Art is Art is Art

“That’s not a real thing” my roommate says when I complain to her about writer’s block and I agree, though I haven’t been able to write more than a paragraph without deleting it for two weeks now. I agree though. Writer’s block is not real. 
Two of my roommates study business, but they have a background in AI. during light conversation on my balcony, they enjoy making fun of what the business world naively thinks AI is or AI does, how they think the next big break is always just around the corner. Neither of them really knows how to close the balcony’s door from outside, so the smell of cigarettes will often drift inside my small room, coiling in my blankets and in my drapes. 

I have been told, in indignant tones, that the only reason I hate AI and its use in art so much is because I like art. In case you, like me, are having trouble finding the critique in that accusation, let me help you out: it’s supposed to say I am biased. That my enjoyment of art is getting in the way of my ability to accurately form an opinion on artificial intelligence. 

In response to this, I haven’t asked, but I wish I did: what human on earth dislikes art? Not some art, or various aspects of art, or the art world (for I can think of an endless list of artists who themselves dislike the art world) but art in general. Art in total. What soul gets no enjoyment, no enrichment or pleasure from any form of art?

Let’s imagine, in this case, a hypothetical man, who, we’ll refer to as Gregg. This hypothetical Gregg wakes up in the morning to no alarm sound and gets up from his bed surrounded by blank white walls. He has no rugs covering the floors, and if he does, they are factory-made grey ones, only there for functionality. Gregg puts on no songs while he showers nor does he notice the musicality and rhythm of the water hitting his shower wall. To appease even the toughest critics of this analogy, Gregg doesn’t cook, nor does he buy take out food from the closest restaurants, which might have chefs who put thought and intention in every dish. He eats ready-made dishes; the kind you poke a few times with a fork before popping in the microwave. Gregg has a sparkling-clean stove. Gregg’s workplace is in a generic building and if it happens that the building has any architectural peculiarities, he doesn’t notice them. The only thing that is true of his work is that he creates nothing. His job, in itself, bares little importance, but if it were to bare any greater importance or purpose, he would still not take any enjoyment out of it. His commute is done via a car that is parked either in front of his residence or in the office parking lot, in order to minimize the chances of Gregg spending too much time in public zones such as a metro station, where he runs the risk of hearing, or even worse, seeing street performers, which grate his nerves. If there is any graffiti on the walls of the parking lot, he doesn’t see it. And most important, once Gregg gets home, he does nothing. There are no shows or movies he had been waiting to see; no album he needed just a bit of time and a cup of tea to listen to. He solves no puzzles and reads no books. He writes in no journals. He doesn’t take to any hobbies, even the more technical ones, such as tinkering with his car, because he takes no enjoyment from feeling the engine purr a particular way on a smooth road. When, on a Friday night, Gregg goes on a date with the girl from work who asked him out, he doesn’t notice the bar lights on her face or the artistry of the cocktail glass they have been sharing and when, at the end of the night, he grabs a late dinner alone at the only fast-food joint still open he fails to notice any significance in the moment. 

By cutting art away from your life, you are, implicitly, cutting away your humanity; not exactly building a wall between you and others, but digging a ditch over which no one can throw anything to try and reach you. 

By living like this, that is, cutting art away from your life, you are, implicitly, cutting away your humanity; not exactly building a wall between you and others, but digging a ditch over which no one can throw anything to try and reach you. The thing about the use of AI is that it prioritizes efficiency, while art is always inefficient. The thing about efficiency is that there is nothing more efficient than not allowing anything to touch you or to move you. The thing about making art efficient is that when art becomes efficient it stops being art. 

Ana Blandiana wrote that a writer is a writer because of their quality as a witness. A writer doesn’t make art, but lives it, and only lives in order to get the materials for art. Everything is done in the name of putting pen to paper. 

One of my favourite works of art is a Tumblr post where the author describes getting mad when faced with such an obvious metaphor that attempting to capture it on page would be futile, and they give the example of one sole glow-in-the-dark star painted over in landlord-white on the ceiling of an Airbnb. People have responded to this post by making a poem out of it, or telling the author that in writing about it, they have already captured the metaphor, but my favourite of those is a bit of blackout poetry where the words of the original post are crossed out in such a way that the poem ends in “you get to do it justice”.

That would be my main issue with a character as unrealistic as Gregg. In assuming that such a person could exist, one is assuming someone on earth never loved anything enough to want to do it justice.