A Confidence in Things

shattered

I have always felt more comfortable in the between, not realizing that all of living in this particular body exists in a liminal space. What I really mean is I was more comfortable not choosing, not realizing that not choosing is an impossibility. What I really mean is that I didn’t want to be wrong, not realizing that there are no missteps. What I really mean is that I was afraid of the future, not realizing that now is always. Not knowing what I know now, I can imagine a me that would be seduced into bypassing all the messiness of becoming through the use of artificial intelligence because that’s what AI offers, right? A panacea for all the struggle it takes to reason and learn, a final version of a shiny product with no dings or dents, and certainly no searching for or grasping at something just on the other side of comfort. 

As a writer, my creative prose process begins with a draft that is generally an attempt at releasing a question floating in the periphery of my consciousness that demands reckoning. Draft completed, I come back to it over and over, rereading, editing, but most importantly discovering what I think and why. My poetic process is similar; drafts come quickly, occasionally completely intact, but more often it is through the editing process I learn about the relationship between language and my particular perspectives of the world. Both processes involve an active conversation between myself and the text. Accepting the process between the inspired first draft and the final product, the curious space between the questions and the answers, as the landscape of creation did not come easy. Trusting, creating is a process that happens in between and is not an outcome, comes with many challenges. When it all happens in the between, in the between where choices are made, mistakes happen, and ground is lost or gained, sometimes, most times, this is not a pleasant or comfortable landscape to inhabit. 

In 2014 I imagined a cup. I imagined a cup and the space inside the cup and the space outside the cup. I imagined I was the cup and the cup was me and I was the space inside the cup and I was the space outside the cup. I considered all that was contained and uncontained and what it meant to be uncontainable. This cup still exists, both in my mind and the text that preserve it: two repositories, two languages. When I imagined a cup as a way to understand being a body in space, I was grasping, searching for a way to understand something that exists on the other side of language through language and the thoughts and images in my brain. I have confidence in these things: the text that is and holds my cup and my body that is and holds my cup and most importantly in the space between my text and my body and my cup. The final manuscript that began with this cup is of little import compared to what I learned. The fact that ten years later the cup has resurfaced is part of trusting the process.

If I ask you to imagine you are a cup, to describe your cup. What is inside your cup? What is outside? What is the difference? Where is the boundary? I have confidence in your answer. I have confidence that in the space between these questions and your replies there will be connections made and learning will happen. And you and your cup will be full. If you ask AI to answer these questions for you, the result might be slick, but it will be empty of life, merely a projection. A confidence in things is a confidence in creations. It is a confidence in imperfections. It is a confidence in journeys. It is a confidence in scars and sutures, but also smiles. It is a confidence in the language used to sustain moments.

For artists and students to sacrifice what little autonomy is available is to lose everything.