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So, I spent the other day gallivanting. To gallivant is to sit in one’s car with no clear plan or schedule and just drive the back-roads. Allowing the mind to wander free. With a bare minimum of attention reserved for keeping the wheels between the blossoming hedgerows just enough not to plough into one of them.
Last week, I got the outline of an idea. One that zooms into focus and then suddenly out of my vision just as quick. It’s the type of thing that’s crystal clear and clouded with my doubt. Which is to say this fuzzy idea has been annoying me and pleasuring my senses, all at once.
In the peace of the cottage retreat I finally decided some gallivanting was required to develop my thoughts further. To either dive fully into it or walk away. Curiously, and without tangible proof, it seems to me this idea is in need of protection from AI engineered thought patterns. Thoughts constantly destroying or distracting my attention from the natural world and real endeavours. As I exited the cottage where I’m house-sitting, and drove out the laneway, I began contemplating the bluebells in the front garden. I felt a bit guilty not writing about them in my last post. I’m not a particular fan of bluebells, you see. Or perhaps, it would be fairer to say, I kinda fall in and out of love with bluebells.
Ah yes, the blue-bells. Tall, slim-stemmed, multi-flowered and totally gorgeous in far too obvious a manner. Unlike the short, bunched stumpiness and glory of primroses. In my mind, a gang of primroses growing on the side of a ditch probably smoke, play black-jack, and drink half-bottles of Jameson to while away the nights. Bluebells, on the other hand, seem a bit like Angelina Jolie - the 2024 version. Superior, aloof, intelligent and looking down their dainty blue noses at you and me.
I’m conflicted, though, as a part of me hopes the 2000 goth version of Jolie might return some-day. The one cruising around in the back of limousines in Las Vegas with vials of Billy Bob Thornton’s blood locketed around her neck engaged in spontaneous acts of Rí-Rá agus Ruaille Buaille. Now, that version of a bluebell would be a useful woman to have as member of the tribes methinks. Wild and uncontrollable. Hope springs eternal, I guess.
Anyway, as this thought mists further away from the frosted grass, the sun peeks in through the window-screen and I decide to take a gamble and put the neglected garden bluebells in charge of my idea for the day. Tasked with keeping the wickedness of any approaching AI brain bots at bay.
Almost immediately, they and I are under attack from the old fart-ificial intelligence. A message pings into my phone informing me that my last piece of writing was copy and pasted into a Facebook page - in its entirety - without reference to yours truly and The West’s Awake. This kind of daylight robbery can drag me down into a thuggish mood for most of a fine day. I track down the account and politely inform them that stealing content and presenting it as their own is not at all good form. The bluebells edit out the word “fucker” six times from the ensuing text exchange and the situation is remedied. I may have underestimated the full talents of these blue-bells.
I still believe the written word is the most impactful and long-lasting form of communication. As a result, it is also the most under attack by the algorithms. Imagine the above described scenario except this time envisage an army of digital algorithms engaged in the theft. Ten, fifty, or fifty thousand versions of a piece of writing can be replicated, diluted and fucked but the reader will never know who or what conceived the idea. Or subtly altered its message. Further still, algorithms can already predict what a scribe will write next and beat the writer to the punch. Unfortunately, most of the writing world still don’t get the problem fully. I don’t get the problem fully, to be honest. Only that it exists and needs to dealt with on a daily basis at a conscious level. Hence, safe-guarding ideas with a protective circle of bluebells in the first instance and with bunches of primroses just in case a fight breaks out.
As the day progresses I talk to a few people about my idea. It involves some healing and healers, a play and some music. With some poetry, faeries and dancing sprinkled through-out. The play has no script and the characters star as themselves. The whole shebang takes place over a couple of different time dimensions just in case things aren’t quite other-worldly enough.
All I have at the moment is the idea and a bouquet of primroses and bluebells. Enough to be getting on with sure.
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Another cracker piece. Wanted to comment with a photo of the Ness Woods (an n-eas is Irish for "the waterfall') rampant with bluebells. You're right about primroses tho.
I awoke this morning and the sun is actually shining in a properly blue sky- for what seems like the first time all year. I heard during the week that the bluebells up in the woods on the hill are out in their magnificence, so this morning thought, 'ah I'll go up and revel in their blueiness and feel all calm and in love with the world again'. But then I just read your piece, and I'll look at them now as haughty pseudo intelligent Angelina Jolie's. I can't believe you got me thinking about bluebells in this way, and funnily enough, I prefer your take on primroses too! Both flowers have fond childhood memories for me that are of love and safety- one of walking in 'Bluebell Wood' with my mother when I was very small, and then one of looting the ditches up the road when I was a bit older, of as many primroses as I could pick and hold in my hands- to take back for my mother. In the 70's you could do that kind of thing. Thank you for your writing Gerry.