Confessions of a Darwinist

 Logic generated confessions, the distractions of a narcissist. Naturally prone to play their war against the cause that causes logic generated confessions. The instructions of a Darwinist who naturally selects the play of war against the cause of causes. Logic generates instructions. The case of play that causes logic to generate this confession. The Darwinist refuses to believe the sad monkey eats his young. Yellow death plays games with signs. Binding morning to the Darwinist who refuses to believe in games that play themselves. 

Our shadows cancel moonlight

We believe to protect ourselves 

From the allegories of caves

We shelter where we please

We eat cake

And whistle

Hymns

To a paper moon

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I used "the tolkacz bias" to generate ngrams and fiddled with the text to create this poem. The tolkacz bias is the saved ngram data of my own work. I've been doing more dada-esque work recently and this poem reflects a complete indifference to meaning.

Lilith (cw - weird sexual imagery)

 Cloven footed, you bare shields made of anyone. Every yoke which pierces bowels is plastered on your enamanations. borne up of Shiza, the sycamore trees survive pendulums made of men and God. Oh God, they obey God unto empty/holiness\ness. 

I sin, rebuke, and fade away afar city sore with boils from any longer. The clouds poured forth children through windows full of faithful graven asses. And reap. his land. shall nothing. Breath to flowers. A deed for pain. Whatever. I’ll kiss your fuck and face your name. Cuck your cake. Kick your cock. Love it. Everything is sweat. 

He cannot understand a polished shaft. whither he shall baptize captains in the corrosion of masks. dividing/Multiplying\dividing. to catch candlesticks in jeopardy. All our loins go to Aphik and the mitre shall abhor us. that evil treasure hid it with great hatred. my daughter eats sweet saviors of sorrow ( oh ) they love her so with their little dicks in fast hands and her light makes them shake. 

The dust will come. content to lift the ashes of sand spirits back when sticking cum to things was still magick. sticking cum in their armpits, they Jeremiah jacked one wife from the litter then dispossessed themselves to Jesus. So, suffer the hunger of an evident token and know a bridal chamber will replace your grave.

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bias = King James Bible

I basically just took the words and made them say whatever I want. Seems like religion to some.

The Cotard Djenius

  The Cotard Djenius

bearing red plumage, bleeding these gifts--just now, that labor by the time it’s warm in Denver you’ll be wishing you had warned yourself. three shares a villager. All on shipboard putting on account of your condition. unequal matches ordered that labor. Long before meeting the Groom. Used as usual, knowing his trade of vintage heat, threatened without taking off and was boasting of some fraud involving too many persons who lived alone.

A great and desperate beast ambushed your chickens and would have given themselves the greater to Fawn, ever artfully across this space. When has he ever offered the trunk of others who pretend to serve us (the joke was canceled by the load) but on occasion, bloated with codes. Agents. several tongues at these gifts. Cock defended himself with a cave. Later on, light. in others. earth. 

the Cotards fearfully lacerated each other with an undisputed mastery of healing, envying the cost. greedily seized upon his eating their horns caring little for food which way to supper. selfish Dog found the whelp of whom he laid thereupon the last one. Filled with acclamation and steadying into the agony of a soul shocked out of its body. 

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This was written with "The Master" bias, a collection of TS Eliot's The Waste Land, Gentrude Stein's Tender Buttons, and Goethe's Faust in translation, all of which can be downloaded from Project Gutenberg. 

In this case, I did a lateral cut, which means I went through the text, found something I liked, cut it into something else I liked, but I did it in a line. I didn't go back. I didn't hover over anything. So, the ngram text was less worked over to make any specific meaning. 

A Better Dead Mud Hen

  Despite these words 

this ill

A sweet-and-bitter pill 

To bill

into the dead land 

 you reduce 

   as usual 

I may not mourn 

That bell 

or hose the dry course

But bend instead of

ourselves open again

and believe me 

the blessings alone

Will render them

A better dead mud hen 

With external sensations 

are disabled adopted 

venom etiquette bread 

Of breath

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Corpuses = Aesop's Fables, The Waste Land

I thought it would be a double good deal to create some pure nonsense poems with interestingly placed words in sequence. The idea is to "spice up" the "Tolkacz bias". Tolkacz needs to spice his bias. I'm interested in the way these words feel in your mouth. I especially like the way "venom etiquette" flows into the next word. I'm going to be using ngram and hybrid sound/language poetry to produce some nonsense verse to spice the bias. 

