DIY vs. AI
"Shaped for People: Sacred Harp Singing in the Age of A.I.," Image, Issue 124, Spring 2025
An essay is not a thing done, a product; it is a posture, a verb. But this isn’t a class, so anyway. About DIY versus AI: I tried, tested, weighed, made an attempt (from the French!) for Image Magazine, which said it was closing its doors, then so many people rallied, and now it’s funded, back, even better. Hooray!
What a pleasure to work with the editors there. Careful, whipsmart, large-hearted, curious. And what a pleasure, really, to cut 1,600 words on a week’s turnaround. It’s like taking a haul to the ARC! Off you go, Halloween costumes, German noodle press, grippy hospital socks. Aren’t you glad I didn’t include my amateur boxing analogy? Or the menacing/flat-affect alt-right AI cartoon hunk? Or discourse on Petrarch’s dull, but historically significant essay wherein he climbs Mont Ventoux, thus ushering in a new scandalous vantage and/or age? Me too. Cut, cut, cut.
The banana pudding stayed. LaVerne stayed. Auld Lang Syne is here, as is a human bagpipe.
With gratitude to every sacred harp singer, living and dead + some bad news for the guys in power. You can read it in print. Or it’s online, here:
“Shaped for People: Sacred Harp Singing in the Age of A.I.”
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Not shape note, but Marian Anderson, thus: song related. “When I Hear Marian Anderson Sing,” a mural I painted along a bike path a few years ago. The poem is from Gwendolyn Brooks’ wonderful collection for children, Bronzeville Boys and Girls.