Over the weekend, I saw some ultra-viral essays on Substack (with tens of thousands of likes and thousands of restacks) and I’ll admit I felt that little rotten green needle of envy. And then I read a few and the envy dried up like Sylvia’s figs, but in a good way.
All of them were AI-generated, almost in their entirety. It was kind of hilarious but also sad. And yet the people in the comments seemed genuinely moved and…I felt such a weird conflict. That clearly robotic writing had moved hundreds of real people. Even though I was glad to get rid of that flash of envy, I wondered if I should also wear the veneer of cynicism because how else was I supposed to digest this?
But thing is, I don’t want more cynicism in my life. As fun as it can be to wear the vibes of a little gremlin sometimes, I actively want to ditch my layers of cynical thinking and try to be more sincere, gentle, and all-around…joyful.
So I’m stuck, I suppose. Yet, I’m thinking there is a fuzzy space between scathing spitting cynicism and Sahara-snarky apathy. I don’t know what words to give it, but maybe it’s as simple as “co-existing”?
Haven’t there always been people (and, dare I say, the majority) that just enjoy…basic stuff?
Basic, decent enough stuff?
Can we fault them for not seeing the difference in what they’re already used to? That is, mass-produced trend-obsessed pop-coded human-writing vs the same but just replace “human” with “AI”.
And it’s not like — if we consider ourselves high-falootin’ intellectuals on our flying unicorns — we’re beyond all that either. I don’t think there’s even one of us who hasn’t been caught under the gargantuan tsunamic tide that is scrolling, in one form or another.
What I’m trying to say is, it takes effort to peel yourself away from that corn-syrup-slickness of the, shall we say, baser tastes ‘n joys.
Watching reels for an hour is easy. Reading Tolstoy for 10 minutes? That takes effort, practice, cultivation. Does that mean we shouldn’t do it? Are we all meant to just give into our natural animal impulses of “hit me baby one more time”.
Attraction can be instant, but love takes time.
Even with kids. What we feel at first sight when they’re born all vernix-lathed and gooey and utterly breakable is not exactly love (let me indulge in semantics why don’t ya?). It’s a biological evolutionary pull. It still feels otherworldly, but that’s “all” it is.
And let me tell you as a child of parents who really didn’t want me around (at the peak of Shitty Times, my mom used to ask me at least once a day “do you think I shouldn’t have had you?” — yeah in those words), loving your children takes effort and to do it “right” without fucking them up and giving them as much true goodness and good character takes practice.
Practice is a kind of devotion.
This is another thing I see that’s caught on a lot, at least on Substack and IG. People talking about being “devoted”. Reminds of the Sanskrit word “bhakti”, which a lot of these articles make a passing reference to. Yes, it can loosely be translated as “devotion”, but a more holistic translation is “loving devotional service.”
To love means to serve and to serve means to always try and improve how we carry out that service in love.
So how do we love ourselves? How do we best serve ourselves in love?
Well, I don’t know what it looks like for each of you, but I do think that consuming mass-appeal sparkly surface-level AI-OR-human-generated content is probably not the way to go.
In a way, this has always been the duty of artists. To show a brighter path, to illuminate the darkness, and to help others find their own inner light.
Alright that’s enough from me for now.
To close off, I want to share a poem I wrote in 2022 for
, my then-long-distance-boyfriend and now very-close (we work next to each other all day) husband.I hope you enjoy it. 💗
Versions of the Undefinable Other1
Holding you is like holding water.
Krishna, in the Bhagavad-gita, defines kama as a fire that engulfs each of the body’s senses.
Ka: to desire
Ma: to create.
Last week, I walked across a bridge and stopped by a bundle of worms flowering in the grass after rain. They looked blue vermicellied under the noon sun. Wind whipped against the spirals on their shoestring bodies. I wondered if it is true — if cutting a worm in half will create a new worm, a third creature, othered from the worm, from my hands — a spindle of summer ash blown out like molten glass into the air.
To engulf is to destroy.
Thomas Aquinas revealed four ways to overcome lust. The fourth? Just keep busy.
