I googled something once
The value of the humanities can be described in a multitude of ways, one in which I’ve adopted is the notion that engaging with culture, communities and the arts, interrogating their forms, can help us better interrogate our own lives in this same manner as the classics and the acclaimed.
So I was crying over the death of Socrates studying for my ancient Mediterranean history class and something stood out to me.
“this charming man”, this charming man you say…
Acclaimed artistry, The Smiths. As I grow up I move from listening to them in nostalgia for my mother’s taste and her adolescent soundscape and now nuzzle my way into the songs.
It’s quite odd to grow with a song, to fit yourself, your narrative and snapshots slot into anothers lyrics, someone else’s life.
Well isn’t this the point of the arts, to find ones own universal truth and experiences as a mortal reflected back to them.
I think in this way it’s when I began hypothesizing The Smith’s discography adapts these narratives I find myself further encountering through courses like Classical Mythology which highlight to me themes such as the Greek god Dionysus having parallels with Jesus as the twice born god, paralles between Gilgamesh and the Egyptians and flooding stories and creation stories and ways we fill the time but in the end its all the same.
So basically I googled (which is synonymous with asking a language learning model to guzzle natural resources at unaccounted for rates), “This Charming Man”.
I mean this feels like the equivalent of needing help, knowing 911 and calling them to discuss community resources and options for your particular situation–as its a coagulate of resources– and instead you get a cop at your door.
So in a way I was glad to see this as I was worried I was drawing an obvious parallel, and then you read the lyrics.
I think its beautiful, the A. plot is yes of course, he cannot afford the love of this man embellished in life’s class memento moris; leather a nod to our agricultural past and the industrialization of our relations with the land and its occupants and of course our own mortality.
He would go out tonight but he has nothing to wear!! I get it!!
But B.
B plot..?
Well if we are to assume The Smiths are maybe well read, maybe are interested in catchy tunes–Whats a hook? What can someone say over and over and over with you, fit themselves in, relate to your situation.
The B. expands it to the larger ephemeral subjectivity of our lives, and as we age and we keep developing these complicated, intricate, stitched together relationships with the world and what it does to us, we find new meaning in those words.
Words echoed by archives of lives already lived.
Words uttered by Socrates on his deathbed about his guard who would not project the animosity of another group unto someone marginalized.
Words read and lectured on for X amount of years– I’m not googling it just trust me bro.
Words sprinkled throughout peoples engagement with the literature or anything it spurred beyond it.
And I think that’s beautiful and just an example of something a chatbot could never imagine, unprompted.
I urge you, ask your friends, your neighbor, the tutor center, the library the questions you plug to the bot, or at least think about doing it for it was Socrates who was interested in questioning our implicit lines of logic.
These microchoices of resources add up and when the water’s murky and the energy bills continue to climb, you might have to just read a book under candle light and think little silly thoughts about the characters and you, hopefully with a friend too.
Or analyze a song and post it to the web!
It pays to be media literate, to your soul, the eternal beat.
We are the archives and the algorithm,
act compassionately and creatively, xo.
