It Just Means More
Reading Notes
9-11 Minute Read | Laptop or Tablet Recommended
Topics and Themes
Why exporting our entire lives to technology and AI is terrible for our artistic souls and ultimate happiness, finding balance between the pursuits we love and the tasks we can't stand.
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In his disturbingly-accurate book The World Beyond Your Head, author Matthew Crawford convinced me that actively engaging with the work we deliberately choose in our lives is essential for developing a sense of who are as artists. I used the words "disturbingly-accurate" because the book implies that when we rely too heavily on technology to do as many tasks as possible for us, we risk losing our ability to think critically and connect meaningfully with the world.
Crawford emphasizes that hands-on interaction through work, hobbies, and everyday tasks nourishes a deeper understanding of ourselves, our environment, and the balance between them. He argues when we take an active role in the work that fulfills us on a deep level, we develop a deeper mindfulness about who we are. Perhaps the most fulfilling work we do has the possibility to enhance our state of sovereignty in the world (let alone our standing). It is only by taking responsibility for our decisions, the actions that arise out of our willingness to choose to invest our energy in one area or another, that we can create a more authentic and satisfying life.
In sharp contrast, passively consuming experiences and conveniences that comes with more sophisticated technology, or allowing a digital presence to do everything for us, perhaps makes us more vulnerable to losing our individuality and also our relationship to the world. Doing so is almost as if we are intentionally fucking with our own foundations of what it means to be human.
Strong and mighty words, you might be thinking?
Crawford's book doesn't let up. Page after page, I found plenty of reasons why it's better to be engaged with tasks that I could automate but choose not to (like, writing this blog. Hello, AI. I think you owe me some royalties).
I will fully admit that a good portion of The World Beyond Your Head went ungracefully… over my head. I'll probably read it four more times before I truly understand it. I was introduced to the book through my brother who absolutely raved about it (My brother is always first in reading awesome books, and I'm always trying to catch up to him). When I finally read it, I stared agog at the concepts Crawford freely and easily threw around. He doesn't pull any punches. It was humbling to be shown exactly how little I knew about the world of philosophy. It makes me chuckle to experience limitations of my vocabulary. Personal pride aside, the book is packed full of the kind of information we need to hear in our lives, now, as 2026 moves forward and we’re well beyond the dawn of the age of artificial intelligence.
In a nutshell, the message that I heard most loudly and clearly from The World Beyond Your Head is that it's a good thing to deliberately choose to do meaningful work ourselves, to do the labor ourselves with zeal, no matter the return.
John Williams’ Choices
The part of the book that was left unsaid, at least as far as my painfully slow first reading, was what we ought to consider tossing aside. Surely, there are tasks I love to do, and there are tasks that surely lead to a slow mediocrity if I kept at them long enough (I’m remembering all the busy-work my high school teachers gave me just to occupy my time). This line of thought forced me to question the balance between the work I choose to do with my own wits, and the work I choose to automate via technology.
Naturally, all arguments about this balance lead back to the process of creating music, but after reading the book my mind expanded towards the creation of art and of creativity in general. I stared, impolitely, at the state of doing creative stuff nowadays. I couldn't help but wonder: Are we to export all parts of the creative process to artificial intelligence and still call ourselves individuals? Or on the other hand, do we wish to burn ourselves out and do everything in a mad dash to claim our own piece of the pie? Which parts do we want to allow someone or something else handle for us? Where's the balance? How do we do art without becoming a technophobe conspiracy theorist but also engage with the work that gives us the most meaning in our lives?
After thinking about it for awhile, I began to wonder about the most well-known artists in my field, film composing. Did they have the balance I was after? One of them, for certain. And he is a king in Hollywood.
A perfect example of a well-known composer who has this balance, a person who favors the use of a simple piano, pencil, paper, and his wits, is the film composer John Williams. His work is heard on nearly every single Steven Spielberg film. And still, as far I know, he hasn't once relied upon even a computer to write his music. He still sits at a piano and writes music by hand. The music takes longer for him to create than most modern composers by comparison; Most composers who write orchestral music for film today are taking clear advantage of the copy & paste function in a music scoring program like Dorico. He chooses to write his notes out, one at a time.
The interesting thing is to wonder about the entire process of film composing for a musician at John Williams' level. I'm positive that he does not do everything himself. I don't think it's a stretch to posit that John Williams has a small army of musicians that love to transfer his ideas that he wrote with a pencil and staff paper into a music scoring program, again, like Dorico. This is a necessary part of the process of getting an original music score ready to be recorded. If skipped, the whole process looks to waste a great deal of resources. Here's why:
First, the master score needs to be digitized so that the conductor in the studio can see the notes clearly (usually Williams conducts his film scores in the studio). Second, when the time comes to extract parts, meaning generating a separate piece of sheet music for each instrument and musician in the film orchestra, having a computerized score score makes short work of that process.
Perhaps you were wondering, "That's all fine and dandy, but why not just start with the computer and save a step altogether?" Probably because John Williams is king, works with Steven Spielberg, and is in his 90's. He doesn't need to. He can hire out all the people to take care of the things that he doesn't want to do, things that don't excite or interest him, things that obviously need to get done but that he just doesn't have the headspace to finish himself.
