Art and Being Alive
How's That for a Title?
Is art alive inside of us? I’ve seen two things recently that reminded me of that notion. I’ll get to those below.
Are we all in danger of feeling uninspired? I’ve read or listened to many podcasts about AI and felt my own writer’s ennui on that front. Again, below we will dig in.
It’s never been harder or easier to make art since computers gave us studios on a laptop, phone cameras, and word processors. AI has made the math even weirder.
If you can tear yourself away from the constant doom that the powers that be seem to have in store for us, you might ruminate on making art. Maybe this is what 1963 felt like? I feel like Bob Dylan could write Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan any day of the week right now. “Blowin’ in the Wind” “Masters of War” “A Hard Rain is Gonna Fall.” It’s 1963, plus computers. Plus the rest of the “Unprecedented Times.”
I have a little skin in this game of trying to be a human. This article is written by me, a human—a real live boy. You might or might not believe that, and you’d be wise not to. Apparently, there’s a lot of AI out there now coming at you.
For my real live part, I’m trying to write a second novel. But it’s slow going.
Maybe it’s time management. I was going to write this morning but I made egg sandwiches for the family before they went on a field trip. Then I went to the grocery store. Then I read about The Commonwealth Prize. The gist is a recent literary award went to a short story that has some earmarks of AI generated text. From The Atlantic,
“Readers noticed AI-like prose in a written work and took to ridiculing it online. Some ran the writing through an AI-detection platform that labeled it entirely AI-generated. The institutions involved in its publication scrambled to figure out what had happened.”
But how about a hopeful idea?
Maybe there is a beat living in the world? Recently, I attended a lecture on the Clave at Tempo Coffee (1) on Nolensville Pike. Nolensville Pike remains the most interesting street in town to me; it’s got a little bit of everything from all over the world. I wish it were a walkable neighborhood with small shops, but as is, I’ll take what I can get, and on this night it had Clave: The Rhythmic Base of Afro Latin Music. The event was held by Voces de Nashville and led by Euge Sosa Barboza. She is a Latin music percussionist and musicologist living in Nashville. Sony Music is in the mix for her work life.
From IG
The most recognizable example of the Clave for me was the 3/2 beat called the “Bo Beat.” I had no trouble picking it out and playing along. Playing the 2/3 variation of Clave was like I’d never used my hands before. The Bo Beat refers to Bo Diddley, the American musician who, along with many others in the 1950s, bridged the blues, country, and gospel into rock n’ roll. You know that, right? (2)
She told us the technical aspects and showed us some songs as examples. I have a new record to spin this summer: Edye Gorme y Los Ponchos. It’s got that lush, sweet, hep feel that records from the early ‘60s have. Technology was just good enough but not so great as to distract, and everything sounds like rum and coke. Euge shared an image by the painter Pedro Figari, and I immediately snapped a pic of the slide. Here is a better picture from the internet.
En el Pueblo by Figari (1861-1938) from Wiki
If nothing else, I walked away knowing about this painter. He reminds me of Carroll Cloar or a funky Edward Hopper. I think she said she was his granddaughter. She showed us his work to illustrate life in Latin America and the mixing of dispossessed Africans, South American natives, and Europeans, out of which the Clave beat blossomed. I want to sit in that painting, drink a beer, and play an old guitar.
As the screws of the talk set into the wood, the discussion moved to the metaphysical and spiritual theories of the Clave. Latin American musicians and people feel that the Clave beat is always there and the players just hop onto it. When they play, they find it; they play along with something that is in creation. Groovy, huh? This is the lore of the beat as I understood it. We have a friend who is from Cuba, and I saw her over the weekend. I asked her if she knew the Clave. She didn’t miss a literal beat and she began to dance and clap her hands to the rhythm, saying, “Yes! It’s Bap Bap Bap, Boom, Boom!!”
