Starting this off by saying that the moderate risk was a bust. Which is good! But we still were put under a tornado warning at around 8:30 pm. My dad and I stood on the porch looking into the dark sky trying to scry it for some sign of anything actually dangerous. No damage, probably not even an actual tornado. Just radar indicated rotation.
I'm writing now because of two things. Three, actually.
- I got a job!
- I drove past my old house today!
- I just spent a few minutes bawling my eyes out over something unrelated to the first two points.
I haven't started the job yet, I'd start early April. It's what I applied for, it's just a weekend position as someone who helps out at events and stuff at the theme park. Not too crazy, but not boring either!
After my psychiatrist appointment today, since it's right up the road from my old house, I decided to drive into my old neighborhood and swing through the cul-de-sac I grew up on. Didn't cry, surprisingly. Didn't feel too much at all. Happiness, if anything. They put a swing in the cherry tree I grew up climbing, hanging off the thick branch that I'd sit on sometimes in the summer. I do miss that house, though. I miss my third floor.
But something I miss more is the time before LLMs/gen AI.
Sounds off topic, but it's incredibly on topic right now.
When I was little, my dad would wake me up early on the weekends so we could make chocolate milk and put stickers— and a little later in my childhood, doodle— on these big paper pads he used for work. That's where I learned to love art and the process of creation.
He was never an artist himself, at least not with visual art, but he created simply because it brought the both of us joy. That's something that stuck with me, too. The things I make don't have to have a tangible purpose, as long as they mean something to me, to someone. And it doesn't have to mean happiness. It can be a stupid joke, I love making things for bits, ones I keep going inside my own head. It can be anger, it can be sadness, it can be something indiscernible entirely from any one emotion. It can be nothing specific, because any creation insists on itself in its founding act.
My dad owns his own company, now. He used to, at least. He merged with two other guys who had their own thing going, and now they're a bigger entity. Still a smaller business, but they have multiple clients. But the company he merged with does a lot of stuff with AI.
To be fair, he's in the tech industry. Everything is AI. I don't even know what kind of AI they use. I know they built it themselves, which is at least something going for them. I understand AI isn't entirely evil. There are niche use cases for LLMs, and algorithmic learning is something that has been around for practically as long as computers themselves.
But it's painful to see the joy we had together replaced with something lifeless. An emotionless amalgamation of millions of artist's blood, sweat, and tears, made into something personal yet so impersonal. Meaningfully meaningless. Generating a eulogy for everyone who finds actual purpose in their act of creation. It cannot be personal, because everyone is suffering in their own ways. And one million individual eulogies would not be enough to apologize for opening pandora's box of horrors.
He sent an AI generated cover of a comic featuring our dog, Toby, as a superhero. It hurts, especially because this past week I've been slaving away at my own comic for a zine entry due this April. I have 12 hours on that canvas, and I'm only halfway done. It probably took the AI that generated that a few minutes at most. It's heartless. It took me looking closely at the subtitle and the teeth of the monster in the backdrop to see it was AI generated.
I just want to be able to make art again. I just want him to find joy in the things I create again. I don't want to be compared to something that masquerades as art. I want to be able to make things without fear that they will be fed to a machine, chewed up and digested and secreted into something terrifyingly familiar, uncannily imperfect.
I don't even want to be guaranteed a job in an art field. I know I wouldn't like that, because I would burn out so quickly that I'd barely get a headstart. But I think about my partner, a sophomore in a graphic arts program, and I'm afraid for them.
I'm terrified for our future. I'm scared we won't be able to appreciate art.
I'm scared that I'll fall out of love with the very thing that taught me love to begin with.
I don't want to lose myself again. I've been there before, and it's dark in there. They project a monochrome life on the cavern walls. I don't want to die in there with no color to paint with, much less dream with. Even with no tools to create, I will always imagine. I will have a voice to hum with. Blood for ink, fingers for brushes. Maybe I'm doomed to kill myself for the sake of art in every end there is to have.
I'm crying again. Writing this helped a bit, but now I'm crying again. "I'm scared that I'll fall out of love with the very thing that taught me love to begin with." What the hell. AI could never replace that. Not to me, anyways, but apparently it's good enough for it to be a problem.
I'm going to go downstairs with tearstains on my cheeks to eat some dinner. I don't know if I want to explain what's wrong to him. I don't know. But I'm hungry. It's 8pm. My partner is currently painting a pigeon for their oil painting class. It looks really good.
I also ordered a spiky flail online and it got here a few days ago. I might hit my dad with it. Not really. But it's a thought.
Yeah. Dinner is a good idea. Don't want to get caught up in some true crime shit.
I'll see you soon!