January 28, 2023

I was showing of a demo of a generative music AI to some friends in the auditorium. We gave it an input and in return it rendered the same piece but at different skill levels. After playing around with it for a bit, we agreed to meet again next week to dance.

I was whistling the melody of Thanatos as I walked past a piano and accordion player down the cobblestone street. I turned the corner at the bottom of the hill to find that the back door of my house was gone. I remembered that someone else lived here now. I walked around to the front of the house to find two cardboard boxes of my belongings. It was mostly stacks of paper that had been sitting outside in the rain. I picked up my boxes and tried to recall if it had even been a week since my home had been ‘captured’.

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A school-wide assembly was being held and everyone had to sit on rows upon rows of choir steps that had been turned on their side. There were students as young as kindergarteners all the way up to undergrads in the gymnasium. No one really knew when the assembly was to start since the children wouldn’t stop talking and making noise. An elementary school student stood up and pointed across the room to announce that they had a new black student who was joining the class and all the children laughed. I looked around the room for the faces of other people who weren’t quite sure how to react to the situation.

A friend sitting on one of the levels above asked the audience if they would want to listen to a story about white people. He recounted a tale involving an ice cream delivery man who was also one of three people in the entire world for which a specific antidote was effective. The story when on an on and at one point a teacher reminded him that he had been talking for well over 13 minutes. He quickly wrapped up the story with something about “Vamprose writers”.

After a round of applause, I overheard people saying that he needed to work on his delivery and that they weren’t sure if the children would get the punchline. I wasn’t sure if I had understood the punchline.

A teacher had announced that my friend would be in the “top 10 array” in two years. Apparently he had already taken enough courses to graduate despite only being a sophomore. Someone showed me his list of courses taken and all of them either had to do with poisons and toxins or public speaking.