Places to loose your spark
& ChatGPT
Last night I had a nightmare. I was looking at my hands, writing things, pen & paper. Words wouldn’t form and I’d miss letters like I know I can when typing on a keyboard (“the autocorrect will fix it for me anyway”). The letters jumbled, shuffled, skipped between their places on the paper, only first and last making outlines of words. Letters melting off the page with tears. I suppose I was afraid that I’ve been typing so much on a keyboard I forgot how to write on paper. A terrible, terrifying dream.
"I realize how configured my sense of distance has become from living so much on the Internet, where everything is in reach and nothing is within touch."
— Robert Macfarlane
To loose your spark in tools
I think ChatGPT is great. It’s great for quick questions, trying to get a baseline understanding of an issue, fixing code… Yes. I think it is great. I also think it is killing me when I go to ChatGPT to help ideate and end up with nothing I would like. Of course, ChatGPT will have ideas. But they never feel quite right. When I’m tired, it even leaves me frustrated.
There is a sort of gap between me and the ideas proposed that I can’t quite cross. Yes, ideally, you are not attached to your ideas so you can be more open-minded and flexible, to be better and more efficient, to choose a more appropriate research topic… But my attachment to my ideas, to my passions, to the way and form the idea popped up in my head in the first place, the thought that it is mine — perhaps that is the magic, the little bit of fuel I am missing. What some would call the spark.
To think I’ve lost the spark to inspiration and ideation. To think that the best part of starting anything is what ruined it for me. To think I lost it to misusing a tool. On a quest for more efficiency, to complete more and more and more and more work, while tired tired tired tired tired, I’ve tried to skip the best part to stay on time. Of course, it can’t quite work that way.
But, pattern broken, lesson learned — as it is with new tools that come into our life. I’m not reaching for ChatGPT early in the process anymore. It has its time to shine, but not when I need fuel. And not when the thing I really need is rest. But… what about this pattern more broadly? Am I better off ideating without Pinterest? Would my art be better if I never logged onto Behance?
Why would I think that I would make better work in a vacuum. Ridiculous.
Inspiration, of course. I just hope it comes to me at a pace slower than high-speed internet. At walking speed — through art museums and galleries. Inspiration that is grounded in reality I can touch (not that I’m encouraging touching paintings in a museum). So it feels like what I hold in my hands is mine again (even though, of course, it is just a messy rearrangement of everything I’ve experienced, and nothing is really ours).
A 15-minute timer and a piece of paper to ideate is all it takes. You’ve got it in you, I promise. Fuel up. And if you think that is less efficient: I will trade efficiency for the spark any day. Not a revolutionary thought by any means, but if things aren’t working: perhaps, slow down.
“In an age of speed, I began to think, nothing could be more invigorating than going slow. In an age of distraction, nothing can feel more luxurious than paying attention. And in an age of constant movement, nothing is more urgent than sitting still.”
— Pico Iyer
I. Things to see
II. Things to hear
III. Things to watch (and play)
Manspread, a short film
The Shyness of Trees, a short animated film
Terra Nil, a video game about restoring ecosystems
IV. Things that hit me like a brick
Social Media Is Not Self-Expression by Rob Horning
Signing off,
Zuza<3