His fingers led the quill’s familiar dance,
ensnaring thoughts in sinuous lines of ink,
unwitting in his ancient scribal trance
that Gutenberg so soon would break the link.
Her fingers passed the shuttle through the warp,
transmuting garb of sheep to that of kings,
accustomed to the music of her harp,
unwary of the song an engine sings.
Their fingers summoned visions from the mind,
with brush, and stencil, pen, and Photoshop,
illusionists astonished now to find
an artificial artist heist their crop.
Of all creation, humans are the head;
but what remains when human art is dead?
—David Jackson Lohnes
2022
Notes:
The recent release of OpenAI’s ChatGPT astonished me. You can add me to the long list of humans who never expected to see their favorite creative gifts made obsolete. Yet obviously that day is coming for me too. I don’t know what comes next, and though I’m sure some good will come, today, I mourn what is being lost. I mourn those coming who will never know what it was to be at the top of creation.
ensnaring thoughts – The power to fix thoughts on a page with the written word and pass them from place to place and down through time has been perhaps the single most transformative power in human history.
ancient – The scribe’s art (until it was made obsolete by the printing press) had been an essential function of civilized society for thousands of years. All our first-hand knowledge of the ancient and Medieval world is due to the many thousands of gifted scribal hands who fixed human thoughts on paper (or vellum, or parchment).
scribal trance – The scribe’s art required long periods of focused concentration and attention to detail. Also, throughout I’ve attempted to incorporate words that underscore the magic inherent in creative arts.
break the link – the generational link from master scribe to learner; also the line of ink on the page. Handwritten pages appear a line at a time. Press printed pages are impressed all at once.
transmuting – another magical word, this time from alchemy; the changing of one element into another (the alchemical dream was lead into gold)
her harp – an image derived from the long warp strings of the loom
Photoshop – Illustration is the most ancient human art, as cave drawings attest. This word makes clear that these are computer-age illustrators. The whole line speaks to the fusion of traditional and digital tools that many modern illustrators use.
summoned visions / illusionists – more magic words
their crop – I wanted to underscore the financial implications to professional artists of AI tools like DALL-E. People will continue to create visual art for pleasure (as I will continue to write for pleasure) long after the work has ceased to be ‘valuable’ and payable. It’s the loss of livelihood that is the chief pain here—decades of investment and dreams made worthless.
what remains – An honest question for me right now. Where do we go from here? I believe human life is inherently valuable. What what good is inherent value if there’s no way to combine one’s natural gifts and talents with hard work and study to provide tangible value?