This idea—that it’s always going—reminds me of how the Earth makes noise. YouTube videos come into my feed that show what Earth sounds like after some sonic tweaking. In the Venn diagram of people who watch videos on how Jimmy Page layered his guitars, Justified shootouts, and bad literary documentaries come videos about the Earth’s sound. Electromagnetic radio emissions and seismic activity make all sorts of noise. Electrons interact and make all sorts of crazy jazz.
For example-
The Indian Ocean Or these The scary sound of Earth’s magnetic field and NASA SVS | Earth’s Song Last one Sounds of the Earth
Keith Richards once said,
“I’m an antenna, I just pick up an instrument and if there are any songs out there, I receive them.”
I relate to the feeling of being an antenna. Every time I pick up a guitar, I come up with something, though I stopped recording a year or so ago. When you hit the record button, it’s like a vow—a promise to make the little sketch something, to let it breathe life, to trace the bones out and add the muscles. Add a drum, add a bass.
Earlier I mentioned it’s never been easier or harder. Right? Because it’s never been easier, everyone can do it, and that’s part of what has made it harder than ever.
Living in 2026, 120,000 new songs are released every day. Releasing a song is so pointless it’s existentially crushing. I remind myself that people played for thousands of years to the fields and the sky, the wind, and the night—not to a microphone in a room or a phone in their corner. The window is who I play to now: the night, the woods, the chair, and the wall. Maybe the rug in the den.
That makes me think of the cover of this Robert Johnson tape that I had in high school. Music is past the doorstep of becoming a commodity, but it’s still a fairly simple thing. It’s a hotel room in Texas with a microphone. Don’t take my picture; it steals my soul! Don’t record my song; it steals it too. Maybe it’s best to just let an A minor on a banjo live with me, strummed to the woods in my yard.
Of course, I’m not even trying to make a record. I’m trying to write a second novel of which 600-1,300 are released every day. Those odds are better right?
Around the same time as the Clave presentation, I went with the superb visual artist and substacker Rob Matthews to see Cave of Forgotten Dreams at Opry Mills IMAX in Donelson, Tennessee. The documentary is from 2010, shot in 3D by Werner Herzog about the Chauvet Cave in Southern France. These images are old; some date back 32,000 years. Visually, in 3D, it’s an immersive, rock-bending dreamscape.
For some reason, the theater was 8,000 degrees and, as I mentioned, the film was in 3D, so I felt a mix of dizzy and nauseous the whole time. It was a tad long but overall enjoyable. The payoff for me came late in the documentary from a scientist, Julien Monney (what a name!), who relates a story of an ethnographer interviewing an aboriginal tribe member. He’s being shown an ancient drawing that needs some repair. The aboriginal decides to repair the drawing on the spot. The ethnographer asks him:
“Why are you painting?” The Aboriginal says, “It is not me who is painting; it is the spirit that is actually doing the painting now.”
Is this like where the Clave is playing? Is this where Keith is just the antenna? Is art just the spirits of the past creating through us? Or God creating through us? I think about this a lot lately. Because when I was young, I was hot to write songs—I was an art major when I started college, I was full of expression. Then I was in a band and could not contain all of the songs pouring down my arm.
Art is wasted on the young, or something like that.
Maybe my frozen progress is not the pointlessness of releasing something, it’s age.
Now, of course, there are lots of older writers, songwriters, painters, and actors who are still at it (Because they have an audience). I’ve read a lot of memoirs by music people in the last few years. I relate to them up to the point of the book when they say, “And then our band took off!” They say, “I can’t imagine not doing what I was born to do.” Well, I can. I am the “choose your own adventure” alternate reality. I think they’d stop if they didn’t have a reason.
Granted, I still do make art. True enough, maybe they are right. But I am really tired of it! I could blame a large part of my writer’s block on how pointless making art is now or on being old. But if I was only repairing the paintings of the past or only playing the banjo to the wind, wouldn’t that count too? Or is that different? Why doesn’t it feel the same?
