When The Machine Stops

A Love Letter to Artists in the Age of AI

Very Large Array Self-Portrait by Jake Marquez

Please read this while playing Small Window On The Cosmos by Max Cooper for the full intended experience.

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One day, the machine will stop and the only thing left will be you and your mind.

The blank page will not generate before you. The music will exist only in your head.

Your mind will only be as useful as the connections you yourself made through living, reading, breathing, loving, suffering.

One day, the machine will stop and there will be nothing left but what you yourself created — what you poured your soul and intention into, the abilities you harnessed with your own will and volition, with the still-beating heart of a curious child.

All the efficiencies will be stripped away, and the connection between you and the muse will be your only tether.

One day, the machine will stop and you will reflect on all that you lost: in the name of efficiency, of production, of rushing the pace of creation, of standing above the divine ground as a master, not servant.

You will see that you were only ever a gardener, tending to life and consciousness as it flowed through you, a steward, not a progenitor.

And yet you are mythmaker 
you are worldbuilder 
you are storyteller 
you are translator 
— you are one who sees and dreams and feels and grows and senses and you turn insight into art, you turn pain into pleasure, you turn fragments into being.

You bring forth the boon from the other side of the veil and for this the people are healed again, if only for one soft moment in the space between pain.

One day, the machine will stop and the world will need you — 
the you that wrote stories as a child, 
with scraped knees and love for that particular tree, 
the you who found god in a butterfly’s wing or the weathered skin of 
your grandmother’s hands, 
the you that cried watching the sunrise, gobsmacked of your own smallness and the distance between you and the stars.

The world will need the you that felt awe and sorrow pass through you and all the world went quiet for a moment, and you sat, knowing with your entire soul, that you are human in all the beautiful and tragic ways that we are.

And you will create from that place something that makes the story of humanity more whole — a small piece of a mosaic as wide as the earth itself.

This is not a product — this is a gift.

This is not a process to be rushed, quickened, devalued.

This is communion with the gods.

This is our birthright.

I know you are weary, and your heart is tender and sore. I pray that you will cradle that pain and hold it close to you, softly, slowly, give it space to come to life — alchemize that tiredness into prose so we can meet you there, right on time.

Do not impoverish this with speed.

When the machine stops, I hope to see you on the other side, weather-worn from the chaos and the turning, sunburnt from the time you spent in the sunshine, patiently waiting for the world to right itself once again. I hope to see you brimming with tales and songs which took many long years to gestate.

I hope to see you pregnant with the possibility and inspiration that can only come with slowness, stillness, and humility.

I hope to see the wildfire burning behind your eyes.

When the machine stops, we will have many great stories to tell and songs to sing — as we always have, and always will.

Written by Maren Morgan

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