. There are all kinds of love in the world, but never the same love twice."
– F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Short Stories
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on tragedy, fate, and inevitability.
oresteia, robert icke // theatre of the oppressed, augusto boal // song of achilles, madeline miller // the book thief, markus zusak // antigone, jean anouilh // revisiting mockingjay ahead of the hunger games prequel, entertainment weekly // romeo and juliet, shakespeare // h of h playbook, anne carson // war of the foxes, richard siken // the road to hell (reprise), hadestown // planet of love, richard siken // they both die at the end, adam silvera
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another year is ending and I want you to know that it is okay if you:
have not healed from the things that happened/did not happen from six months ago. just because the year is ending it does not mean your grief is too.
don't have any "fun" NYE plans to ring in the new year. this life is yours to live across days and months and years, and you can celebrate days other than the ones heavily marketed and shoved down your throat to shroud you in severe FOMO.
have no resolutions or goals for 2024 laid out in elaborate lists or shared on social media or with your friends. you are braving through this life trying to do your best every day and hold the fort and so of course you know, deep down you know what is needed from you for you going forward and of course you are going to work in that direction. good luck love.
have not become a "better" version of yourself by any of the tangible or conventional measures. that kind of bettering is mostly to serve others, not yourself.
are not happy with yourself/your life as it is now. you're a work-in-progress, remember? and if you're progressing in a direction you do not like, then it's time to change the blueprints and the strategy.
take time off social media around this time to protect your mental health and whatever little joy you have managed to keep.
don't want to spend too much time reflecting on how this past year went and doing various forms of 2023-wrapped. again, it's your life. you can also revisit this year in memories and pictures and feelings whenever you'd like. it's not like you don't still visit 2012, 2017, and 2022, right?
feel disconnected from your friends, family, lover. I know this is "ideally" a time to be celebrated with your loved ones. but life is not ideal, is it? it's just life. and if right now you are not feeling the love, the joy, or just don't have the headspace or social energy to engage , that's alright.
are finding comfort in simpler things like a TV show from the 90s or that book you first read at sixteen or that slice of strawberry cake or a random post like this you come across.
don't feel hopeful, encouraged, or excited for 2024. given everything that's happened in the last couple of years, on the macro and micro level, it's only natural for you to feel weary as well as wary. when the good things happen, when the healing happens, when things begin working in your favour over time, you will automatically feel all those things. it's okay if until then you choose to be neutral.
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When Shakespeare describes the eventual end of human history as “the last SYLLABLE of recorded time” suggesting that the end of humanity will not be with a bang, a whimper, a gunshot, a sword, or even a breath, but with a syllable - a word….
And the fact that the line ends on the word “time”, which is one stressed syllable past its welcome in the iambic pentameter, suggesting that time itself continues long after human speech (iambic pentameter) has already ended AAAAAAHHHHHHH-
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In order for me to write poetry
That isn't political
I must listen to the birds
And in order to hear the birds
The warplanes must be silent
-Marwan Makhoul
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Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
Richard Siken, Crush (Little Beast)
George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones (A Song of Ice and Fire)
Margaret Atwood
Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games
Yves Olade, Bloodsport
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Samih al-Qassim, "The End of a Discussion with a Prison Guard" (trans. A.Z. Foreman, ID included), from A Map of Absence
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If the world ended tonight, would I be the last thought on your mind?
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A Beacon of Bright Stars
I want to say a thousand things
with a gesture,
a small offering
of affection, a beacon
of bright stars—
what if we make new constellations?
Arrange spaces for each other,
slowly, with the unhurried
curiosity of recognition, like calling to like,
holy in the only way
that matters.
What if there is magick
to be found here,
between us? Hearts heavy
with the past still sing,
still dance, still
know how to revel
in wonder, a frisson
of want
stark as a bright moon,
new as each day—
this is a bargain before you,
not a crossroads
but a gift, a reminder that yes
can be an adventure,
that mouths are meant
for meeting,
that hands are meant
for holding,
that layer by layer
let this distance
come apart—
I am here, a wild thing,
looking for a reason.
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