AND IF THE earlier Prosatio Silban news isn’t thrilling enough (well, for me at least), I’m scheduled to talk about him on KSVY this coming Tuesday, May 12th, at 10:40 a.m. during Cat Smith’s “Hollywood and West Napa” show. From outside the range of Sonoma Valley’s 91.3FM station, find us at http://ksvy.org – just click the “Listen Now” button, and “Bob” will be your uncle!
Tag: creating
Making stuff: up, real, and nicely.
Arms Call
“Don’t spectate: CREATE!”
–Barbatus the Elder
Sober Assessment
TWO-AND-A-HALF MONTHS AGO, I completed my tenth year of clear-eyed, clean-headed and grateful sobriety.
Now, when some people hear that, they might think, “Great, here comes the self-righteous lecture on the evils of intoxication.” But that won’t happen, at least not from me. I don’t and won’t disdain anyone else’s recreational or coping choices; frankly, they are none of my business, and refraining from inebriation is not a crusade that I feel either comfortable or qualified to pursue toward others.
Instead, I want to speak about the rarefied and addictive intoxicant that actually “saved” me, keeping me sane and healthy not just during the past decade but all of my life – and if you know me as well as you think you do, you can already guess what that is.
WRITING.
Not for nothing did Stephen King say of this 6,000-year-old-plus art: “Do it for the buzz.” There is an ineffable thrill in watching the words spill out onto paper or screen, an actual physical and mental rush only gotten from congealing thought into alphabetic form, that’s as hard to beat as it is to describe.
And the best part is, it’s free. Easily accessible. Shareable. No more watching my money go up in a cloud of marijuana smoke; no more furtively prowling dodgy neighborhoods; no more keeping it all to myself lest I run out.
Did I mention addictive? Once you start writing, you’re hooked for life. I sometimes find myself typing and typing until I fall asleep at the keyboard, literally unable to stop ’til I drop. (True story.) E.g., tonight: I meant to take advantage of the finally clear Sonoma skies and do a bit of long-delayed stargazing. But as I write this, it’s well after 10:30pm (or, if you prefer, 2230 hours) PDT and I’m already getting sleepy.
So before I trundle off to Dreamsville, I’ll leave you this hard-earned advice: Try not to let the Great American Novel (or Essay, or Blogpost) keep you from tending your other bodily needs. Otherwise, you may find yourself face down in a pool of your own ink – or even with “QWERTYUIOP” reverse-imprinted deeply into your throbbing forehead. Nighty night.
Wholly Toil
IT’S NO SECRET that I loathe AI.
Well, “loathe” is rather strong language, especially since I believe modern tech in general to be an evolutionary leap comparable to the discovery of fire, or the invention of the wheel. Let’s just say I am deeply distrustful of AI, and more than a little saddened and dismayed by how quickly and eagerly it’s infiltrated our culture, our devices, and our minds.
Fortunately, I have some Jewish ammunition backing up my “danger-Will-Robinson” disdain. In this week’s edition of The Forward‘s “Looking Forward” newsletter, Louis Keene makes a good case for why Judaism may hold the key to the AI Resistance.
“That key is the Jewish value of עֲמֵילוּת (ameilut), or toil,” Keene writes. “As far as Jewish values go, ameilut is an obscure one. It lacks the celebrity swagger of its better-known peers like chesed [lovingkindness] and tzedakah [righteousness] or the political power of tikkun olam [“repairing the world,” sometimes understood as social action]. … Yet I believe it is just as crucial. Yes, toiling is a mitzvah. And in the age of AI, ameilut can be a human road map.”
The concern among fervently religious Jews and others, Keene relates, is that anyone can feed, say, the week’s Torah portion into ChatGPT and have it spit out a sermon. But that misses the point. Knowledge shouldn’t be commodified – it should be earned through a lengthy (and rewarding) process. Ameilut means toiling for the sake of personal growth. It’s about the means, not the end; the discovery, not the destination.
A cliche, perhaps, but an apt and important one. And a warning: don’t embrace a shiny new toy without examining, or at least giving serious thought to, any consequences.
Words To Bring Back: “Apodictic”
– Definition: adj expressing or of the nature of necessary truth or absolute certainty
– Used in a sentence: Edward R. Murrow was the exemplar of apodictic American journalism.
– Why: Because it’s easier to spell and less overused than “paradigmatic.”
Words to Bring Back: “Obviate”
– Definition: verb remove (a need or difficulty)
– Used in a sentence: Popular voting would obviate the problematic and obsolete Electoral College.
– Why: Because the phrase “get rid of” lacks a certain finesse.
How To Write
SUCCINCTLY.
Salad Nights
HYPOTHESIS: A THREE-INGREDIENT WHISKED DRESSING.
