Letters from Quotidia Fractal 6

Welcome to Letters from Quotidia Fractal 6. This is the third of the Letters to be posted on Halloween, 31^st October, and incidentally, my birthday. The previous two Halloween posts reveal a concern for our future, the environment and AI and seem therefore, fractally cogent. The first of these was posted on 31st October 2023 when Radio Quotidia broadcast a series of specialist programs including one on the blues.

I asked then, “Are you old enough to remember the first Terminator movie? Released in 1984… It tells of the point, in the year 2029, when the Artificial Intelligence systems of the time interconnect, become prescient, decide that we- as a species- are superfluous to requirements and, now merged as Skynet, immediately inflicts nuclear Armageddon on the human race… this is not a distant sci-fi dystopian tale but a…possibility for our near future. ChatGPT and similar programs are presently shaking up the zeitgeist as workers, artists, writers, and the administrative and managerial classes wonder if they will still have meaningful jobs in the near future.”

In the next Halloween Letter, in 2025, I stated, “Yeah, the whole of humankind will be playing funerals soon unless we can arrest the wholesale poisoning of the planet and halt the headlong race towards oblivion courtesy of nuclear or biological warfare. Of course, advances in Artificial Intelligence may, instead, arrange another, unimaginable, method of ridding the earth of its pesky humans.” The almighty algorithms inflicted on our race by the tech bros and sistahs seem to know our every fave and fear and foible.

As I was fulminating- I was in my old man shouting at clouds mode- about the gross invasion of our privacy and sordid manipulation of our impulses and desires by these venal billionaires, it struck me that if AI agents of the future (like the guardian angels of Catholic belief, but their polar opposites!) were to enable a dark humour module, they might come up with a report card for humanity tailored to each person according to the accumulated information gleaned about us all from vast storehouses within the multitude of data centres presently gobbling up resources around the globe.

What would my report card say? This prompted the first song of this post. In my report card, the AI compiler would recognise my love of country music and craft a song where my affinity for the past would ensure that the lyrics would utilise the rhyme scheme from the octave of the Italian sonnet rather than the more modern English variant. It would visit the first book of the Bible, Genesis, for its subject matter, and cite our despoilation of the environment as the reason why it would now bring on my personal Apocalypse. The use of swinging guitars and mandolin would be the icing on the malign cake as it delivered the coup de grace. What your report card would say, I have no idea- but all I can do now is present myreport cardin the song, Report Card on Humanity. [insert song]

The Emperor of Ice Cream, a poem by Wallace Stevens, has intrigued me for decades: Austin Allen in an account of the poem writes in Poetry Foundation, The lives of all creatures are fragile and temporary, and all creatures obey a sovereign impulse toward hedonism: feast as much as you can while there’s still time. And he quotes the celebrated critic Helen Vendler who paraphrases the meaning of the poem thus: The only god of this world is the cold god of persistent life and appetite; and I must look steadily at this repellent but true tableau—the animal life in the kitchen, the corpse in the back bedroom.

D. M. Thomas wrote a dystopian poem decades ago, where he has aliens visiting the nuclear wasteland of planet Earth and, using a surviving trace of DNA, resurrect the person from whom it originated. Gaining sentience and, blind at first, the man sings hosannas for the fulfilment of the old Promise. Then, as the scales fall from his eyes, he sees the merciless orbs of the aliens who, having extracted the information they wanted, mow him down and move on to the next phase of their exploration. I wrote the blast from the past, my song, The Emperor of Ice Cream back in the mid-eighties in Northern Ireland. At the time of composition, I was thinking of fascist dictators and authoritarian regimes who terrorise their citizens. 40 years later, AI may fit that mould, too. [insert song]

Langston Hughes wrote a short poem, Dreams, originally published in 1923 in the magazine The World Tomorrow, which is as pertinent today as it was 100 years ago when he was part of the Harlem Renaissance. In my time as an English teacher, I used it frequently with my students of all ages. I have also referenced it elsewhere in the Letters. This two-stanza poem comprising eight short lines is so simple and yet so profound, Hold fast to dreams/ For if dreams die/Life is a broken-winged bird/That cannot fly.//Hold fast to dreams/For when dreams go/Life is a barren field/Frozen with snow.//

Of course, dreams vary in content and intent, some are pipe-dreams, some are flights of whimsy decked out in nocturnal imagery, some are dystopian and dire and some others are heartfelt and meaningful. A go-to quotation for me is Prospero at the conclusion of Shakespeare’s The Tempest where he says, These our actors, as I foretold you, were all spirits and/ Are melted into air, into thin air: /And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,/ The cloud-capp’d towers, the gorgeous palaces, /The solemn temples , the great globe itself,/ Yea all which it inherit, shall dissolve/ And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,/ Leave not a rack behind./ We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life/ Is rounded with a sleep. In literature there are so many fine explorations of dreams: what they are, what they mean and where they come from, that it is with some trepidation that I put forward my song, Dreams [insert song]

I’ll end by quoting from an idyllic Carl Sandburg poem, Theme in Yellow …And I am called pumpkins./ On the last day of October /When dusk is fallen/ Children join hands / And circle round me / Singing ghost songs / And love to the harvest moon; / I am a jack-o’-lantern / With terrible teeth / And the children know I am fooling. Until next week, when we can all meet in Quotidia, take care, stay safe, be well.

Report Card on Humanity (words and music Quentin Bega)

Intro: Cmaj7 G7sus Cmaj7 Verse: Am Em Dm Am-2 G F-2 x6

Listen now humanity your time is at an end

You had your turn to be in charge but did not follow through

All you’ve done is stuff it up you must admit it’s true

Can you expect Mother Earth still to be your friend

You started out in Eden’s garden, ate forbidden fruit

Evicted by your landlord you then had to make your way

Along a hard and weary road with little time for play

One son he turned out OK, the other was a brute

You built the tower of Babel thought to heaven you would reach

You sacrificed to idols and you turned your back on God

And when you’re asked for an account, you think it very odd

You can’t imagine any law of which you’d be in breach

Through fire and flood and pestilence you fail to see the point

It’s always someone else’s fault you cry in your defence

You’ll hire shonky lawyers and you’ll spare no expense

And if you don’t get your way then you’ll tear down the joint

Instrumental verse

Listen now humanity your time is at an end

You had your turn to be in charge but did not follow through

All you’ve done is stuff it up you must admit it’s true

Can you expect Mother Earth still to be your friend

All you’ve done is stuff it up you must admit it’s true

Can you expect Mother Earth still to be your friend

The Emperor of Ice Cream: a fantasia

(words Quentin Bega- inspired by Wallace Stevens– and music Quentin Bega)

Wallace wrote a poem and put it in a glass jar

Placed it on a hillside deep inside Tennessee

Ah don’t you know that Sunday can be wearing

Strolling in a peignoir mulling on the mystery

Where is that sweet man- ooh ahh