A Constellation of Data
Connecting the Dots
Hello!
In 2016, when I’d first acquired an Apple Watch, I’d showed it off to my friends, telling them how I can now see my workout stats, monitor my heart rate and all other such fun facts. My friend Alisha cut me down to size (as she usually does): what will you do with all this data?
I didn’t have an answer back then, just an abstract musing that I couldn’t put into words. But now I can.
During the lockdowns, I’d started Late Night Writing Circles where I’d debut new writing exercises that I’d been building while stuck at home. One of them was called the Sphere of Influence.
Exercise —
Draw 4 concentric circles, and place yourself in the centre. Make a list of ten people you know — friends, family, pets — people who make up your immediate now. Once you have that list, start mapping them into those circles with a single rule: the closer they are to the centre, the more influence they have on you.
This, I’ve found, is an especially great for building fictional characters and chalking out their world. If this map is made dynamic, people move between layers dependant on the situation and time. Many of my relationship centric stories have diagrams made for each scene so I can monitor and map those relationships visually.
While this is a great tool to map out people in relation to my characters, it still felt incomplete — are our sphere’s of influence only people? Don’t plants, our clothes, the weather, the time spend on our phones and so much more have a (often, subliminal) influence on us? How then, do you capture it all?
Thanks for reading Missives From An Island! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.
Before I moved to my (beloved) iPad only setup, I used a MacBook Pro. These were days before streaming where all music had to be bought — or sourced. wink wink. Over time, I’d amassed a massive 64.5gb library of songs. Alongside the songs, I’d found a simple Javascript app that scanned my entire music library and give me a graph of all the songs I heard most often, my top ten genres, which albums I heard most often. That app was quite popular amongst the few who knew it almost like a precursor to the more popular services like Apple Music Replay and Spotify Wrapped we have now. But why are they so popular?
Humans, I believe, are distinct from animals for having the capacity to ask: who we are?
Who am I?
This question, I’ve come to realise, is the basis of everything I do. Personal growth, in a sense, can be measured by how close one is to answering this question.
One of the modules I’d taken as during my MA was Writing the Self, where we dived deep into the abstract nature of memory, childhood, and understanding how we perceive ourself and how this perception is shaped by our internal views but also the external views thrust upon us by our families, religions, society and even our nation. (The result of this module was an essay titled Engineering Myself which was eventually published in Human Parts. You can read it here.)
We go through myriad stages in our lives, almost like scenes in a story, and each one imprints itself upon us. These imprints act like dense objects floating on a liquid and by knowing ourselves deeply, the denser we become, we create a layer of surface tension to shrug off these external imprints. But the tug and pull continues.
We are all those things and we are none of it as well.
I am not sure that I exist, actually. I am all the writers that I have read, all the people that I have met, all the women that I have loved; all the cities I have visited.
- Jorge Luis Borges
Art in all forms, I’ve found, leaves the deepest imprint. In the soil of me, it blossoms.
A large part of the answer to the question — who am I — comes from the music I listen to. It’s why when I’m feeling most lost and/or overwhelmed, I listen to music to find my centre again. It’s the reason that little Javascript app that gave me details about my music remains such a beloved part of my memory and also what these music streaming services tap into — data about you, telling you more about you and in a way, helping you answer that deeper question: who are you?
On 10th June, Apple changed the whole AI game by introducing Apple Intelligence. What makes Apple’s implementation different is twofold: one, is tap into the user’s Sphere of Influence, with not just their relationships to people but everything from weather to traffic to music and other real life events thrown into it — a minefield of personal data we store in our smartphones to make the intelligence feel more personal. And two, of course, with privacy inbuilt, a claim to a high degree I do not doubt.
On a first draft level, stories are nothing but patterns in data and without that data we would not know the story of ourselves, the answer in response to the question Who am I? The Apple Watch was my first step in gathering that data. The second was writing and discovering my stories, connecting data points I’d identified along the way, like constellations in a sky full of stars. But the sky is limitless and so are our stories.
I only hope that Apple Intelligence not utilises our personal context — safely and securely with privacy at the forefront — but is able to share that data with us so we too may be able to find the patterns to discover the constellations of our stories.
Akshay Updates
June was quite exciting! I had two pieces published:
- An Interview with Christopher Paolini: I still can’t believe I got a chance to chat with my childhood hero and the reason why I ever wanted to be a writer. The 12 year old inside me would be so darn proud. You can read it here.
- Wedding Photoessay: My wife and I were never keen on a wedding video but a wedding essay makes so much sense for both of us. I didn’t know I wanted it until I got a chance to collaborate with my photographer Ben. You can read the whole story of how it happened here.
Note: With my studies (and marriage) behind me, I am currently looking to coach writers one-on-one again and have multiple slots open. If you or anybody you know would benefit from this, please reach out. You can drop me an email or reply to this newsletter and I’ll get back to you. You can read more about my work at akshaygajria.com
Until next time,
Keep connecting,
Akshay
You’re reading Missives from an Island a newsletter by Akshay Gajria, a prize-wining writer, storyteller and writing coach. This newsletter is delivered to your inbox on the 30th of every month. You can also find Akshay on Twitter (X), Instagram, and Medium. If you enjoyed reading, consider tipping him by buying a cup of tea (or three) here or buying his ebook (linked below). You can discover his work at akshaygajria.com