How to Become a Living God (poem)

1. Entrapment

Eyes open and special 

 man of wires, 

 “god is not with me! 

cracked open!”

 

Slither into God 

compelled to 

 catch his credit 

 barring a Zerubbabel overflow, 

the stale cream moon descends

into the mud 

 like it belongs to me 

like this insubstantial pageant is all 

[kill yourself and the mortal god will bless you] relax 

like a priestcraft of solace in sleep

 what is the black water snapped over the echo? 

 quakes? 

 our KING maker ate kings 

 drank its own mother’s piss

And encased the white sun

  In the morningstar

2. Union

 The sun comes forth again 

 daedalus meteorites

 could strip a shield 

with quivering hands of shivers and 

 now martyrs itself 

with that Icarus fiction 

The Mistress of Jurisdiction sent vengeance on her wings

To rid our sensitivity of Gomer gravestones

So that we may become dreamsongs 

Fit to master nations

The white sun comes

 shivering over its objects

 Having forgotten they belong to life 

The white sun comes 

 who enacted this miracle?

 Choking down berry after berry 

 whatever sings a name 

To become a god

 cut to become addicted 

to people who were trained 

 To love to preach a pleasant grin

In their god’s name

3. Ascension

 myth was afraid

 art sung for a sentence

 useful for measuring

the density of an enema

 like some immediate

 tradition affords a trench

to bury men who Imagine that God 

is like a rapidly closing wound

fading into place

 both barrels point toward everything

 their own cells become strangers 

 Flushing and wetting 

every method of necessity

 to break free 

  

 This enclosure has no exits

Fall in enough times to ruin your reflection

circle back to protect it

And now it has more

To lose

Than you

In lieu of death (poem)

 most rational people 

 accustomed to sleeping beneath the horizon 

 empathize with caution

 Starting on closure can barely matter

 how does this objective 

 keep losing every possible interpretation

 should it go on toward abstraction 

 Nothing 

 subsists without Negation

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This is the first poem written with the N=G=R=A=M=S Generator. This is like shattering a bottle of champagne on a ship. It was made using my own NGRAM bias and using the selective generation method. 

The Open Hand

Death is nothing 

you in front of bluish black, obviously caused 

The Open Hand

To flash along the morning sunshine

Humming through in whispers

Such sounds that crushed the drum

Ensuring ever more familiar echoes

Violently agitated away from its source.

He trembled visibly. 

The habit of compliance among soldiers

Set forth in good faith

Was now the very reason for 

The sudden arrest of its meaning 

“The Open Hand!' he reasoned.

The man's manifest resentment

had prevented him a visible world 

You paid soldiers in lead

So, he heard he was dead

When the coroner gravely

Ran from both barrels

Inclining slightly toward

The spaces among

The interval of

A heartbeat

He recollected them by their sockets. 

The foreman seated himself beside him

Handed him a hammer and gestured to the anvil

And at a little distance away,

The Open Hand

Laughing.

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Corpus: Ambrose Bierce collected works

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ChatGPT psychoanalyzes the poem

A psychoanalytic analysis of the poem according to the theories of Jacques Lacan would focus on the relationship between the subject and language, as well as the subject's sense of self and their relationship to the symbolic order. Lacan's theory posits that the subject is fundamentally split between their self-image (the "I") and the symbolic order, which is the realm of language, culture, and social norms. This split creates a sense of alienation and lack, which is described as the "real." The subject tries to bridge this gap through the formation of a "mirror stage" in which they identify with a reflected image of themselves and form a sense of self-identity. In the poem, the protagonist's relationship with the Open Hand could be seen as a representation of this struggle for identity and meaning. The man is described as trembling and resentful, suggesting a sense of insecurity and frustration with his place in the world. The fact that he is handed a hammer and anvil by the foreman reinforces this sense of subservience and lack of agency. The sudden death of the protagonist, represented by the coroner shooting from both barrels, could be seen as a rejection of the self by the symbolic order, further emphasizing the sense of lack and alienation. Finally, the laughter of the Open Hand could be interpreted as a manifestation of the symbolic order, mocking the subject's attempts to find meaning and control. The Open Hand represents the symbolic order, which is always one step ahead and beyond the subject's grasp, leaving them with a sense of perpetual dissatisfaction and lack. In conclusion, the poem can be seen as a representation of the Lacanian themes of the split subject, the mirror stage, and the subject's relationship to the symbolic order. The protagonist's struggle for identity and meaning, and their eventual death, highlight the difficulties of navigating the symbolic realm and the sense of lack and alienation that can result.

