The Best Stuff I Read This Week

“Suffice to say, I do not feel the same enthusiasm around this technology … I understand that ChatGPT is in its infancy but perhaps that is the emerging horror of AI – that it will forever be in its infancy, as it will always have further to go, and the direction is always forward, always faster.

It can never be rolled back, or slowed down, as it moves us toward a utopian future, maybe, or our total destruction. Who can possibly say which? Judging by this song ‘in the style of Nick Cave’ though, it doesn’t look good, Mark. The apocalypse is well on its way. This song sucks.”

— Nick Cave / “‘This song sucks’: Nick Cave responds to ChatGPT song written in style of Nick Cave” / The Guardian

“… I imagine knives for teeth, typewriters for hearts.
The librarians jackrabbit. They devour the dogs.”

— Jenn Givhan / “Headless Mama Returns (Xmas ’18 Redux)”

“You know, the main problem, so far, has been that there has been quite a difference between literature and life, and that those who have been writing literature have not been writing life, and those living life have been excluded from literature.”

— Charles Bukowski / On Writing

“… My mother’s laugh was a record skipping, 
so deep she left nicks in the vinyl. 
See? Even in death, she wants to be fable.”

— Hafizah Augustus Geter / “Praise Song”

“Unfortunately, planet-heating emissions are weaved into almost every action of our lives, meaning that we will each need in some way to confront this emergency. While climate change will be solved at a societal rather than individual level – you can’t recycle your way out of this, sorry – this shouldn’t negate the reality that some habits may have to change, which some will find meddlesome or even oppressive.”

— Oliver Milman / “The US right is red hot about a future without gas stoves – but it’s the change America needs” / Down to Earth newsletter

“inside my mother
i make a little fist
& then i punch her”

— Anselm Hollo / “To Be Born Again”

“Writing a good song is not mimicry, or replication, or pastiche, it is the opposite … It is an act of self-murder that destroys all one has strived to produce in the past. It is those dangerous, heart-stopping departures that catapult the artist beyond the limits of what he or she recognises as their known self.

This is part of the authentic creative struggle that precedes the invention of a unique lyric of actual value; it is the breathless confrontation with one’s vulnerability, one’s perilousness, one’s smallness, pitted against a sense of sudden shocking discovery; it is the redemptive artistic act that stirs the heart of the listener, where the listener recognizes in the inner workings of the song their own blood, their own struggle, their own suffering.”

— Nick Cave / “‘This song sucks’: Nick Cave responds to ChatGPT song written in style of Nick Cave” / The Guardian

What I’m Listening To:

“Orpheus picked up his lyre for the last time
He was on a real low down bummer
And stared deep into the abyss and said
This one is for Mama”

— Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds / “The Lyre of Orpheus”