August 29ths
8/29/2019
The history of automation was, at least partially, for the purpose of setting aside more leisure time for craft and creativity that wouldn’t be seen as “work”, and would give meaning to life. Personally, I prefer the idea of work as it relates to craft, and is the only way to get into “flow”. If working in AI, with the final result a great piece of music you play over and over and uplifts you and others, then it has a place. But the idea of “replace humans” is a decidedly bleak idea.
[8/29/2025: Everyone has to find a use for AI where you are always in the loop. If you’re just generating words you’re not using or processing them. This is why I would never generate a lyric or a poem just to churn words. I can churn the music but at least I haven’t churned the words that drive the music. Sometimes I use the music to inspire works I write myself].
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Reading (at least for me) is a way to connect things I already know something about, and enhance that knowledge. Social media has degraded our ability to read well, so we now skim, scroll, and swipe our way through the world.
[Relates the same way: AI is a way of skimming over the possible meaning in words. It’s an extension of how we’re moving away from text to emojis, photos, and video, which don’t use words at all].
8/29/2022
When I was first learning to play music, playing along with records and the radio gave me ideas for composing my own music. I have since realized that it really was an extension of my fascination with language and rhyme, and then rhythm. If you like wordplay, and reading in general, you’re probably more inclined to want to write your own music.
The "lyrics" I used were just chosen at random from 8/29 entries from my diary, one about the 2004 Republican convention on 8/29/2004 and Hurricane Katrina on 8/29/2005. It's a song about nothing and something at the same time, with just three lines, with the "seed" rhythm as the primary motif. I am the "human in the loop" creating the piece manually, to be set against the AI-generated track.
8/29/2025
Broken Wing, a piece in 5/8 written around Katrina, probably noodling around on a guitar while watching it unfold on TV, now a string quartet @20 as a Curio.
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