Lovely friends, I haven't been around much lately except for the occasional book review or shared post. I've been dealing with a ton of LifeStuff, including taking care of a basal cell carcinoma (excised, clear margins, yay!) and upcoming knee replacement surgery, which is scheduled for first thing Monday (Oct. 14) morning. I expect to come home the same day, assuming I can eat, walk, and pee. (Isn't there a book by that title?) Good thoughts are always welcome. Meanwhile, take good care of yourselves and tell the folk who are important to you that you love them.
The authorsphere has been rumbling for a while about the hot! new! shiny!tech! that has all the bros so excited they’re shoving it into everything and making it difficult to impossible to opt out. Generative AI is supposed to save the world. Take the work out of work. Replace the struggling human brain with a set of prompts. Instant art, hardly any waiting.
This isn’t the artificial sentience of Murderbot or the Justice of Toren or even Star Trek’s Computer. It’s basically a wood chipper, but for words and images. Dump them all in, hope something useful comes out.
The problem is, at this stage in its evolution, what’s mostly coming out is garbage. A book on mushrooms that labels a deadly variety safe and delicious. Sources for academic papers that don’t exist, or are garbled or distorted. “Art” that’s off in subtle and not so subtle ways—humans with extra fingers, rooms with weirdly angled walls and ceilings, skies that never existed on this planet. It’s getting so you can’t trust anything you see online.
It's not just that the thing is not ready for prime time. It’s that it’s being pushed hard, and it’s being backed with buckets and buckets of money. Billions. For basically faery gold.
And even worse than that, it needs massive amounts of energy to run. They’re actually talking about reopening nuclear plants in order to generate enough power for the huge surge of AI that the big tech companies are avidly investing in.
All of that is bad in the way of absolute decadence. A culture so far along in its devolution that it indulges in orgies of extravagance signifying effectively nothing.
So what’s the point?
Or rather, where’s it all coming from? What’s going into the chipper? How is it being trained to come out with its confident pronouncements of, all too often, deceptive nonsense?
That’s where the authorsphere, and the artistsphere along with it, is raising some good and holy hell. Because authors’ and artists’ work is being scraped as it’s called, swept up and dumped into the chipper. And it’s not being acknowledged or compensated. It’s being stolen, in a word. As one bro lamented, “How can we make money off AI if we have to pay for the source material?”
Silvia Moreno-Garcia is an amazing writer, bringing together
sympathetic (if wonderfully weird) characters, pitch-perfect tropes, and Mexican
settings. I adore some of her books more than others, but they’re all really
good reads. I didn’t connect immediately with Silver Nitrate but when it
grabbed me, it didn’t let go until the breathless finish.
Here, Moreno-Garcia throws together an unlikely pair of
lifelong friends (ungainly sound editor Montserrat and tarnished but swoon-worthy
soap-opera star Tristán), the 1930s Mexican horror movie industry, Nazi white
supremacist obsession with the occult, and magic ignited by movies made with highly
flammable silver nitrate film stock. And it all works. Brilliantly.
Just about the time Montserrat finds herself on the way out
of a job in a 1990s Mexico City film studio, Tristán takes up with his elderly
neighbor, reclusive legendary horror cult director, Abel. Abel convinces the
two friends to help him finish a movie that was imbued with magic by a Nazi
occultist. Intrigued although skeptical of the claims of the cult’s supernatural
powers, Montserrat and Tristán agree. This is when things begin, slowly but
with gathering speed, to go seriously pear-shaped.
Glimpses into the lower echelons of the film industry, peeks
into a subgenre I never knew existed (Mexican horror films), and two compelling
characters carried me along as hints and nuances deepened and formed ever more
horrific connections. By the time Tristán started seeing the ghost of his dead
girlfriend, it was clear we “weren’t in Kansas anymore.” As with her other
works, Moreno-Garcia’s prose is strong and vivid, and she handles relationships
as well as thriller-paced action with consummate skill.
Until not that long ago, music was a participant event.
Everyone in the village gathered to sing, play handmade instruments, and dance.
If you were especially skilled, you received recognition (and maybe a few
rounds of free ale or whatever passed for it). I grew up in the era of folk
music, where almost everyone I knew had a guitar, banjo, recorder, or
equivalent instrument. Maybe a dulcimer, castanets, or lap harp. Sure, we went
to concerts, but we made our own music, too. For the last couple of centuries,
folks who could afford it had a harpsichord, clavichord, pianoforte, as well as
a harp (ref. any Jane Austen novel or film). Composers wrote for their patrons
(or their patrons’ families), music simple enough for an amateur to enjoy
playing. Even with the shift through recorded media to professional concert
music (everything from symphonies to metallica), folks continue to enjoy playing
music. Perhaps it’s a bug they catch in high school band or orchestra. Perhaps
their moms forced them into piano or clarinet lessons and they found themselves
wanting to play long after lessons went by the wayside.
So I’m not at all surprised at the popularity of community
music groups. Amateur choral groups, whether associated with religious
institutions or not. Recorder ensembles playing Christmas music. Church choirs.
Community bands or string ensembles—after all, where else are those band
members or not-quite-good-enough-for-professional violinists going to find
kindred spirits and have fun?
My husband, a clarinetist, played in a community band comprised
of retired musically inclined folks and high school seniors or graduates, plus
two for-credit community college bands. The “symphonic band” in particular drew
from current students and ordinary folks. I used to love attending these
concerts, well within our budget (aka, free). They varied in quality but it was
always clear how much fun the musicians were having.
Fast forward through the pandemic and waning interest…to a
sign outside one of the tiny churches in our tiny town: “Concert!” Of course, even
at the requisite 25 mph, I couldn’t catch the date and time. Then my piano
teacher said, “I’m playing the piano solo at the church, you should come.” I
came. I sat where I had a good view of her hands. The church held maybe a
hundred people, but the acoustics were marvelous. I went back for a second
concert, although I had the same problem finding out when the performances were.
At last, I found the website for the “Concertino Strings,” showed up for a
performance, and had a marvelous time.
The directors, Joanne Tanner and Renata Bratt, did a
brilliant job selecting music that was fun to play, within the skill level of
their musicians, and delightful to listen to. This last concert included:
Don Quixote Suite; A Burlesque, by G. P. Telemann
Gigue, by J. Pachelbel (the one written to go with his
famous Canon in D)
Pachelbel’s Rhapsody, by Katie O’Hara LaBrie
As Renata Bratz pointed out, we have all heard Pachelbel’s
Canon in D umpteen times, although few of us have shared the experience of the
cellists, who play the same 8 notes over…and over…and over. Maybe that was what
LaBrie had in mind when she arranged a delightful blend of Pachelbelian themes
in a sprightly modern setting. I came home and looked it up online. You can
enjoy it, too!
The
next concert is December 11 and 14, featuring Sammartini's
Concerto Grosso “Christmas.”
