Thinking for Myself

(Above: my sketch this morning.)

Not long ago, I received an email from a young person who had written a song using AI. He was hoping I’d set the lyrics to music, record and share the song. I declined, but took the request as a compliment. I also encouraged him to try writing a song without using artificial intelligence, because it’s a lot more fun.

Much has been written about the threat AI now poses to creative expression, employment and the environment. Above all (and related to all of these) I grieve the potential loss of our ability to think for ourselves…to puzzle things out…to sit with the questions and arrive at our own insights.

As Rilke wrote in response to a young poet who was hungry for success (and who might have used AI if it were available at the time):

Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves. […] Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”

In his Substack titled “Living the Questions,” Parker J. Palmer recently featured the poem “Now I Become Myself” by May Sarton and reflected on the challenge of showing up as our true selves…something that human-scale creativity helps us to do, or so it seems to me.

Also, synchronistically as I was working on this song yesterday, Dr. Polly Young-Eisendrath posted her excellent essay “Don’t Hand Over Your Decision-Making to AI.” affirming the value of human intention and the urgent need to apply it now in light of AI’s rapid encroachment.

A few notes about the song and video. It surprised me at many turns (songs are always ahead of me!) but especially in the way it affirms the role of loving relationship in the individual quest for meaning.

The experimental video framing was a surprise too, as it included two original paintings, one done by my husband and me many years ago by splashing acrylic paint around on a canvas in the basement, and the other created by my mother a few years before I was born (an abstract of a couple in loving embrace).

Wishing you much love, joy and meaning in the Real that is all around us. Thanks for reading and listening!

Here I go again / thinking for myself / Trying to let in / some truth that I can tell / Yes, here I go again / thinking for myself

Here I am again / meeting with my muse / my fine forever friend / whose hand I can’t refuse / She is coming to me when / I think for myself

Don’t take it away / my right to get it wrong / There’s no easy way to write a human song / Don’t take it away / the answer hard to find / Don’t let me lose my heart to an artificial mind…

I’ll offer—if I may—this educated guess / The beauty that will stay is Love and nothing less / and it’s what I need today / speaking for myself

And so I shall return / for better and for worse / to seek a certain word that suits the Universe / There is much I need to learn / and I need your help

Don’t take it away / my right to get it wrong / There’s no easy way to write the human song / Don’t take it away / the answer hard to find / Don’t let me lose my heart to an artificial mind…

Here I am for now / for my mental health / trying to show you how / I’m truly doing well / yes I’m coming round again / thinking for myself

And I hope it never ends / thinking for myself…

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