I was recently reflecting on a line I am particularly proud of. The tail half is: “I’ll go to the funeral if I get off of work.” As I am prone to do, it got me thinking about my abrasive hatred towards AI, especially in art. But I have to justify myself, if a computer wrote that line, would it still be a good line?
The reason I think it is good is because I believe it. I wrote it at a time when I genuinely believed I would have to quit my job to attend the expected funeral of my father, who was in an unwavering coma (I did end up having to quit my job to take care of him when he finally woke up). It was good because, with every fiber of my 19-year-old being, I believed it. This was a reality that my strained mind had to comprehend.
There is no point in droning on about one poor bastard’s opinion, but there is a much larger point when a thousand bastards are ripping out every rib to explain their beliefs. I put out a prompt for local artists to tell their own beliefs, and I can tell you, no fucking machine could believe or experience these lines:
Jamie Vandenheede (she/her)
— song “The Bullet & the Urge”
by Receiver
Face down, seat up, that’s the way of the world.
It clamps down on me like a precious pearl.
Nowhere girls float side by side
That life is the apple of my eye.
This lyric comes from the opening track of our set, “The Bullet & the Urge,” detailing a time in my life before I came to terms with my transsexual identity and was drinking heavily and abusing hard drugs. On a trip with my high school friends, I most likely overdosed on cocaine (I say “most likely” because I blacked out after drinking upwards of 15 drinks) and was left to fend for myself at the toilet for the rest of the night. I woke up the next morning in a puddle of my own vomit and the worst hangover in recorded human history.
I tend to write obtuse lyrics that couple with my own made-up terms and definitions quite a bit as a reaction to the matter-of-fact, hyperreal style of talk-singing that has become prevalent in recent years (I don’t hate it when it’s done right, however i.e., Viagra Boys, Geese, Parquet Courts, Tentative Decisions).
The first line is a reference to my time at the toilet on that fateful night, most likely hovering on the edge of death.
The second line refers to the fact that I escaped the vice grips of pre-transition, becoming a young woman with a real life ahead of her.
The third and fourth lines are meant to be taken together. I used the term “nowhere girls,” that I thought I had heard somewhere but didn’t know the meaning, to talk about the inescapable envy I’d feel sulking around my college campus pre-transition and seeing the women around me enjoying their lives without thinking for a single second about their gender.
I’ve long been a late-adopter (or never-adopter) of hot new technology, particularly due to my skepticism of the Silicon Valley tech-bro instinct to claim their new invention will “save the world.” These “entrepreneurs” position themselves as outsiders and disruptors to the status quo, but advocate for the same conservative deregulation and anti-worker legislation as the status quo they claim to tear down.
It came as no surprise to me that from this hotbed of anti-intellectualist, cryptofascist sentiment came generative AI: “The Bad Art Machine.” The rising sea of content slop in the past couple of years has led to a decrease in the general public’s appetite for challenging, forward-thinking art. Critics are seen as enemies of the people, popular music has become more about image than songcraft, and Billboard Top 1 hits are unrecognizable to large swathes of people.
AI art combines global cultural homogenization with blatant plagiarism. AI cannot create new ways to use words or phrases with intent. AI cannot discern between chic and un-chic. AI cannot form opinions about artistic techniques and use them to craft meaningful and personal art.
I overdosed on cocaine. AI didn’t. I wrote about it from my perspective. It couldn’t. My perspective gave a deeper meaning to the words in the song. AI has no perspective.
Cel
— song “This Bird”
by Roughshod
This bird just learned to fly
grew its wings up in the sky
across the rivers and ripples of my mind
blissful till the end of time
This bird just learned to spy
watching us up in the sky
across the homes and busy streets
many faces for one to meet
Take me to the island you’re the only one who knows how to get there
Take me to the island you’re the only one who knows how to get there
leave us alone, leave us alone
leave us alone, leave us alone
This bird just learned to cry
shedding tears up in the sky
across the rocks and bended trees
brings me down to my knees
This bird just learned to die
falling swiftly from the sky
across the moon and grayish clouds
the reaper wears his blackened shroud
Could AI get a picnic date canceled on them at the James River, consume all the food themselves, get lost in the birdsong, and write out these lyrics? I think not.
I went to Texas Beach, and a buddy had once shown me an island further out in the river, but I couldn’t find it by myself. I thought about how the birds around me could easily fly and find it. The alone picnic and not being able to find that perfect river spot added to my angst, too many people, too much man-made noise, not enough birds and running water and my thoughts.
When I talk about “leave us alone,” I was referring to children playing close by while I was trying to consume adult substances. You’d think there wouldn’t be four-year-olds around after I walked 20 minutes down the trail and trudged across rocks but you’d be wrong.
For the final lines, I’ve been hyper-aware of the delicate balance between life and death since I lost one of my best friends in a car accident at 17. Honestly, every time I start getting pensive while alone, I think about it. I am grateful to be alive at the same time as those birds.
Oh, and yes, “bended” is a word. I looked it up because it flowed better than “bent” in the song. Doubt AI would choose that one.
Reese Austin (he/him)
— song “Hitman”
by Sprawl (Reese Austin, Jack Bradbury, Sam Harbin)
stanza from final chorus:
Hitman of my heart
You found every little thing
Wrapped up in your arms
Like a lover on a train
Hitman of my heart
I loved every living thing
Turn it all to stone
My cemetery in the rain
I was playing guitar in my room and humming a melody when I heard the words, “you found every little thing,” so I decided to grab onto the first thing I could think of and write a song around that line. As always, the first thing that came to my mind had to do with the obsessive-compulsive disorder I’d been dealing with.
The “Hitman” is the OCD, aptly named. It truly will find “every little thing” about your life and dissect it from as many angles as possible. You’re unable to go about daily activities without considering “every little thing.” It’s an overthinking disorder, but that’s simplifying it. Everybody overthinks, but trust someone with OCD, it’s a very tough thing to deal with.
The second half of the stanza is an exercise my therapist gave me: “write a story with a bad ending that leaves loose ends.” I figured the worst ending for the narrator would be death hence the “cemetery in the rain.” But now I think it’s a neutral ending, if every beautiful thing is turned to stone, all troubles and worries are, too.
zhtml (she/her)
— song “Teardrops in the Garden”
One of my favorite sets of lyrics is from my recent single:
i get so scared when you like me / cuz i see so much to hate
i see my siblings in the mirror / suddenly i like my face
These lyrics explore the experience of grappling with self-hatred and the fear of being truly seen. It’s about the vulnerability that comes with wondering how someone might respond if they saw all the parts of you especially the things you try to hide.
To ease that pressure, I remind myself that when I’m looking at myself, I’m also looking at the people I come from, my siblings, my community, who carry traits I recognize as undeniably beautiful and worthwhile. Seeing those qualities in them, and knowing they exist within me too, helps me come back to myself with more compassion.
—————-
I don’t have much more to say because the people above have said it best. I will leave you with a quote from Nathaniel Wood of local punk band Ratfight: “AI is making art? Put that motherfucker on the line and work a shift in the kitchen then get back to me.”
Photo by Koshu Kunii
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