With AI, it’s starting to look like everyone is going to be in danger of feeling uninspired. What’s the point of all this art we make if AI can make it? Rock is dead. Jazz is dead. Painting is dead. Reading is dead. Movies are dead. Rap is dead. Sex is dead. Email is dead.
Is everyone in danger of feeling this way?
What if, in the not-so-distant future, we start to value music, painting, art—all these dead things—because they will be like the animals in Blade Runner; the real ones are prized and worth a fortune because every animal is a robot because World War Terminus killed the real ones. I like to think that AI will make the real things in life matter more. My gut is that people like what they like, they don’t care about its provenance, and free is their favorite. So no, I don’t foresee a boon.
But hold on. Maybe there will be.
I usher at my church. We’ve seen growth over the last two to three years. Maybe that means there is church growth. There’s a lot to suggest it’s a mirage made from older attendants that will pass away soon and younger attendants that are faddishly trying out spirituality. Because we have grown so much, we have to ferry about 15 to 30 people, and even more during the height of Holy Week, to our meeting hall. No one is ever excited about sitting in the meeting hall. “It’s just not the same,” people tell me. It’s just not the same as being in the room with the icons, the priest, and the incense. I agree. It’s not. I don’t like sitting in there either. The reason we can even offer this? The tech of a television in another room.
If recent graduation speeches where AI has been mentioned—the rousing boos indicate a marketplace where AI might not be welcome. I think this is why chefs are the last rock stars. You can’t conference-call a great sandwich. Which reminds me of one of my pet peeves: a podcast where the person being interviewed didn’t care enough to A) go to the location or B) at least go to a place that will record you. These digressions prove I’m not AI, right?
I recently rewatched the movie Babylon. That movie is raw stuff. Lots of nudity. Lots of sex. Lots of drugs. Elephant dung. Actress barf. All of the bodily fluids, human and animal. Be advised if you venture into the film, but on the topic of the work of creativity, there are a few scenes that are breathless. One is what I’ll call the “Day in the Life” scene and the other is “Trying to Make a Talkie.”
The “Day in the Life” scene depicts our two characters: Manny working on the set of an epic period piece and Nellie working on the set of another film set in an old west saloon. Manny breaks a strike with a pistol, races across town to borrow a camera, a film crew fights against the sinking sun, the lead actor grows increasingly inebriated, and an extra gets impaled by a spear.
Nellie’s day shows her on the set of a film shot against a set that consists of a room cut in half, with a small musical group to the side to set the tone. One camera, and a crew filming whatever was interesting. Much smaller potatoes than Manny’s day, though they will soon intersect.
Whatever happened, happened. The directors let it take them where the story flowed. The dialogue got added afterwards. At the same time as Nellie’s film the whole lot is filled with other small films being shot. A Hot Jazz band, a piano player, a small string group, a bongo band, all of them wailing away at whatever the film crew was capturing.
Image from film, Babylon, Paramount
There was no process. There were no consumer insights. There were no rules. And granted, a lot of it was disposable. A lot of it was not worth a second look. It existed to build the audience for the medium.
The other scene is Nellie’s first day on a talkie. Excruciating. It’s eight million degrees in the room because air conditioning is loud; you must wear rubber shoes and no watches for the sound. These are, fair enough, easy things to do without, but also: no loud breathing! No sneezing. No coughing. No drinking water.
The mic cannot be moved without calling in a carpenter so every move must be to the perfect box marked on the floor. It’s too loud or it’s too quiet or it’s too this or too that. It’s absolutely maddening.
Extrapolated large, this is the world we’ve made for ourselves! The art was no longer in control. The sound guy with his prissy sensibilities was in control, wanting everything to be perfect. Is the silent era to sound era for movies in Babylon as earth-shattering as AI for writers in 2026?
Yes, I need a prissy sound guy to defeat my Podcast pet peeve.
