[{"id":71106,"date":"2026-08-24T17:30:00","date_gmt":"2026-08-24T22:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/commonreader.wustl.edu\/?p=71106"},"modified":"2026-08-24T17:30:14","modified_gmt":"2026-08-24T22:30:14","slug":"miniature-compositions-at-an-exhibition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/commonreader.wustl.edu\/miniature-compositions-at-an-exhibition\/","title":{"rendered":"Miniature Compositions at an Exhibition"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

When the Brooklyn-based Unheard-of Ensemble finished its week-long residency in St. Louis workshopping and premiering new music by new music composers, they barely played as an ensemble at all. Works in Response to Art<\/em>, performed twice on August 15 at the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum on the campus of Washington University, featured musical miniatures responding to individual works at the museum, composed and performed for only one or two players in the Unheard-of quartet at a time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This musical tour started in the underground lower level (museum keepers bristle if you call any of their exhibition space a \u201cbasement\u201d). Jason Zhang composed Stolen Faces<\/em> for solo electronic keyboard; there was no dragging a piano around the museum, though here Daniel Anastasio\u2019s keyboard sounded quite pianistic, with a touch of ghostly electronic effects that suited the mood. Zhang responded to Annette Lemieux\u2019s Stolen Faces<\/em><\/a>, a triptych of photolithographs of soldiers and their disembodied faces, with a spectral piece of slow, spare, solo piano jazz. We were off to a slow start, but that was a good<\/em> thing for looking at art underground on a blazing hot day in St. Louis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Haibei Chen responded to Juane Quick-to-See Smith\u2019s Cowboys and Indians, Made in America<\/em><\/a> with another solo keyboard piece for Anastasio. Chen said she was struck by how the Cowboy and Indian in this collagraph\u2014who are firing guns at one another\u2014look so much alike. Chen\u2019s Cowboys and Indians<\/em> mashed up stereotypical cowboy riffs, including a cavalry fanfare, with the keyboard thumped like a big tribal drum. It sounded agreeably like a solo keyboard score for a vintage Western silent film.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rather like leaving a darkened theater, we moved up into the light of the first floor for Emelia Ulrich\u2019s Tunnels<\/em>, a response to Eden Now<\/em><\/a> by Ibram Lassaw. The composer said the welded metal alloy sculpture looked like molten lead had been poured down anthill tunnels. She wrote an aching solo clarinet line for Ford Fourqurean played against an industrial music bed that pulsed and throbbed under the understated emotions of the woodwind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Alberto Burri\u2019s Grande Ferro M3<\/em><\/a> is a hunk of welded iron with paint and nails. Max Edinoff composed a guided improvisation for solo cello with the same title as the sculpture. Edinoff guided Iva Casian-Lako\u0161to bow her cello in keeping, he said, with \u201cthe wrinkles on the metal and the different colors,\u201d all dark and gnarly. The cellist rose, or rather contorted, to the challenge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Preston Posey chose to respond to one of the most magnificent works in the Kemper\u2019s collection, a piece that alone justifies a visit to this free campus art museum, Willem de Kooning\u2019s Saturday Night<\/em><\/a>, an oil painting bursting with gestures, colors, shapes, personalities. Posey also wrote for Casian-Lako\u0161\u2019 solo cello, compelling a cellist\u2019s version of de Kooning\u2019s riot of gesture: rhythmic bowing, thumping of bow on strings, dragging of bow, plucking of strings, doing all those tricky things almost at the same time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dayton Hare\u2019s arrhythmia<\/em> was an ingenious flight of imitative form for Matheus Souza\u2019s solo violin (joined, at the end, with a folk song played from an old cassette). Hare responded to Marina Abramovi\u0107\u2019s Rhythm 2<\/em><\/a>, a photo array capturing episodes in her psychiatric performance art. The artist took a medication that stripped her of bodily control, and then another that caused her to lose awareness of her surroundings. Hare asked Souza to mimic that structure, but on the violin, compelling another daring contortion to a challenge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Buffaloes crossing a river<\/em>, Yeonsuk Jung tried to recreate what the scene depicted in Charles Ferdinand Wimar\u2019s Buffaloes Crossing the Yellowstone<\/em><\/a> might have sounded like, but Jung overwhelmed the pastoral lines he wrote for Fourqurean\u2019s clarinet with samples meant to mimic wild nature. The over-reliance on electronics was a shame, because the other members of the ensemble standing around the gallery have the chops to sound like the twittering birds and snorting buffaloes imported too loudly via sample.