An Interventionist God

Have you doubted synchronicity lately? I use disparate influences as a way to solve an Illustration assignment. When I receive an editorial piece that needs a visual idea to build the piece around, I take time away from sketching and thinking about the text. I purposely do other things, with the visual problem of the assignment perched on the edge of my consciousness. The focus on a different activity or subject helps to reframe my thinking. Reading and drawing away from the problem invariably leads me back to the problem. But the organic experiences and peripheral searches that have supported my process for so many years have changed. Now, I’m not sure if it is my framing or the filter bubble that is directing my thoughts.

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I’m working on a project that is based on the history of my mother’s family in the 19th century. I have done extensive research using census, marriage, and death records. I wanted to see how Google Gemini would do as a research aid. It did a marvelous job of fabricating an entire story that had nothing to do with my family.

I have done the primary work, and I know that my great grandfather was part of the economic migration of French Canadians workers employed in the cotton mills of Rhode Island in the 1870’s. The Gemini sourced ancestor remained in Quebec and was married and had children there. I redirected the AI with the correct information ( I needed to do this multiple times) and then the fake storytelling went in a direction I hadn’t expected. It began to draw connections and map my ancestors path, with one distinct problem.

None of my family took the path Gemini described and the fictive generated story of their life is generic, flat, and stitched together from an abundance of information and a paucity of lived experience. The reason I am working on this project is because the decision my great grandfather made in 1894, is likely why I exist. My mother shared some of the details of her family before she passed in 2021, just short of her 101st birthday, but how will our history and our stories be written when we no longer depend on elders for their telling?

The Apple TV series, Silo, about a post apocalyptic future where humanity lives in a series of buried silos, is not just a warning about climate/civilizational destruction, but a cautionary example of the claustrophobia of mind and space that is being chosen for us. We have understood wisdom as being able to synthesize and connect the loose strands of our knowledge into a thread of meaning and purpose.

Where are we if the threads we reach for are statistically generated, probalistic patterns? What are we giving up in this bargain with an interventionist God. The title of this piece borrows from a poignant Nick Cave song, Into My Arms. Give it a listen, the emotion and heartbreak laced through this song is visceral, because it is real. Our imagination and our humanity depends not on data or pattern, but the arbitrary dynamic of everyday wonder that is being alive.

Into My Arms/Nick Cave

I don’t believe in an interventionist God
But I know, darling, that you do
But if I did, I would kneel down and ask him
Not to intervene when it came to you
Will not to touch a hair on your head
Leave you as you are
If he felt he had to direct you
Then direct you into my arms

Into my arms, oh, Lord
Into my arms, oh, Lord
Into my arms, oh, Lord
Into my arms

And I don’t believe in the existence of angels
But looking at you I wonder if that’s true
But if I did, I would summon them together
And ask them to watch over you
Well, to each burn a candle for you
To make bright and clear your path
And to walk, like Christ, in grace and love
And guide you into my arms

Into my arms, oh, Lord
Into my arms, oh, Lord
Into my arms, oh, Lord
Into my arms

But I believe in love
And I know that you do too
And I believe in some kind of path
That we can walk down, me and you
So keep your candles burning
Make her journey bright and pure
That she’ll keep returning
Always and evermore

Into my arms, oh, Lord
Into my arms, oh, Lord
Into my arms, oh, Lord
Into my arms