Somewhere, a switchblade kisses a thorax. A hand, lonely as a hyoid bone, scaffolds an arm. Voice: an arroyo. Water: missing child. A mouth tears a piece of raw liver, the frozen blood like red glaciers on the alps of your ribcage. Where is the animal? His faceless voice asks.
Parasmani Devi was the last lover of the black laughing Lord of the Universe. She danced in the Balisahi of the Jagannath Mandir before Garuda, the gold bird carrier of Vishnu. She would lullaby the deities to sleep with songs of divine lust from the vault of Jayadev Gosvami: the Gita-govinda.
vasati vipina-vitāne tyajati lalita-dhāma || luṭhati dharaṇi-śayane bahu vilapati tava nāma || tava virahe…
Renouncing his marble palace of sapphires that could rival moonshine, Krishna now resides in the depths of the forest, where no light reaches. || He thrashes on a bed of dirt and stones, hollering your name — Radha — over and over. || This separation from you…
I am not trying to remain in illusion. I accept myself as a small creature, a turtle perhaps, trying to crawl through tangerine riverlight. The day has worn a robe of silence. Outside, the sky canaries through the seasons. A ticking clock echoes through my bones.
Shiva, the Immortal Lord of Dance, the Lord of Serpents and Skulls, the Supreme Ash-Smeared God, the Blue Tombstone Below Kali’s Soles, I offer you my obeisance.
Shiva, anger lengthening through his eyes, beheaded and cindered the head of Kamadeva, the god of lust.
The small god teetered in the cold galaxy like the skeleton of a star.
Lord, I am frothing at the mouth. Poison has possessed my belly. My lungs are a screen of smoke and bile. I am left songless, as naked as a torched temple, as a ghost among believers. Dispel my doom. Or behead me, too.
Holding you is like holding water. Where are you in the desert? Where is Yamuna in the Thar? I see swirls of flares in the distant horizon. My crown of solitude. My dark stone. My blood churns to lava. The ocean is a rumour, a tide whispering somewhere around here. Tell me the truth, beloved. When will you come back?
Where are you now?
Holding you is like drinking water.
Holding you is like watering the arid ginger threads of the cracked and beaten earth of July.
Even with a stillborn, the woman becomes a mother.
Lover, hold her hand. Those fingers of water. She is as cool and round as rainfall rainbowed through sunlight.
Here, a sheaf of prayers. Here, a mala of your name. Here, the axe to scrape the sin from my limbs.
No man need forgive me.
I kiss azaleas. I kiss your feet. I live between burn and salve.
But the constant desert.
Rilke, that divine Aristotle, who in his infinite wisdom, said we only need love to soon never need love, was not kneeling like us.
Selected by Carl Phillips as 2nd place winner of the Palette Love & Eros Prize.
I am leaning toward the question why I am here, rather than who I am. I find myself responding to every post of yours, Shannon, unusual because I seldom answer to others, spending my Substack time on my own prose and poetic scribbles. When I ask myself why, I come to the fundamental distinction between human and AI writing. You (and Karan and Only Poems) are honest, genuine, and inquisitive, three qualities that go to heart of art and which AI cannot emulate. Readers and writers find those qualities irresistible, and I’m guessing that I am not alone in my assessment. I think it is too late to stop AI, but we must develop guidelines that keep the work of humans distinct or we will lose the very essence of our creativity. For now, let’s be grateful that we can still tell the difference.
Hi- this is our first comment yet because we read your missives directly from through email inbox. Commenting reroutes us to the substack app and we prefer to be on here minimally. Firehosing substack from the app is all sorts of overwhelming. Who are you is always a restless question we haven't quite figured a succinct answer for. But we can say that the word "obeisance" and like that you use it in this poem. We first heard it in the anime darker than black and have loved it ever since. These days when we can, we are trying to memorize and recite poems we love by heart. On good days, we are trying to write some too. We are trying to be less scornful about things written and sung to slake popular thirst (AI generated and all) realizing that the over-indulgence is because most people have no time to feel the layers deeply. Every day we try to listen to the birds and spend more time with the ones who love us.