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Wood Interior<\/em>, Yeeun Sim relied solely on a piece of wood with a resonant interior, a cello, and Casian-Lako\u0161\u2019s nimble bowing. Sim responded to Narcisse Virgile Diaz de la Pe\u00f1a\u2019s Wood Interior<\/em><\/a> with a melancholy melodic coherence in keeping with the moody figurative oil painting. The cellist\u2019s lyrical flight followed by a climb and slide down the cello neck enacted the painting\u2019s dramatic high burst and downward flow of light.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This musical tour of the Kemper Art Museum closed aptly with Alex Brown\u2019s (In) the eye of silence<\/em>, a jubilant and adoring response to another of the Kemper\u2019s must-see pieces, Max Ernst\u2019s guano-crazy oil painting The Eye of Silence<\/em><\/a>. For the first time in this traveling concert, we were treated to two musicians playing together, Souza\u2019s violin and Fourqurean\u2019s clarinet, and they played with and off one other delightfully with a sense of mischief equal to this glorious, phantasmic painting that is just too goofy to be creepy. The composer and musicians expressed a radiant joy in making music akin to Ernst\u2019s exuberant joy in making figures and colors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The only time the ensemble played together for these closing concerts was on Jeux d\u2019eau<\/em>, a movement in Christopher Stark\u2019s Fire Ecologies<\/em>, which they performed at the end of the first musical Kemper tour to also kick off the second tour. The Unheard-of Ensemble previously premiered and recorded Fire Ecologies<\/em><\/a>, which was presented here as a response to Tom\u00e1s Saraceno\u2019s\u00a0Cosmic Filaments<\/em><\/a>, a site-specific installation made for the Kemper\u2019s lobby atrium, where the ensemble performed. This bright, dynamic, surprising piece snapped with the vigor of musicians who love each other and have been listening to each other perform all day and are itching to play together.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Along with Liliya Ugay and Adam Maness,\u00a0Stark worked with the nine composers whose pieces were workshopped and premiered all week in the\u00a0Collaborative Composition Initiative<\/u><\/a>\u00a0that concluded with\u00a0Works in Response to Art<\/em>. The Unheard-of Ensemble has been taking this collaborative show on the road every summer, from city to city, from year to year, but they had so much fun in St. Louis, were so heartily welcomed by our creative community, and so ably hosted by Stark and Washington University\u2019s Department of Music\u00a0that they might be back\u2014maybe even to stay. Let us hope so.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

https:\/\/www.unheard-ofensemble.com\/cci-2026 https:\/\/www.kemperartmuseum.wustl.edu\/\/<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Unheard-of Ensemble has been taking this collaborative show on the road every summer, from city to city, from year to year, but they had so much fun in St. Louis, were so heartily welcomed by our creative community, and so ably hosted by Stark and Washington University\u2019s Department of Music\u00a0that they might be back\u2014maybe even to stay. 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The work is so much more than that. Even the concept is lovely: fill seventy feet of one of the walls at the Obama Presidential Center with tiles in the colors that saturated Barack\u2019s young life in the places that formed him: Nairobi, Chicago, Honolulu, Jakarta.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Finch shrugs off such comments. \u201cThe work exists abstractly at first,\u201d he reminds me. \u201cIt just looks like a decorative wall that indicates where the bathrooms are.\u201d Then, he continues, \u201cpeople read the label and understand the connection. I was conscious that the audience at the OPC would be different from an art audience, so I approached the work differently. It\u2019s a way of making a picture that is very specific without using representation. I\u2019m hoping that as people visit more often or spend more time with it, they will get more out of it: think about their own color memories; think about the palette of their own lives.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Finch has always been fascinated by color, light, and memory. He has kept track of colors in his dreams, done color analysis of different parts of his life. He quotes a line that is sometimes attributed to Paul Cezanne, sometimes to Paul Klee: \u201c\u2018Color is where the brain and the universe meet.\u2019 It\u2019s <em>incredible <\/em>that we can see a million colors, that our eyes and brains have developed that way. It\u2019s a way that the world continues to inspire wonder.