Humans From Clay, and Other Authorial Pursuits

“Aruru washed her hands, she pinched off some clay, and threw it into the wilderness. In the wilderness she created the valiant Enkidu” — The Epic of Gilgamesh, stela 1 

While writing The Original Glitch, I became incredibly preoccupied with the human obsession with creation. That is, the creation of life in the image of the creator.  Something not only our most prominent gods have undertaken but some of our most famous literary characters. Yahweh, Victor Frankenstein, the Rosen Association, Gepetto, and Aruru all have something in common. In fact, it’s become a leading theory of the universe that we are simply simulated ghosts of future humans’ pasts. But what about writers?

The primitive motivation of information sharing, and the resulting parasocial connection between author and reader, is oft-cited as the instinctual root of a writer’s soul. And we’ve done it forever, literally. Over 17,000 years ago human ancestors painted stories of their world along the walls of Lascaux cave. The desire to mimic the world and recreate something for posterity reaching out across eons. This introspection is, according to Aristotle, the thing that separates us from our closest animal relatives. Our ability to not just look in the mirror and recognize all that we see as being us but also all that we don’t. 

This was the turning point for us, according to historian Yuval Noah Harari. It was the homo sapiens’ ability to assign abstract meaning to their world and thus stories and myths, that allowed them to move beyond the logistical survival instinct that might band together with a few hundred homo erectus and build societies of several thousand from which came pyramids and epics and plays and poetry. 

Writing, of course, is not the same as trying to will into existence an artificial general intelligence. Writers are window makers. It’s through their lens that we peek into a world and brush with the souls therein. The creation of something that could be mistaken for human, that could mistake itself for human, is another thing entirely, as the characters of my novel learn. “The human condition is in fact a tragic predicament from which none of us can escape,” writes anti-natalist David Benatar.

We are harmed by the asymmetry of a painful existence and yet we continue to force that fate on others, through children, through algorithms. Perhaps the drive to create life is to inflict some of what we suffered onto others. Perhaps writers want less to reach out into the dark and more to have punching bags for their anguish.   

There is a third option for what exactly it is we’re looking for when we put pen to paper or inputs into neural networks or clay to primordial magic. When Victor Frankenstein sent electric shocks through the stitched together carcass of the Creature he was looking for the secret of life and death and how to cheat it. In the world’s oldest piece of fiction (clocking in at over 4,000 years old), Gilgamesh’s journey is for eternal life.

When Adam and Eve are thrown out of the Garden it was to prevent the newly sentient humans from eating from the Tree of Life and gaining immortality. The inevitably of our deaths makes story sharing all the more urgent. Makes the possibility for posthumous fame all the more appealing. We create, we write to live forever, or at least to prove that we lived at all. To get some facet of ourselves right throughout recreation and hope that’s the piece that lives forever.   

You most likely don’t think about this when you open up that word processing software or uncap the pen. But maybe when the work is finished, the cleanly bound novel in your hands, you’ll consider all it took in your mind or, if you prefer, soul, to paint that world beyond your authorial window. All the pains and desires and anguishes. Perhaps you’ll picture Yahweh gathering dust from the earth and shaping Adam and wonder if he was a writer too. 

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Bio: Melanie is a Philly-based author of two novels and several short stories. Her work has appeared in Philadelphia Stories, Ghost Parachute, Popsugar, and others. She also serves as a coordinator for the 215 Literary Arts Festival.

Twitter: @MelMoy https://twitter.com/MelMoy

Instagram: MelMoy https://www.instagram.com/melmoy/?hl=en

ORIGINAL GLITCH

In the aftermath of his mentor’s death, grad student Adler is left to piece together and clean up the project she left behind: an adaptive and increasingly malevolent artificial intelligence, kept locked in a virtual “box” that’s no longer quite enough to keep him in check.

As he tries to manage the AI and continue Dr. Kent’s research, Adler soon discovers her sociopathic creation is determined to escape his enclosure to wreak havoc on the outside world.

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Tags: featured, women writers

Category: On Writing