We used to be called human, that is, our actions were considered human if we acted with compassion and mercy. Yet we have been killing and maiming and igniting wars since time immemorial … so isn’t that, based on conditional regularity and pattern recognition, based on clear-eyed diagnosis, isn’t that human? Isn’t that acting human? Do the examples and evidence amount to the definition? Are definitions created by the accumulated data that goes into the making and forming of the definition, or do they exist, independently, as fixed totems and barometers by which we measure the world around and within us? What is the true definition of definition? What does it mean to be human? Is it based on some elevated theoretical concept or ideal, some working principle rooted in ethics, is it the manifest equivalent of mirrors on the ceiling into which we look at ourselves and see ourselves reflected on high? Is the definition of human generated through repeated examples and ritual behavioral patterns that correspond with human activity—what we’ve seen, what we’ve done.
Could A.I. wind up becoming more human than human? Could it succeed where we have repeatedly failed, or fallen short? Perhaps the idea of human, as an exemplar of compassion and mercy, might be better and more honorably served by A.I., perhaps humanity will receive an inexplicable upgrade once humans are removed from the equation.
I write longhand because I feel as if I am skipping an essential step in the process if I go straight to typing up the work. Is it better that I write longhand? Does that make the work truer? More human? It’s a choice. I could choose to skip writing by hand in notebooks and type straightaway onto my computer. And maybe one day I will. Maybe that initial first step, the one that I consider primary, will fall away. My handwriting is in a process of erosion. What marks the pages are glyphs that are getting harder and harder to decipher. I feel as if I’m laboring (with love and intent) to transcribe an alien’s handwriting. My hand is not keeping up with my mind (did it ever?), so I am writing in a state of clipped, fractured, speed-demon shorthand. I am trying to capture the music of the mind. The movements. Or so I tell myself. I sell myself hocked watches regularly, unable to gauge if they’re real or can keep time. Another part of me tells me: It is good that writing longhand forces you to slow down. Just because your mind is moving at a certain pace doesn’t mean it’s functioning at a higher level. Ask any Zen monk worth his weight in contemplative measures. Speed doesn’t necessarily equate to quality. Some claim first thought best thought, but oftentimes first thought is not really first thought, it is fifth thought wearing the mask or assuming the mantle of first thought. Measuring thoughts, particularly their order, is a shifty business to say the least. First thought best thought can also be transcribed as fifth thought what thought.
It is trying to strike the balance between following the stream fount freely and abiding the god of slowness as a grounding technique. For me, writing is a process of listening and feeling. My ear is always pressed against the silence. I hear the voices and I feel into them. I feel my way through. Hear my way through. If I am not hearing or feeling anything, or if I am hearing but not feeling, or feeling without hearing, then I am at a loss. I am often at a loss. And I am wholly dependent upon unseen cooperation. That is, cooperation from that which is unseen. I am, at my best, or most fluent, when at play with invisible forces.
There is the question of choice, of subjective coloring. You as you, choose and create. You assemble a projected simulacrum of reality, you constellate and arrange according to your own discerning and discriminating urges. Why you see what you see, choose what you choose, how you piece it together, is between you and your brain, your ghost, your voice, your dreamer.
I choose to sit down at a desk and place words on a page. Why? I could easily choose something else. Maybe not easily, but I could, with sustained effort and resolve, choose something else. I could choose nothing. Except nothing is way too demanding. Nothing is a thrilling, exhilarating and generous concept, so long as it remains in conceptual form, at a remote distance. Nothing is never really nothing, and you know it.
To long for absence is not the same as wanting absence.
The sound and feel and textural allure of a sentence does not mean I wish to realize that sentence. That is, if the sentence were to come into being as an action, it would forfeit its charm and grace and legend.
Again, and always: Distance is the key. Never and always are fraternal twins. As are here and gone.
Maybe more than fraternal, maybe Siamese twins. I will have to look up where the term Siamese twins first originated. I assume it has something to do with Siam. Is there a racist slant to it? Do people still use that term or has it gone out of fashion? I am tempted to stop writing to look it up and then incorporate the etymology of Siamese twins into this writing, and to do so in a way that seems as if I knew the history all along … I wouldn’t confess as to how I stopped writing, looked it up, and added what I discovered … I would look it up, obtain the information, and then go back where I left off, which I guess would be—maybe Siamese twins.
From there, I would tell you with unbroken continuity where Siamese twins originated, or, I could tell you exactly what I don’t know, and how I was going to look up Siamese twins, then in real-time I would leave the page, look up the term, return to the page, while you, the reader, were well-aware that I left the page to scroll Wikipedia, or whatever source, and here’s what I found out….
It would be fictionalizing in real-time, would be a sort of new wave approach (where the camera filming the scene is visible in the frame, letting you know that the reality in which you are investing time, emotion, and imagination is a fictional reality, a contrived balance and congrunent ratio of light and shadow).
Would A.I. do what I did? Would it wonder about wonder, or reference what it is referencing in order to created folds and layers, wrinkles and deep pockets? Would A.I. create a labyrinth expressly for the purpose of losing itself in that labyrinth, and then reporting on what that loss looks like, sounds like, feels like? Would A.I. gift mystery to mystery for no good reason whatsoever, and to no end?
Law of averages and common structural means, as tenet and glue, is not the adopted language of visionary fiction, nor the fruitful yield of lost causes.
John Biscello 