AI, Plastic Surgery, and the Sacred of Story

I recently posted a short little jibe dubbing AI the “plastic surgery of story”. I said what I said. And stand by it. But this prompted an ex-journalist friend who’s deeply embroiled in the AI of it all to ask:  “Why do you hate AI?”

Hate is such a strong word. And besides, what I feel is not a charged ire launched outward in all directions to display my rage, but more of an inner wince, aimed inward and reaching into the deepest parts of me — those places where the wants live, where the wishes and dreams dwell.

Thinking on it: When one is seen to wince, it is often far more than a mere grimace — but instead an entire shrinking movement of the body — a physical revolt of sorts — away from an expected source of hurt or distress. I say wince because it is pain (or the anticipation of it)— not anger —  that AI brings to mind. 

Why pain? Isn´t distress a bit dramatic? It’s just AI? For me, it is apt. Apt because it deals with the deepest parts of me (and you, I imagine), where those wishes and dreams dwell. But to dwell, one thinks of being at rest. This would be the hope, dare I say, prayer. 

AI worries me. I wince. Anticipating the pain of the loss of the story. Those elements of that creative chorus that sang a journey that— up unto now — has been the soundtrack of my life. The music that has made me, mostly due to its cacophony, and the way that it somehow sculpts the chaos into art worthy of an audience, even if it that peanut gallery is an audience of one, limited to the woman I see peering back at me daily from a pane of glass.

Reading was my solace as a child — and remains today a staple. The double entendre is accurate, thinking back on the countless characters (friends, really) whose journeys woke something in me, reached some corner of what I call the otherwise unknown ish. (This I now know to be those wants, dreams, and wishes buried deep). 

I still recall with vivid detail the moments when I read the words of those "friends", those exact instances when the dialogue they breathed — in one way or another — broke something in me. 

When Jane’s speech shattered the self-imposed ceiling I hadn’t realized I’d hung — that second I took hold of the truth that I too am no bird ensnared by nets, but a free human being with an independent will. Or the rally cry that resonated deep within me, a shared guttural brag from the Bell Jar sent by Sylvia Plath to somehow scorch — and soothe — my soul simultaneously: “I am, I am, I am”.

There are far too many memories of such moments to mention here, but two more must be given praise: The time Charlotte Bronte sent Jane to sit with me, whispering words no one else would utter in fear of seeming unstable, or worse, needy. She understood that he had made and broken me, and that it was a deep wound made all the more painful by the fever pitch of wedded bliss it belied. Like a punch in a prize fight, Bronte left a bruise — but it was healing to have bled beside. 

Lastly, when Wild Geese crumbled my walls with animalistic assurances — declarations that I do not have to be good, or crawl through a desert of repentance for … existence -- those entire months on end, when Mary Oliver mercilessly martyred the victim mentality, to birth me -- mustn´t be made small.

It was as if these friends living in the pages of the tomes I held within my hands were holding my hands, bearing witness of what rumbled in me— touching the wants, those dreams, them wishes, so they could have each their moment in the sun, then slowly subside back to an equilibrium, at rest because they had been seen, touched, and released and untethered, even just for a moment.

*Maya Angelou once wrote, ”There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you” — This, ironically taken from a gift given to the world titled I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. 

Like so many authors (and characters) up to now, Angelou says all I could say, and better. 

I do not hate AI. I simply love the story.