This article is based on this Dutch article of Martijn Benders
Does AI make dreams come true? Not exactly. After all, it was never truly a dream of mine to start a Deutsche Welle band. Dreams, paradoxically, always include a certain element of realism. It’s too much work, and as such, it’s not my dream.
There’s the flip side of that coin too: people using AI in an unimaginative manner to make their so-called existing dream easier. Like the writer who has AI compose their book for them. This application of AI is utterly uninspiring.
In my case, it’s still been a significant amount of work. Truly mastering these tools is no simple task. That’s 80% of the entire process.
My assessment was as follows: I am one of the best writers, and if I can become equally adept at mastering this, I’ll have a significant edge over the rest.
Time will tell if it pays off.
Germanness without Stau doesn’t exist, of course. That’s why the next records I’m working on will feature no fewer than three Stau tracks.
And the learning never stops. What makes my approach unique is that I don’t follow tutorials but discover everything through experimentation. Tutorials are essentially just copying someone else’s tricks. Experimenting means discovering your own. By basing everything on experimentation, you eventually create your own tricks and develop your own sound. If you just mimic others, you’ll always sound somewhat generic, I think.
This applies to poetry, but also to everything else.
Most people don’t pursue this because it’s simply too much work. That’s why I believe music is sounding increasingly homogeneous. Everyone’s using the same tricks—copy, paste.
(I managed to create a poetic oeuvre with minimal copy-paste nonsense—that in itself is a significant achievement. But achievements haven’t interested the average person for decades now. It’s customary mediocrity through and through, and immense, cringe-worthy clumsiness.)
Take that bizarre site again, where people post daily poems with just one criterion: “Dutch-ness.” And then they think they can also simultaneously argue against nationalism. But isn’t that nationalism already, you wooden-shoe wizard? The ultimate pettiness: Dutch-ness as the sole quality benchmark.
No, events stick to them like mosquitoes on skin. Even poetic accomplishments leave them indifferent, let alone a poet who merges into a musician. For that, you’d need a critic with knowledge across multiple mediums—someone who has lived multiple lives. And that’s precisely where the shoe pinches. Because the average critic today has never lived outside their Excel sheet, let alone dared to pinch a wooden shoe. They’d rather sweat over their year-end lists.
Martinus Benders, 25-12-2024