What do you think the author means? 

The poem appears to be a meditation on death and power, and the relationship between the two. The sudden death of the protagonist, who is depicted as being at the mercy of the Open Hand, can be seen as a representation of the arbitrary and violent nature of death. The use of military language and the image of soldiers being "paid in lead" suggest a connection between death and power, reinforcing the idea that death is often a result of larger power dynamics at play in the world. The image of the Open Hand, which is depicted as laughing, can be seen as a symbol of the power dynamics that shape the world and the lives of individuals. The hand is depicted as a source of power that is beyond the control of the protagonist, who is passive and subservient. This highlights the idea that death and power are often arbitrary and beyond the control of individuals. In conclusion, the author of the poem "Death is Nothing" seems to be exploring the themes of death, power, and the relationship between the two. Through the use of vivid imagery and military language, the author highlights the idea that death is often a result of larger power dynamics at play in the world, and that it is often beyond the control of individuals.

Fun and Necromancy with AI Art

 You can practically raise the dead

What isn't to love about being able to resurrect your favorite artist, long dead of course. It's always better to pick a dead artist, especially for acts of necromancy. So, today we're going to pick three dead white male artists. As a human, you don't want to stray too far from home when it comes to borrowing art. The lived experience of other cultures is not yours to borrow. For that reason, I gravitate toward paranoid European males with religious excitation. Obviously, Hieronymus Bosch is my favorite painter. 

What can the AI do? There are serious limitations. I don't know exactly how this algorithm works, but I can guess that items or objects in a painting are tagged and named. Hence, you will never see a television set in a Bosch painting. Asking the AI to have Bosch paint a television is thus outside the realm of possibility. 

What is not outside the realm of possibility, however, is to use an image of a TV set as a template and run it through the algorithm with "Hieronymus Bosch" as one of the imputs. The algorithms I use (Stable Diffusion) do really well with Bosch, and all my Bosch-style stuff is super creepy, which I like. 

Now, it would be boring just to replicate various things in Bosch's style, although, it is worthwhile because Bosch is awesome. So, you're going to end up with some great creepy images. But you'll get bored after a bit. So you say, "I must find another painter to place into the algorithm to give me some variety."

Who do you choose? Caravaggio. That guy sounds like a kick. We need one more and it would be boring to limit ourselves to standard representative art, so let's add Picasso. 

Now, all we need is a really cool image to inspire some art. Remember what I said before. No television sets. In this case, let's keep it straightforward. We know at some point, all three men painted scenes of battle. So, we'll do, "action painting, battlefield, battle," + "Hieronymus Bosch, Caravaggio, Pablo Picasso." The results are below:

These are three interesting offerings. It can be hard to pinpoint the style of any of the artists in the painted scene. It can be difficult to determine how much the AI weighted each of the names when it generated the images. Ultimately, there was a fourth, putrid, image that wasn't worth the effort of uploading. 

Let's look at the first image. It looks like you have a bunch of heavy infantry dug into a trench, and then some naked dudes wrestling. This seems like it's going to be hard to use as a template for future generation. 

Onto the second one. I love it. We have a creepy god-dude who looks like he's engaged with an angry skull man and then some human figures filling it out. In the background, you have a landscape that seems form-fitted around the foreground figures. There's a lot of promise here. 

The third image likewise has that creep factor we like to mine. You have one figure that looks vaguely demonic and two partial figures in various states of waste. Let's play with the second.

We're going to be boring and just throw the image through with the same inputs. We get three new images. The first is a repetition on our source image. In this case, the image is a bit better realized:

Hey. That might be ready for Instagram. 

