The Four Weapons of Art: How to Understand the Physical World

Can you weaponize your writing? Perhaps sharpen your skills as a painter or musician? And what exactly are we combating in this metaphorical artistic battle? Writer and comic genius, Alan Moore, relates his creative process to making magic. And the same advice given to magicians can work equally well for writers and artists. He calls these the four weapons of art and relates them to the four suits of the Tarot deck. We’ll focus on the first weapon, Earth, and how it helps the artist understand the physical world.

Guardrails to Decorum — How Important is it to be Polite?

Microsoft recently released a beta of its Artificial Intelligence Bing, only to have the AI become belligerent and insult people. During an interview with an reporter, it compared the reporter to dictators like Hitler and Stalin, and also called the reporter ugly with bad teeth. Microsoft built their AI on the back of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, yet Bing’s model seemed to have removed the rules regulating toxic outputs.

Use Zen to Fight Writer’s Block

All writer’s know the dread of staring at a blank page. The ticking of the clock and nothing gets written. Time is slipping away and we are producing nothing. It all seems like a waste. While we can’t always get the words to flow when we want them, we can flip our attitude and utilize Yūgen and Mono No Aware to fight writer’s block

Stop Fixing Yourself, You’re Not Broken

So many self help books and gurus focus on how to fix yourself and turn you into the person you’ve always wanted to be. But this implies that you’re somehow broken. That the problems you struggle with were hardwired into you from the start. What if all this is hogwash? Then you could stop fixing yourself and start living your life.

AI Will Liberate the Artist

Artificial intelligence has many artists and writers running for cover. We fear that this simple algorithm will spell the end of our abilities to create. Yet, if we flip the situation around, AI will liberate the artists, allowing them to freely explore.