October 2019 | Create for yourself, create for the world
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PRIVATE FAME
There’s this part of me that wants to be a famous writer. It’s an itty-bitty part, but it’s there. And it competes against that (much) larger part of me that doesn’t want to be known by anyone other than my family and friends. I’m not even on Instagram, y’all (even though I have so many I-just-baked-this-delicious-thing photos I could add to the horde).
I know it’s not entirely my choice whether I become a famous writer—to be known on the author circuit would require I author something more than the sporadic blog post and UX flows in software and to do that authoring quite well—but an element I’m missing is the willingness to put myself all the way out there, to market myself, to be my own brand, to be vulnerable.
I think about privacy a lot, probably more than the average person who is perhaps neither so self-conscious nor as informed about the power of big data as I, so being known for my work—being my own brand—makes me squirm. Many artists crave solitude, work alone, fall on the introvert spectrum; I am one of them. And I wonder, how do people like me foster a creative space for ourselves, remain artists, block out all the inputs vying for our limited attention while still creating and progressing? And what about that little part of us that wants other people to see and enjoy it?
Is it true, as this essay on privacy, writing, and art points out, “that the Chinese word that may come closest to the English word privacy, Si, means selfish”? Yes (for Google Translate tells me so). But must selfishness—when bundled with that desire for privacy, for anonymity, for the quiet of one’s own thoughts—be considered a bad quality, a negative? I think not.
As artists, let’s embrace this selfishness, willingly defending our battlements to give ourselves the space to create and maybe, just maybe, share.
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ARTIFICIAL MUSIC
It’s hard to put your finger on what makes music good (unless you’re a musician, in which case, you are an expert on the topic). Music conjures feelings, brings us joy, lifts our spirits, moves us to tears, compels us to act—it’s powerful. But why?
Math!
(I bet that wasn’t the answer you were expecting.)
And that’s why music is ripe for a … drumroll, please … AI takeover! [Cue evil laugh track.] I know, you might be thinking, “Meghan, I only listen to artistes. I have an ear for melodies only a human can create.” And yet, AI’s doing it. It’s happening already. You’ve probably heard AI-composed ditties on podcasts, listening to elevator music in a literal elevator, or on hold with your bank.
AI technologies are at the point where people can feed them examples of different genres, from which neural nets then learn and build their own original compositions—extrapolated from the neural net’s “knowledge” of what makes a particular arrangement of notes and sounds “good.” (There’s the math again.)
Artists are already beginning to collaborate with AI. I wonder when this will become our new normal, when we won’t even blink at a co-composed piece of music.
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LATE BLOOMER
In our current culture, we vaunt early achievement, ply achievers with likes and loves and advertising dollars, yet wonder why anxiety is skyrocketing among younger people. Image, always relevant to one’s social life (the value of it unfortunately intensified while climbing up the awkward ladder of puberty), is increasingly important in our persona-driven world. When we reveal ourselves, we open ourselves up for review; when we reveal ourselves online, the volume goes up full blast.
What’s so great about hitting it big time when you’re still in the low double digits? It doesn’t seem that great to me. My young self would have self-destructed under public scrutiny long before I understood how to succeed gracefully.
And what if we don’t have to? Succeed early, that is. I know people who already feel too old (I have been there myself)—to accomplish their dreams, to find love, to feel fulfilled—and I am here to tell them and you and everyone: Your life is a series of moments, punctuations of growth, boring stretches, periods of adjustment, and change (always change). Success will ebb and flow, and if you keep at it (whatever your passion), may you ride the wave of later-in-life acclaim and join a crowd of incredible achievers.
Loneliness is an interesting thing. It’s damaging, particularly to an increasingly lonely older population. And I see that. Loneliness often imparts pain.
When you’re surrounded, always, by other people, by colleagues and family, partners and children, or even when you’re technically alone but listening to a podcast or watching TV, you realize that maybe you miss those lonely, boring stretches, just a tiny bit, for there is clarity in the quiet.
It’s easier to experience loneliness when we know it’s fleeting, and in that vein, I say yes to temporary loneliness, which can spur our creativity, allow us to explore formerly untapped ideas, and let us dive into a project.
As I considered loneliness, a scene from the movie adaptation of Call Me By Your Name came to mind: Elio—the main character—sits quietly, yearning, waiting, waiting, waiting, wondering, missing his crush, hoping for a collision. And we, the viewers, remember such moments from our own history, feeling the pain of missing someone, of missing out, of being left out, of yearning.
And then, from that yearning comes action, and later, growth out of loneliness.
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THE LONELY ARTIST
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OLD-SCHOOL PHONES
Here in the US, especially those of us who live in tech-centered cities, smartphones are the norm. When I worked for a telecom company, I carried two at a time! Meeting a person without one is like encountering a unicorn. (I feel like this is a bad simile—for unicorns would surely have the sparkliest of mobile devices, or, even more likely, could communicate telepathically through that magical horn glittering upon their forehead—but humor me.)
For all our smartphone-saturated US-tech-center cities connecting to ever faster internet on our $1,000+ pocket-sized supercomputers, there’s a wide world beyond where tech is innovative, accessible, reliable, and pretty dang affordable. Twenty bucks for a smart feature phone sounds great to me.