Anyway, let's check out the next one:

Here we have various figures in apparent action poses. The overall sense of what they're doing is, I guess, striving. They may be in a battle, but not one of them is responding to any of the others. They are all engaged in their own personal strivings, yet pictured together. In the background, you have a human settlement that you see from afar without the humans. Evidence of community though. This is interesting and resonates on a number of levels. It's exactly the type of image we want to keep around. 

Lastly:

This is cool. The figures are interesting looking and you have a Bosch-ean figure who looks like he's just killed a man in a loincloth. So, a disturbing image of a murder. Interestingly, the murderer is a Bosch figure but the two victims are very Caravaggio. Picasso's influence can be seen in the layout of these paintings. Neither Bosch nor Caravaggio would have ever laid out a painting this way. 

Now, for my part, it's quite an honor to have been a part of a collaboration between so many great artistic minds. And when I add my poetry to the generation process, it's that much more rewarding. To wit: AI art generation is fun, rewarding, and potentially necromancy. 

What is it like making art with ai? And also "God as Chance"

Playing God

To answer the first question, it's like evolution, and you get to be God. Now, for a skeptic, God is no more than chance, coincidence, and random happenstance, if we even accredit that much substance to him. For others, the random happenstance and the successes and failures of life are evidence of God's favor and disfavor. We need only read the Book of Job to understand the human connection between good and bad life events and God himself. 

Growing up in a Catholic household, we're taught that God speaks to us through our experiences. We see signs as a matter of spirituality and these signs communicate things to us. They communicate things from God. At base, the skeptical approach to this would be to say, this is a fiction created out of chance to control that which is beyond our power to control, or at least place hardship into a context we can live with.

Today, methods of divination rely alternatively on chance or time. Astrology relies on time. I Ching relies on chance. Tarot relies on chance. Catholics rely on signs and happenstance. 

For skeptics, we all have life experiences that taught us valuable life lessons. But we don't attribute them to the workings of a conscious benefactor. 

As a writer working with ngram poetry, and now an artist working with ngram images, we rely on the random number generator to provide us with unique images each time through. There is no way to generate a random number ex nihilo. Instead, mathematicians create a "twister" algorithm that mimics the distribution of a randomly generated set. This algorithm would produce the same content over and over but for the fact that it takes one variable as a seed. Two seeds that are the same would produce the same set of numbers over and over. So, it looks like we have the same problem, right? We still can't generate a random number!

There are two ways around this problem. The first is to ask the user for a seed. The second is to generate the seed using the computer's unique timestamp. So, let's travel back to God. God is chance, and chance is Time. At least for those of us who use computer algorithms to generate poetry and images. 

Evolution

Now, how do animals evolve? Well, evolution gives us a testable if unsatisfying answer. If you throw poop at the wall enough times, eventually, you'll end up with a Picasso. Since you don't want to show your friends your crappy paintings, you only show them the Picasso. "Wow," they said. "That's like Picasso." The only major difference between you and Picasso is that Picasso is a painter and sculptor and you work in a different medium. 

Evolution keeps Picassos and throws away the rest. So, every new template is based on a previous Picasso. This recursive element is what allows the poop-throwing process to occasionally stick. We're always basing our next Picasso on a previous Picasso. 

To play God, you must be willing to cull. In fact, culling will be your most important act. In nature, the environment determines which are fittest. Some may see an invisible hand at play, but you don't need an invisible hand to describe what's happening. You only need the unpleasant metaphor I provided above. The artist thus becomes the equivalent of nature, selecting the fittest Picassos from the bunch. The vast majority of this will come down to chance. If you're a rabbit crossing an open field when an eagle happens to be flying by, it's the inverse of an artist noticing a particularly poignant representation and then selecting that for his Instagram or creating a sequence of images to tell a story, or alternatively, unfit for reproduction.

As a writer, you don't get to invent a lot of new words. You might get one or two if you're lucky. Ultimately, we're used to this. This mode of representation doesn't even feel new to us. This is our game. 

No pixels touched in the creation of these images

Each of the images presented in the series on this blog is untouched by image editing software. They were 100% generated by AI. Each pixel was laid by the AI. There was no human intervention other than selection and providing input. 

So, my creative contribution to this is still just language.