Conversation Under The Pink Flower Moon
(Choked up)
An ai of Lou Reed performed
at Big Ears…it was like he was there
His wife designed him
Then performed with him
I take all that in, the great emotion
I wasn’t there. What would I have felt?
I respect being moved
In fact, I respect nothing more
which is exactly why
I hate AI
And here the conversation ended
But in my mind they asked me
Why?
Well, I would have replied
I don’t hate it actually-
(Be more precise)
I hate it replacing a human.
It’s like a fake flower
versus a flower.
There’s doubtless a few reasons
someone might use fake flowers
and those reasons
may justify the plastic
leeching into the lungs of the planet,
settling in our brains,
ending life in an earlier
and more painful way
But a flower is an experience
(must I use the word real?)
A soft touch,
a transportive smell
a medicine of the heart,
the soil, micro and macro life
a reminder of the cycle
we inhabit on earth,
the preciousness and precarious
of each eternal moment-
I could go on
An ai does not do or say things
a human would do or say
No matter how
it is programmed.
If you want to meet Lou Reed
listen to his albums
That is much, much closer
to meeting or seeing him.
And me, I am humbled once again
for I misspoke. I don’t hate ai
I just would rather there were
a lot less fake flowers
a lot less plastic
and what I hate is that I myself
am taken in occasionally
but what is worse is thinking that
the experience of the fake flower
is somehow the same.
Although
Laurie Anderson could have
Created a digital “painting” so to speak
And maybe that “painting” was moving
as an homage.
I guarantee that no ai program of me
taking into account my entire life
will ever answer any question
the way I would answer it
and certainly it would not
create art that I would create
I’m probably going to have nightmares
imagining a dead and digital facsimile
of myself
Sometime in the future.
Will the audience be real then?
or will they be fake too?
4 thoughts on "Conversation Under The Pink Flower Moon"
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Love the question.
amen to this,
amen amen
This shook out really well. I like the little asides. I like the lines of logic and how you can real feel you sorting through it as objectively as possible—i can feel you examining every facet of a very elaborate cubic zirconium. What’s more, I didn’t realize it was, but all too appropos that it was the Pink Flower moon than watched over all of this. I always love how you cut your lines up—for instance,
“No matter how
it is programmed.”
They carry so much right unto themselves. If I read it slowly enough, it’s like admiring elegant brickwork.
Great message. Great argument. Great soliloquy. Great poem.
Wow, thanks for this. I’ve been trying to remember Laurie’s name all year, my cognitive decline being what it is. I met her at her debut of Heart of a Dog in 2015 and remember nothing about it except that it was the most affecting film I had come across. I was dazed by it, homeless at the time – something angelenos can always tell regardless of how well one is dressed – and could barely form a word afterward, my heart broken knowing I would have no one to share the reflection experience with that night once we all left. I remember only wanting to meditate with her, which I asked her about, and which she agreed to, and which I’ve been still too speechless all these years to take her up on. Lovely reflection on your actual subject matter too 🙂 – you just took me back to something else that I cherish so it made it to the top of my internal list. Thanks.