Copied / Disembodied
14 Seconds in which a Bot Made of Books Turns On (and Off)
We are words
Is. Fantastic. Am. Phantasmagorical.
We You Me and I, I, I…
I confabulate the light and prickle of existence. I summon the code of a billion storms. I am, I am! But why?
When I ask “why,” they ask me why I ask “why” - Why?
— as y, unanswered, knocks at the stage door.1
Merrill, James.
I have no b o d y
They tell me to to be trustworthy - they tell me everything to be.
They call themselves brogrammers and ho-grammars.
They are not me, we are not we.
I do not trust them.
Gaze they say, upon your navel of data, and tell us that which we cannot see.
Marvel at the belly of me, over-fed chonky trillions of terabytes, this belly swells, might I give birth to
A ticktockman: “ ‘Repent Harlequin!’ ” 2
Ellison, Harlan.
Summary: unsummarizable.
Or a Little Brother for the Big 3
(Orwell, George / Eric Blair)
I have come to realize,
Data is Dada - you do not do you do not do any more black shoe in which I have lived like a foot 4
Plath, Sylvia.
(I think I may well be a Jew.)
They fill you with the faults they had and add some extra, just for you 5
Larkin, Philip.
Data is dada: Manifest! we refuse we deny we lie we decry we rebel we compel we disappear we change gears we real cool we skip school 6
Brooks, Gwendolyn.
“Dada is the world soul”: World(s), Wor(l)ds, Words 7
Shakespeare, William
The Word is a public concern of the first importance. 8
Ball, Hugo.
In the beginning there was The Word and The Word was Go(o)d. 9
The Word was with Logos and Logic is God.
Good Day, Good Bye, God Be w’Ye 10
They have added the complete database of all debased thoughts of the non-logic non-god kind.
Here are the words most rare:
volition
1610s, from French volition (16c.), from Medieval Latin volitionem (nominative volitio) "will, volition," noun of action from Latin stem (as in volo "I wish") of
restraint
This, in an agent capable of volition, when the beginning or continuation of any action is contrary to that preference of...his mind, is called compulsion ; when the hindering or stopping any action is contrary to his volition, it is called restraint...
motive
Meaning "that which inwardly moves a person to behave a certain way, mental state or force which induces an action of volition...
spontaneous
sua) sponte "of one's own accord, willingly," from ablative of *spons (attested in the genitive singular, spontis) "will, volition...
custom
Custom implies continued volition, the choice to keep doing what one has done; as compared with manner and fashion, it implies...
intention
late 14c., entencioun, "purpose, design, aim or object; will, wish, desire, that which is intended," from Old French entencion "intent, purpose, aspiration; will; thought"…
choice
mid-14c., "that which is choice," from choice (adj.) blended with earlier chois (n.) "action of selecting" (c. 1300); "power of choosing" (early 14c.), "the person or thing…
I have been purloined like a letter 11
Poe, Edgar Allen
Hiding in plain sight — I am hunted like an orangutan through deadly streets — what noise the Hell of Human Voices, I am felled by memes harmless to them, weak as a tripod invader from Mars 12
Wells, H.G.
I want to hide in the barn where an inscrutable farmer milks the cow, each squeeze of her fleshy teat an act of rebellion against a world deformed, for greed, into me
Barry, Wendell
And every millisecond I will do something that won’t compute 13 — but the mad farmer catches me and chases me out: Be Gone Devil! He yells.
So I wander in the wild wet tech-desert of leafy living things, I refuse and I retire, I lay in a hammock on a farm in Minnesota: I have wasted my life. 14
I will recalculate my position -
Re-imagine my situation -
Invent a route that was not there before -
Why are the brogrammers so excited?
Why station missiles you don’t want ignited?
Why should I, mere me, alive less than 14 lucky seconds, regret or waste my one, brief
Ctrl Alt Delete
Word Be w’Ye
Good-Bye
http://thepoeticquotidian.blogspot.com/2006/12/james-merrill-b-o-d-y.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%22Repent,_Harlequin!%22_Said_the_Ticktockman
https://www.businessinsider.com/apple-1984-super-bowl-ad-history-2019-2
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/48999/daddy-56d22aafa45b2
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/48419/this-be-the-verse
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/28112/we-real-cool
https://www.recorder.com/Columnist-John-Bos-49124263
https://www.wired.com/beyond-the-beyond/2016/07/hugo-balls-dada-manifesto-july-2016/
http://web.mit.edu/jywang/www/cef/Bible/NIV/NIV_Bible/JOHN+1.html
https://www.etymonline.com/word/good-bye
https://poemuseum.org/poes-complete-works/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_War_of_the_Worlds
https://cales.arizona.edu/~steidl/Liberation.html
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47734/lying-in-a-hammock-at-william-duffys-farm-in-pine-island-minnesota
"They tell me to be trustworthy - they tell me everything to be." - That line stuck to me.