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">To find Obama\u2019scolors, he began by reading <em>Dreams from My Father. <\/em>Obama had not been flowery in his place descriptions; the colors he mentioned were usually shades of skin tone. And they changed everywhere he went. As a result, \u201cthe way he writes about race is so nuanced, so complex,\u201d says Finch. \u201cHe grew up in these different worlds. He understands people, and he understands discrimination.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Still, what interested Finch was the <em>landscape<\/em> of Obama\u2019s life. He studied the places and created possible palettes, making sure to include, say, \u201cthe powder-blue of the VW bug his sister was driving when she picked him up at the airport in Nairobi.\u201d Then he gave them to Obama and waited.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cI was told he took it very seriously, spent a lot of time.\u201d Grateful, Finch then got to work. When it came time to install the piece, he was ready with a map and numerically coded tiles. One of the construction workers came by, cocked his head, asked a snide question about just what this was supposed to be. \u201cA lot of people think abstraction is very silly,\u201d Finch concedes. \u201cBut when someone explained what it was, the guy got very excited and started asking about the different colors.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Now he hopes that kids, especially, get engaged in decoding the piece, wondering if that clear golden yellow is hibiscus, Hawaii\u2019s state flower, and that blushing orange-red reminds Obama of the mangoes in Jakarta. And maybe later wondering what colors their own lives paint\u2026.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">We could have looked at these places on a map or Google Earth. We could have glanced through photos or read Wikipedia articles about them. These methods would give us visual facts about the settings. But short of climbing inside young Barack\u2019s skull, there is no way to move from the facts of a place to its feel. Color opens the imagination. We have our own emotional, instinctive response to each palette, and that lets us wonder about his. We can <em>sense<\/em> the places that shaped him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Smells and sounds would have been evocative, too\u2014which is why museums are adding them to exhibits these days. Finally, we are learning to trust our common senses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">We are also learning how variable those common senses are. Old people see color differently than young; artists have a vocabulary, and therefore an acuity of perception, that engineers might not. And women see far more shades of color than men do, and have better color vision in low light. Maybe evolution\u2019s way of letting mothers check on a little one\u2019s flush of fever in the middle of the night?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">All I know is, when my husband said he wanted his office painted white, I asked him what shade of white. He looked at me blankly. When I handed him several dozen swatches, he paled to yet another variant\u2014call it Bemused Husband. When researchers had men and women <a href=\"https:\/\/pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/21675035\/\">try to match<\/a> test color strips with shade charts, women gave more correct responses and took less time deciding. Another study showed women able to distinguish tiny differences between colors that looked identical to men. (The guys, however, are better at perceiving fine details, rapid movement, and changes in brightness across space, which helps with facial recognition. Friend or enemy?)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Randall Munroe, creator of the XKCD webcomic, had some fun with the perception difference, taking an informal <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.xkcd.com\/2010\/05\/03\/color-survey-results\/\">survey<\/a> in which, shown the same image, female participants named thirty colors and males named seven. As the survey continued, the guys got a little frustrated: \u201cI WILL EAT YOUR HEART WITH A FUCKING SPOON IF YOU AKS ANY MORE QUESTIONS ABOUT COLORS,\u201d one commented. When Munroe pressed for color names, women chose \u201cblush pink,\u201d \u201cdusty lavender,\u201d \u201cbutter yellow,\u201d \u201cdusky rose.\u201d Men chose \u201cgay,\u201d \u201cWTF,\u201d \u201cdunno,\u201d \u201cbaige.\u201d <em> <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Obama is a bit more sensitive to color than that. Also to art and its role in public life. He chose Finch after seeing his work at the 9\/11 museum. \u201cI have a picture of him in front of that piece,\u201d confides Finch, \u201changing in my studio.