I could make a higher-visual-quality movie with my phone, but the results would probably be less compelling. I realize that I am romanticizing the past and that the movie took liberties with some elements. Tech rules art now. Movies are engorged with CGI. Singers are leadened with vocal tools. I am typing on a computer using Google Docs. The parameters are set. To be fair, it’s a great tool. We are a long way from Kerouac writing on a sheaf of wallpaper. Maybe better. For sure it’s better. But what does it mean to be better? Our goal as humans is to be efficient? I don’t like that idea at all.
There’s the Brad Pitt and Jean Smart scene (Jean Smart is Luella Parsons in this movie, I’d assume. Maybe, maybe not. Whoever she is, she is hot stuff.) where she tells Brad, playing a historical figure amalgam named Jack Gilbert, “You’re just old. You got old.” Maybe I am just old. I’ve been reading East of Eden and I took a picture of this passage.
“You know, Lee, I think of my life as a kind of music, not always good music but still having form and melody. And my life has not been a full orchestra for a long time now. A single note only—and that note unchanging sorrow. I’m not alone in my attitude, Lee. It seems to me that too many of us conceive of a life as ending in defeat.”
- Samuel Hamilton in East of Eden
Maybe the young are inspired and don’t feel like art means nothing. My kids are into all sorts of things made by young artists. They seem to be rolling with the flow. My son wants to go see a movie called Backrooms. The director started out using his computer and YouTube. Now, he’s with A24.
Maybe it’s AI, maybe it’s age, maybe it’s laziness? Maybe my writer’s block is the place? I moved to Nashville to be a songwriter; didn’t do it, but I still live here. It’s sort of like living in your past. It’s even notable for how inauthentic it is. In fact, Nashville came in worldwide at number 4. Have you ever heard the song, “Walking in Nashville”? No, because it’s “Walking in Memphis,” because Memphis has soul. Nashville is bank-art soul, as in the art on the wall at a bank. Our downtown is held hostage by tourists and bridesmaid parties. I should have moved to Memphis back in 2001, but honestly, my wife says I’d be dead by now.
All this is to say, I often want to be back in South Florida, sipping an oat cortado and reading a book. Listening to fishermen yell and laugh. Watching birds and leering at iguanas. The only people playing music are the cover bands at the Tiki Bars. It’s sort of perfect. Maybe we should just repair old paintings. Maybe that’s all we ever were really doing.
(1) Tempo Coffee holds one of my “You will be shot by firing squad in the morning, you have your choice of meal” dishes. Their eggs, beans, tortillas, and potatoes with a cortado is one of the best breakfasts in the world. Easily the best in Nashville. It’s comfort food served simply and with care. Con cariño! Please visit them on Nolensville Pike and try everything. Nolensville Road remains the street that fascinates me the most in this city.
(2) I saw Bo Diddley at Starwood Amphitheater in Nashville. Bo was opening for Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. The girl I was dating at the time and I were on a double date. The couple we were with had the tickets, and the husband was dogged and determined to get into a fight with the people sitting in front of us because I think they leaned their seats back too far. It was 20 years ago, so I won’t try to reenact the scene. Bo Diddley had to sit down to play, and I thought it was sad. But shoot, he was probably 74 or so at the time. I’m thankful I saw him because I love Bo Diddley’s music.
Tom Petty was really good but all I remember is being a little disappointed that Mike Campbell played all of his solos note for note like the records. Campbell is one of my all time favorite guitar players. I was stoked to see him and very disappointed he just mimic’d the records. He didn’t throw any paint. But I get it. I’ve lived in color inside the lines Nashville for 25 years. It’s the way of the pros. I get it but I don’t like it.
I can’t conclude without mentioning Starwood was the site of The Replacements opening for Tom Petty, in 1989 or so, in which they in the act of opening the show stole and wore Petty’s wife’s dresses and played a ten-minute version of Lou Reed’s “Walk on the Wild Side” and then sauntered off. That sounds more like it Mike Campbell.