What AI compels me to say.

I've seen impressive advances in AI recently, and I understand it will only be a matter of time before the machines can create masterpieces of art and writing much faster than any of us can. I've been forced to reevaluate what makes art valuable.

The AI cannot generate the context that creates the art; that's a life that you must live. That part primes us to interpret art a specific way, and even to create it a certain way. That part has to be lived and can't be generated any other way.

When I wrote Arizona Kenopsia, it was in response to a historic time and place that can't be replicated. I saw Arizona with the eyes of a newly arrived stranger, and it inspired in me an alien, hostile future of science fiction as bizarre as Mars. I encountered the pandemic in this context. I saw the world shut down and busy places become ghost towns. I became chronically ill, and understood the shift in ethics and ruminations that causes.

Arizona Kenopsia, with its many distinct qualities, is anchored in a time and place real to all of us, but especially to me. Everything we took for granted was closing, shrinking, hiding away. Strip malls became barren. The media, professors, and jurors became dubious instruments of the regime. Life receded into illness. Every day we asked ourselves what in the world it was for, but doggedly persisted in the courageous and selfless act of living.

That will never lose its value.

​I'll write more on what makes each thing I write valuable. The context I give the writing is just as important as the art and writing. The context is the life I lived and shared with some of you.