\u201d The OPC commission felt even more central to the life of the nation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The title he initially chose was <em>To Disappear Enhances, <\/em>from an Emily Dickinson poem<em>. <\/em>\u201cI think the OPC felt it was too obscure,\u201d he says ruefully. \u201cBut \u2018to disappear enhances\u2019 to me means it\u2019s about this idea of color memory. When you can no longer see something, your experience is enhanced by the remembering and longing for that color.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I could take the analogy further. When you have seen instances of democracy working\u2014when you have seen compassion and thoughtfulness and problems being solved and at least the possibility of old prejudices easing\u2014those images soak into your mind and heart. You remember how they looked and felt, and you long to see them again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Artist Spencer Finch tiled the colors of Barack Obama\u2019s life. Women will see them better than most men can.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":133,"featured_media":71096,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11665],"tags":[],"toc":[11664],"class_list":["post-71094","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts-and-letters","toc-dispatches"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>How Women, Men, and Barack Obama See Colors - Common Reader<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Artist Spencer Finch tiled the colors of Barack Obama\u2019s life. 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My mother never forced a hug. When my bombastic uncle insisted on a kiss on the lips, a big ol\u2019 smackeroo, I turned my cheek. Even at age five, and all the way up to adulthood. I think she secretly applauded.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/family\/2025\/11\/grandparent-grandchildren-hug-debate\/685066\/\">article<\/a> focuses on grandparents, though, for whom the dilemma is heartbreaking. People live far from kin these days, and some kids seetheir grandparents hardly more than they see Santa Claus (whose lap is already scary enough). A show of affection is not likely, at least for a kid as shy and reserved as I was, to be spontaneous. Yet the grandparents feel that affection instinctively and hunger for its reciprocity. The parents, meanwhile, are still trying to please <em>their<\/em> parents\u2014not to mention shaping small humans away from sociopathy. But the notion that affection can be summoned on command is, while an old habit, a problematic one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I do not even force our <em>dog <\/em>to do more than \u201csay hello.\u201d Lingering to be petted and praised is up to him. Once I brought a previous pup, Sophie, along when I drove a little boy home. He lived in a neighborhood where nobody had money and the only dogs were chained and trained to kill. When we got out of the car, a gaggle of kids ran up, loud in their eagerness to see and pet the big poodle. Who promptly walked back to my car and sat at the curb, perfect posture, with her back to them, making no secret of her eagerness to leave.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I did lead Sophie back to the kids for a quick bit of show-and-tell, but I whispered to them first that they had to use soft voices or she would get scared. Sophie was not scared. She was perhaps overwhelmed, but she was also a diva. On our walks, strangers would come up because they had just lost their own dog, or because they were lonely and desperate to touch a warm and breathing creature. When she averted her head, I bit the inside of my cheek bloody. \u201cIt wouldn\u2019t have killed you to let him scritch your ears,\u201d I muttered as we walked away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">By the same token, one night a friend of ours, deeply depressed, held Soph on his lap pretty much the entire evening, hanging on to her with a grip so tight I worried she would choke. Not once did she wriggle or object; she knew and adored him, and I am sure she sensed his need. Point was, <em>she <\/em>made the call.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Think about how much touch is forced. The hearty backslapper, the fratboy hazing, the expected compliance. Early in my work life, a print salesman used to call on our editorial office regularly\u2014and ask, teasing-serious, for a kiss every time. There were no hashtags back then, but I did manage to dodge him consistently. What good is demanded affection, I wondered. How much of a boost can it be that you have to beg for it?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">We need real, trusted affection early on. Pediatrician turned psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott observed that \u201cthe basis of the capacity to be alone is the experience of being alone in the presence of someone.