Words off a Page

Isaac Nakone

How do I make these words explode off the page? These stag nant strokes, and yet, these ephemeral signs. Tasked with the impossible: to mean something. Tasked with the impossible: to mean nothing. To die thankless, to die rewarded, to die pun ished. Already I see the associations tesselate out before me. To war, to life, to politics. To all things.

Words are nothing but strokes, opacities. Yet within words that mean everything and nothing, there’s a calling to explore music’s possibilities. Abstraction’s possibilities. There’s the opportunity for process – tesselate – fight – get up – get up – get up. There’s an opportunity to forget the one-sidedness. Music resolves the difficulties of language. Using your imagination to forget your deliberations and harness your proclivities!

This jazz is a whack-a-mole with a thousand players. Philomena sings like Aretha, pouring a bit of blues and lot of soul into the mic –

Dancers sway within the galactic linings, several layers in and out! The beat pops, the piano keys sway and sing and stroke the pianist’s fingers – saying “hello” back to her. This freaky piano speaks in the language of infinities despite the fact that her fingers point finite and compact. Philomena’s movements.

Who would know that things would change? Who knew that machines would take over? I thought it would happen, just not like this!

“Marshal. Marshal?” says the voice from the telephone. “Are you with me?”

“No. Not anymore.”

Author’s Note:

I have found that readers find my creative experiments obscure and unnecessarily complicated. I imagine the response here will be similar.

I have decided to include some explanation as to the intended meaning of the work. For some background and context: a writer friend of mine and I have recently been researching the implications of artificial intelligence (AI) on writing and the meaning of literature. The project of understanding the implications of AI in this realm is vast, however, I think part of the consideration should be (and currently is) focused on what AI cannot do. Yes. In my writing I have been precisely interested in the type of unstructured prose that AI will never be able to replicate – at least I hope so!

A good question which I can imagine someone screaming out is: “Is the lack of a recipe equivalent to a recipe for non-sensical B.S. writing?” To that, my answer is to present my writing. Does it make sense? What meaning can you make from it? Is it just B.S? Perhaps there is some higher order structure. What is “good art?” Maybe we aught to readdress this question in these changing times.