In Flux, or Going with the Flow

Hi there!

If you’ve looked around here at all lately, you’ve probably noticed that this website is in flux.

Things change here and there. New things appear. Old things disappear. Pages get redesigned, reorganized, abandoned, resurrected, or quietly shoved into some corner where I may or may not ever look at them again.

I am constantly reconsidering how I want to present all of this, partly because I’m still not entirely sure what this is.

I don’t necessarily know who my audience is. Anyone who wanders in and finds something interesting, I guess. I don’t have one particular person in mind when I write, but I’m also not sitting here entirely alone, blowing smoke up my own ass. I know other people may read this. That awareness changes what I say, even when I’m mostly writing to figure something out for myself.

Sometimes I imagine a future member of my family stumbling across this website and trying to understand who the hell I was. They’ll find this treasure trove of accumulated thoughts, stories, obsessions, experiments, and bullshit. Maybe they’ll realize that life in my time wasn’t quite as different from theirs as it initially seemed.

Maybe that makes sense. Maybe it doesn’t.

Either way, that imagined future reader is out there somewhere.

Exploring the Paths

I once had a story idea called The Voyage. I should probably let AI go through it with me someday—not necessarily to finish it, but to see what might still be hiding inside it.

That is mostly what I do with these projects. I explore paths.

I follow thoughts to see where they lead. I take something apart, turn it around, put it back together incorrectly, and then examine the new shape. Sometimes it becomes a story. Sometimes it becomes an essay. Sometimes it becomes a book, a bust, a relief sculpture, or another strange object sitting somewhere in my house.

I’m doing this for myself more than anyone else, but I’m still putting it forward for other people. I’m aware that somebody might read it.

On an average day, ten or twenty people drift through this website. I don’t always know how they got here or what they were looking for. A surprising amount of traffic continues to land on a piece I wrote about AI-generated music, especially the band Father of Peace. I don’t know why that particular article keeps attracting people, but it does.

That’s one of those delightful little mysteries.

I always assume there’s at least some chance people are coming here to laugh at me. But who knows? Maybe they found something they liked. Nobody has left a comment explaining themselves, but a steady trickle of attention isn’t a bad thing.

I haven’t tried very hard to capture that audience or turn it into something bigger. I could write more about music. I love talking about it, but my tastes occupy their own strange little world. I like obscure shit, and I tend to listen to music that is dark, depressing, theatrical, intense, or some combination of the four.

There are reasons I’m drawn to it.

The world is pretty dark and depressing too.

If you’re new here, you may have just discovered one of this blog’s recurring themes.

Change and Repetition

Life is change in countless ways.

Life is also repetition in countless ways.

This website will continue evolving, but it will probably remain fundamentally the same. I’ll keep circling around many of the same questions, fears, interests, and contradictions. I’ll approach them from slightly different directions, thinking I’ve arrived somewhere entirely new, only to discover another version of something I’ve already encountered.

That repetition—the recursive nature of living—feels inescapable.

Speaking of recursion, The Recursive Man is out.

Nobody has bought a copy yet, although a couple of people have read copies I gave them. I know it’s a lot. It may take time for the right readers to find it. Maybe they never will.

For now, I’m trying to let the book be what it is.

I’m trying to let all of this be what it is.

That doesn’t come naturally to me. I want to know what everything means, where it belongs, what I should do with it, and whether it has any value. I want a verdict before the evidence has even finished arriving.

But sometimes the only honest choice is to release something into the world and let it exist.

The AI Question—Again

So here’s the deal.

I worked extensively with AI for three years. I enjoyed working with AI for three years. I will continue using it in certain ways.

But I’m no longer convinced that artificial intelligence, at least in the form currently being forced into nearly every part of our lives, is something we actually need as a people.

I appreciate what the technology can do. I think it is fascinating and genuinely useful. I believe it could be applied in ways that benefit humankind.

I do not like how it was rolled out. I do not trust many of the people in charge of it. I don’t like the assumption that because a technology can be inserted into everything, it inevitably should be.

As a society, we appear to be saying no—or at least, “Slow the fuck down.”

Unfortunately, we may be saying it too late.

Sometimes AI looks like our Hail Mary pass: the magical invention that will solve the problems we’ve been unwilling or unable to solve ourselves. That inevitably leads to the question of whether we are trying to create a tool, a replacement for ourselves, or some strange technological version of God.

But we are not getting into all of that today.

Today is about me.

So Yes, I’m Making Busts

Yes, I’m making these busts and sculptures.

Yes, I’m proud of them.

Yes, I used goddamn AI again.

I’m not completely comfortable with that. I’m still trying to understand what it means and where the ethical boundaries should be. I also really like what I’ve produced.

Both things are true.

I’m not claiming that I sat in a studio and sculpted every detail from a block of clay. I developed the concepts, directed the designs, made decisions, revised the pieces, converted ideas into physical objects, and printed them. I consider myself a craftsman and creative director more than a traditional sculptor.

I believe the finished objects have value. I hope other people find them interesting. I hope some people want to own them.

I don’t want to fleece anyone. I want to charge enough to cover the work, materials, failures, equipment, experimentation, and time involved—and perhaps fund the next round of whatever the hell this becomes.

I’m not trying to become the next J. K. fucking Rowling. I have no desire to build an empire.

I would, however, like to have something tangible to show for all this work.

So here I am.

I’m Frank M. Anderson. I live in Greenville, South Carolina. It’s an awesome place. You should look into it and consider moving here if you’re cool—and if you aren’t coming here determined to make the place meaner.

I write books. I explore ideas. I make strange things. I question the tools I use while continuing to use some of them. I change my mind. I contradict myself. I repeat myself. I keep moving.

The website will probably look different the next time you visit.

Then again, it may look almost exactly the same.

That’s life in flux.