The Red Hand Files

I just found out this great newsletter, which is not curated, but written by one person. But it has amazing inspiring content: https://www.theredhandfiles.com

"It seems to me, that if we love, we grieve. That’s the deal. That’s the pact. Grief and love are forever intertwined. Grief is the terrible reminder of the depths of our love and, like love, grief is non-negotiable." -- Nick Cave, https://www.theredhandfiles.com/communication-dream-feeling/

Nick Cave - The Red Hand Files https://www.theredhandfiles.com/ I wouldn't say immediately or even regularly, but I do like to catch up on them every so often. Short food for thought.

Nick Cave, on writer's block: "My advice to you is to change your basic relationship to songwriting. You are not the ‘Great Creator’ of your songs, you are simply their servant, and the songs will come to you when you have adequately prepared yourself to receive them. They are not inside you, unable to get out; rather, they are outside of you, unable to get in." https://www.theredhandfiles.com/do-u-have-any-spare-lyrics/

I want to share a post from the Red Hand Files blog written by musician Nick Cave, because I think he explains it more eloquently than I could. --- From: https://www.theredhandfiles.com/considering-human-imagination-the-last… In Yuval Noah Harari’s brilliant new book 21 Lessons for the 21st Century, he writes that Artificial Intelligence, with its limitless potential and connectedness, will ultimately render many humans redundant in the work place. This sounds entirely feasible. However, he goes on to say that AI will be able to write better songs than humans can. He says, and excuse my simplistic summation, that we listen to songs to make us feel certain things and that in the future AI will simply be able to map the individual mind and create songs tailored exclusively to our own particular mental algorithms, that can make us feel, with far more intensity and precision, whatever it is we want to feel. If we are feeling sad and want to feel happy we simply listen to our bespoke AI happy song and the job will be done. But, I am not sure that this is all songs do. Of course, we go to songs to make us feel something – happy, sad, sexy, homesick, excited or whatever – but this is not all a song does. What a great song makes us feel is a sense of awe. There is a reason for this. A sense of awe is almost exclusively predicated on our limitations as human beings. It is entirely to do with our audacity…

Some comments here that IMO seem to miss the whole point of what art is about. Great art (putting aside - what can I call it - “entertainment art”) isn’t about “making you feel better” or “having a nice experience”, it’s about art as expression, it’s about pain and loss and love and understanding. A song or story generated by an AI isn’t human - the humanity of art is the point of art. Even if the output generated is impeccable - beautiful to look at or read, it still isn’t human in experience, so it doesn’t carry the same quality as work that has been sweated over, worried about, loved and lived over months or years. AI can - and of course will get very much better at - create exciting things to look at, read or listen to - but much as the age old “I could do that” response to a Pollock misses the entire point of his journey to that artwork, the “it sounds / looks / reads really amazing” misses the point about what it means to create real, human art. Nick Cave of course puts it much better than I ever could: https://www.theredhandfiles.com/chat-gpt-what-do-you-think/

Nick Cave’s direct response is verbatim on the original generated text page [0]. It’s worth a read. Stronger: read that, not the linked guardian article. He’s a fabulous wielder of words. Placed next to the generated text, his rebuttal lays bare the beige blandness of chatgpt output. What’s truly threatened are authors of articles like the linked guardian one. That’s the irony of it. These cut, paste, and bookend articles that hacks churn out over coffee at the start of the work day. They dilute rather than focus the conversation. That’s what chatgpt can replicate with aplomb. Not that we’ll be the better for it since there are all too many of them already. I hope Nick works on a song about the “algorithmic awe”, the “replication as travesty”, the “grotesque mockery” that generative text supports, and how it’s superficial output threatens the breakthrough of genuine new human creative talent above the impending noise of vanilla generated music and lyrics. [0] https://www.theredhandfiles.com/chat-gpt-what-do-you-think/

Transcript (actual letter) here: https://www.theredhandfiles.com/chatgpt-making-things-faster-and-easie…

Cave was expressing an answer to a question about cutting corners in the process of creating music. ( https://www.theredhandfiles.com/chatgpt-making-things-faster-and-easie… ) There is certainly value in the work of nurses, bouncers and servers, and my interpretation of Cave's other written works leads me to believe that he is a proponent of finding joy and creative expression, even in tasks which don't have an obvious artistic product. AI lacks insight and lack of insight is what can turn a succulent feast of a life into biweekly deliveries of Soylent.

Funny you should say this. See https://www.theredhandfiles.com/originality-hard-to-obtain/ “What else have you stolen?” I ask Warren. “Everything,” he says, “Absolutely, everything.”

Context: This is the blog of Nick Cave - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Cave Update: https://www.theredhandfiles.com/chat-gpt-what-do-you-think/

Singer Nick Cave on Wain and his involvement in the film https://www.theredhandfiles.com/i-just-saw-the-electrical-life-of-loui…