Experiment: Appropriate measures of olive oil, anchovy paste, and fresh lemon juice.
Analysis: Something’s missing.
Experiment #2: A dab of Dijon, a modicum of maple syrup.
Conclusion: !!!
Replication: You’re welcome.
Welcome To An All-Text, AI-Free Zone!
DEAR PATIENT READER (and anyone else who’s happened by),
Now that you’ve arrived, there are three things to know:
1. If you’re eager to meet Prosatio Silban, the self-defrocked holyman in a fantastic land who teases out a meager but honest living as a mercenary cook, allow me to introduce you!
2. You may also/instead browse at leisure a mellow mix of rusty recollections, offbeat observations, friendly particularism, tasty recipes, unpretentious poetry, entertaining quotes, recreational science, and wry spirituality.
3. Whichever you choose – please enjoy!
Thank you for your patronage,
Words to Bring Back (or in this case, Forth): “Wonderpiece”
– Definition: n That creation which evokes awe in the beholder.
– Used in a sentence: Have you ever heard Dr. King’s “I Have A Dream” wonderpiece in its entirety?
– Why: Though arguably a mere synonym for “art” (at least as defined by https://metaphorager.net/pithyism-5/), I like to think of this neologism as “art-PLUS.” Not all art stimulates our sense of wonder and reverence; not all oratory or music or cinema or poetry or what-have-you makes us weak-kneed with wordless appreciation. Yet we might be conceptually richer if we could point to what exemplifies art’s indefinable but very real power. Drop this word into your next deep conversation and see if it floats!
Words to Bring Back: “Quotidian”
– Definition: adj ordinary or everyday, especially when mundane.
– Used in a sentence: If you can’t find pleasure in the quotidian, you likely won’t find it anywhere else.
– Why: To seize our eyeballs in the current attention economy, modern media abound in exclamatory superlatives: “Maximum!” “Ultimate!” “Extreme!” One welcome corrective might be to shift our focus toward life’s less intense, but no less important, aspects: a sincere handshake, late afternoon sunlight, soft music, petrichor, the flavor of cold water. Try it for yourself and see.
Audiomobile
“COGITATE COGITATE COGITATE COGITATE COGITATE…”
So ran one of the many “found sounds” (today called “samples”) on the pass-around tape collages that were a fringe benefit of membership in the Neo-Pagan Society of Diablo Valley College in the early-to-mid-1980s. (Accent on “fringe.”)
My initiation into this three-part sonic conspiracy – which included “Mr. Bird” and “Zoro X.R. Troll” – came about on receiving from Zoro a postage-stamped 60-minute cassette tape with no explanatory note save “PLAY ME” written on its label. Curious, I popped it into my boombox and pressed “Play.” My ears were happily assaulted (in machine-gun succession and no particular order) by excerpts from: Alan Watts, William S. Burroughs, The Grateful Dead, Firesign Theater, a straitlaced radio preacher, Mr. Bird’s paranoid brother, Tom Robbins, Zoro’s favorite inspirational readings, The Beatles, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, and various other audial offerings now hazed by time and headspace, as well as Zoro’s drawled invitation to add to, subtract from, or otherwise mess with “this here tape” before sending it either back to him or on to Mr. Bird.
The process was simple:
1- Wire up two cassette recorder/players from output to input (this also works just as well, if not better, if you have one two-bay cassette player/recorder).
2- Load output player with whatever you like: music, spoken narrative or poetry, movie/tv soundtrack, sound effects, live microphone, &c., as limited only by imagination and source material.
3- Load a cassette into the input recorder, press “Record,” and engage the Pause button.
4- Play a section of the output tape.
5- Disengage input ‘s Pause button to record as much output as you want, then re-engage.
6- Switch output sources, the more incongruous and/or thematic the better.
7- Repeat process until you lose interest. (WARNING! It’s addictive.)
To simple, mad minds like ours, the results were vastly entertaining, and inadequately depicted in writing: “output1 (click) OUTPUT2! (click) OuTpUt3? (click) oUtPuT4…” ad infinitum.
After it was exchanged for a while, the tape had mutated into something very odd and layered indeed. One surrealistic iteration included dialog between myself and elements of David Bowie’s “Ziggy Stardust.” Another had Mr. Bird and Zoro calling out each others’ names in weird voices and at unexpected intervals. Yet a third featured Jim Morrison repeating the lyric “learn to forget” over and over and over.
For whatever reasons, we three eventually drifted away from this collaborative creation. Yet I still have a copy of the original tape kicking around here somewhere, plus one which I slowly built up over a period of nearly 20 years, always meaning to send it on to my colleagues.
Perhaps, one day, I will.