As a former professional musician, I've dealt with a lot of ear worms. As a hopeless opera fan, I often find a soaring fragment of a Verdi aria or the surprising harmonic twists and turns of a Mozart finale stuck in my head. I must say, there are worse things.
It turns out that the worst thing for me is actually AI slop. Not the slop itself (although that is very taxing to read and deathly annoying to edit) but the impact of AI slop on my inner ear.
As best I can tell, the rhythm of the sanitized, predictable words is terribly effective at getting deep into my subconscious and taking over my inner monologue. But instead of a specific tune playing on repeat, it feels to me more like the absence of a tune…like my brain is stuck in short, staccato fragments and won't string words together the way I want.
I grew up reading every book I could find. Dick Francis horse racing novels and Tom Clancy tomes, but also James Baldwin, James Joyce, Maya Angelou, Kazuo Ishiguro, John le Carré, Vladimir Nabokov, Cormac McCarthy, Joyce Carol Oates.
While I'm sure I read plenty of poorly written sentences, em dashes, and beach-read page turners, my word diet was overwhelmingly nutritious.
Not to take an analogy too far, but you are what you, er…read.
And so, back to the slop worm, which works its way into my brain through tiny drips: GitHub pull requests, not quite right inbound emails, Facebook ads, etc. Precisely because it is hidden in plain sight, AI slop chips away at my taste and palate in a more subtle way than elevator music. At least I can get off an elevator!
I'm taking steps to harden my defenses, but mainly I'm working to recover more quickly from my daily exposure (not unlike social media exposure). I am buying great magazines to flip through on the toilet (there are a surprising number of them), listening to music during my dog walks, reading a poem a day, and working through a daily writing prompt. Playing scales on my bassoon. Writing thank-you cards.
I'm doing this because it's about being able to really, truly think.
If writing is thinking on paper, then reading is how I sharpen my pencil and organize my desk. It's an essential process, and when those synapses get mangled, I lose access to a deeper line of thinking.
That's what I'm doing here with this post. I'm thinking through writing. Or more accurately, I'm practicing thinking by writing.
This website might appear as an indulgence, but I need to keep my wits about me and to form words and edit them carefully in order to keep my inner monologue truly mine.
Thanks for reading. I wrote each word myself, and will continue to do so.
Now, back to Verdi!