It seems balanced to me how this works: John Williams composes the way he composes because it has obviously worked for him and the films he's worked on. Three Academy Awards to boot. And yet, he outsources the less sexy parts of that process to others that he trusts to get the job done correctly. In other words, there's a balance between the tasks that are extremely fulfilling and meaningful for him (the composing) and the tasks that need to be completed but don't excite him probably one bit (inputting notes on a computer scoring program, extracting parts, etc).
In the age of artificial intelligence, there's a temptation to wonder if computers can do everything for us. For example, I know of many people who already rely upon AI to produce everything in their business, from writing content for their blogs (I use AI to proofread and make suggestions for better flow, just to be clear) all the way to creating entire companies with tightly wrapped, branded products. I have heard of photographers completely letting go of grabbing their camera and letting AI create an image for them. Ditto for YouTubers looking to get a new piece of content for their channels. I’m constantly on the defence for taking time to create teaching materials or blogs because of the time and energy it costs me. I just can't bring myself to export the process for someone, or something, to handle for me. I can't just have AI write a blog for me. You'd know it in a second that the blog was written by AI. It would annoy you. Or, I assume it would.
Besides, the deeper issue is what happens when we let something who has pretty much no skin in our game as artists create for us. When we allow a robot who basically doesn’t care beyond excuting a prompt correctly to create for us, are we not losing something in the process? I dare say that we lose some of our agency and sovereignty... hell, I think we are losing boatloads of our passion as creatives. Do we really want that, just in this dogged, damned effort to save time, make money, and feed this stupid content machine? Just to make ourselves feel better and important that we have this digital assistant that does our dirty work for us for free? Sounds a little... boujee.
In coming back to the example of John Williams, a man who works with a pencil, a piano, and composes using just his own wits and personal musical history, can we not take a little something from his example in our own lives?
The answer lies in what we wish to do with our time.
Are there tasks that only we should do? Surely. Are there tasks that we probably shouldn't do and leave to a computer? Surely. The trick is figuring out which tasks belong where, and I believe that's a conversation we ought to have with ourselves, often.
Perhaps a couple of obvious examples will do here.
Would I want an AI to meditate for me every morning? Rhetorical question.
Would I want a robot to do Yoga for me every morning? Ditto.
Do I want AI to decide what Eurorack patch I want to create? What guitar chord to play? How to compose a melody? No, no, and no. I like doing all of these tasks. They make my life richer, more fulfilling, and I love feeling the agency in the work that I choose.
But certainly, I can find tasks for computers that seem super unsexy to me. For example, a chunk of my day is spent taking a close look at which emails deserve a response. Thankfully, many email programs automatically filter emails according to importance. I take liberal advantage of that. The only exception is when I get an unsolicited email about SEO placement offers. I love laughing out loud at their emails right before I spam the living shit out of them.
Another task? Scheduling guitar lessons. I remember the dark days of my teaching practice when I scheduled all lessons by hand, in a paper scheduling book. I would have at least four back-and-forth email exchanges between prospective students, and half the time, they wouldn't show up for their first lesson. It felt awful to sit outside my office, waiting for a student who would just never come. So, when online booking came around, I instantly saw the potential. When a student booked a first lesson, I gave this person the choice of time slot, immediately. I also gave them information like directions to my office, where to park, and what the first lesson is like. I also required payment on the first lesson, which cut down the amount of no-call-no-shows. Systemizing the booking of lessons instantly saved me three hours of work each week, hours that I could spend doing something more fun, like writing songs.
Let's do one more: I spend a large part of my Thursdays aggressively soliciting for more press and promotion opportunities for the albums on my record label. The hours I spent researching blogs! The hours I spent writing emails, trying to get them to listen, following up! Yuck! I remember clearly the moment when I found a couple of services that filtered promotion opportunities for me. Now, my music got submitted to hundreds of places automatically, and if a blogger liked the music they wrote about it. I could submit the music I wanted to promote to potentially thousands of blogs in 5% of the time. I felt a huge weight lift away from my shoulders. This freed up a good chunk of time to do things I enjoy doing a lot more, like writing blogs like this one.
The point is, I want to keep doing the tasks that give me a sense of fulfillment, tasks that define me as a human being, just as Matthew Crawford states in The World Beyond Your Head. I want to keep on composing, writing music, and engaging with the work that makes me feel alive. And also, I also want to outsource the work that has no place in my life other than to conspire to keep me busy, engaged, mediocre, and frankly, tired as hell.
What gets missed in the conversation about AI is exactly how much we seem to want to outsource everything to it, boring tasks as well as fulfilling tasks too. I wouldn't be at all surprised if in ten years most of my life could be handled by AI. This frightens me. I don't want to lose my sense of sovereignty. I don't want to allow someone else, AI or human, the chance to write music for me (unless I'm collaborating, of course, but only with humans, goshdarnit).
It just means more to do the work that makes me feel alive. And, it means more to let go of the busy work that I find incredibly silly.
Balance, baby. Balance.