Why Write for a Computer?
Round 1
Each morning, I rise early and stumble into my little garage studio, flip on the lights and the amplifiers, and pour a cup of coffee while the tubes are warming up.
I’ve studied music since I was a teenager — it’s one of the few Peter Pan pursuits I’ve managed to hang on to over the intervening years, through a combination of curiosity and determination. My teachers in music all say the same thing; indeed, they have since I started: “play music with people, for people”, or some variant thereof. While there’s something to be said for the intrinsic enjoyment of practicing arpeggios in the silence of the garage, day after day, there’s a larger argument out there about the purposes of creation and composition.
This is what I was thinking about as I approached this piece of writing. My assignment: push a piece of my writing through a digital platform and see what comes out the other side; respond accordingly.
I’m sure a large portion of my reticence to do this comes from C.O.V.I.D. induced technology burnout — the last thing I want is another Hangout, GroupChat, InstaConcert. I’m tired of horizons bounded by a screen, and I’m worried about our ability to remember the souls on the other side of that flat, gray expanse of electrons. Why should an algorithm be first diver to penetrate the depths of the oasis of writing…why not a set of burning human eyes, a mind fresh or fatigued, but sentient?
I’ll do it, I promise…I’ll find something I’ve written and blast it into the box. But first I’ll kick a little, remembering the first letters I wrote (for my mother), the first song I rhymed my way through (for a girlfriend), the ninth grade portfolio I conjured from adolescent dreams and wonderings (for an exceptional English teacher). Each came from somewhere special and went somewhere equally special, with no way-station interruption of redline, suggestion bank, thesaurus scroll, spelling and usage scrapyard. Good stuff gets parked and dies in these bone yards, is towed beneath the swinging, squeaking sign of “correctness” and eventually abandoned, run dry of the meaning that gave it animation and speed in the beginning.
As a writing teacher, I’d rather smell the sweat of a composition fresh off the fingers, mistakes and missteps included. Let me see it first. As a musician, I know mistakes are part of the game — inspiration waits there. Let me hear it before it gets e.q.’d and auto-tuned. As a human, I’ll take my fellows raw, their words untucked and unkempt. Let me read it first.
And then, if we all agree, we’ll let the box have it.