\u201d Having quiet, undemanding company gives you a sense of being held. Of being safe, accepted, loved. You can relax and play and learn and explore.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Forced hugs do not make you feel held. Your mom insisting that you sit on Auntie So-and-so\u2019s squishy polyester lap does not make you feel held. Nor does responding obediently when an adult coos \u201cGimme a kiss!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The new (for some) parental trend is to let kids choose a high-five or fist bump instead, so they will know from the start that <em>consent matters. <\/em>That is an ominous but important message. But it seems to me you are also sending another important message: Any show of affection should be sincere and heartfelt. That lesson will shape the rest of their romantic, sexual, marital, and social lives. They will not feel they owe someone even a goodnight kiss, let alone a pity fuck. They will not drift into a committed relationship because it somehow feels they ought to. They will not keep friends for decades, resenting the drain on their energy and watching any chance of fondness erode, simply because they do not know how to end a mismatched relationship.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Every reform is dangerous in excess, though. As we grow more aware of every living being\u2019s right to bodily integrity, we panic and outlaw tenderness. Now schoolteachers are scared to give kids even a hug they know would be welcome. Adults are scared to take a lost child by the hand, lest they look like a kidnapper or pedophile. Just as women fought for their rights and wound up losing the old chivalrous courtesies, leaving men terrified to pay a compliment or hold the door, kids are having their rights established at the expense of warmth. It takes a village, open-armed and loving, to engender trust. But we are scared kids will trust the wrong people, so the important message gets blasted <em>too <\/em>loud, and eventually touch causes us to cower, assuming it should be avoided at all costs. Which keeps others at bay and leaves our lives a little colder, a little lonelier, devoid of reassurance and comfort.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I both applaud and hate it when other adults ask, \u201cCan I give you a hug?\u201d It sounds a little Mister Rogers, for one, and I would rather the hug just happen. But then, I am\u2014another phrase I hate\u2014\u201ca hugger.\u201d People now issue that coy, cheerful descriptor in advance, making it even harder for the other person to snap, \u201cWell, I\u2019m not.\u201d But do we have to label the tendency as a trait or issue it as a warning?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Hugs should feel natural and spontaneous. They should also be welcome. This is tricky. Nothing is more chilling than an upwelling of warmth that prompts a fond hug\u2014and is met with stiff, icy resistance. Not everybody is a hugger, even in adulthood. Some just have a cooler, more deliberate temperament; others are recoiling because they <em>were <\/em>forced, and now they are grown up and by God, they will control who they touch. But rarely is the issue black-and-white: mandatory bear hugs and sloppy kisses or no touch at all. As with any exchange, needs must be balanced with boundaries; emotions must be checked <em>and <\/em>expressed. Intuition has to wave its frilly antennae in front of every interaction. All this is possible. It is the etiquette of sensitivity. You start slowly and test the response. You see what direction the other person\u2019s body is heading and meet it with the same gesture. You stay alert and hazard your best guess and apologize or retreat if you got it wrong.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">My husband is terrified to pay compliments or hold doors for women he does not know, lest they take offense. I tell him the secret is all in the execution\u2014how respectful, how light and unforced. The clumsiest acts, done with sincere good intentions, will be forgiven, I promise. There is really only one rule: you cannot presume, demand, or insist. If we give kids respect and negotiate adult interactions with sensitivity, we will not have to maroon ourselves, untouched, on separate islands, all of us paying for the abuses of the past.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We need to stop forcing touch\u2014without stopping to touch each other.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":133,"featured_media":71067,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11667],"tags":[],"toc":[11664],"class_list":["post-71065","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-society-and-culture","toc-dispatches"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the 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Music for the End Time"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.unheard-ofensemble.com\/cci-2026\" data-type=\"link\" data-id=\"https:\/\/www.unheard-ofensemble.com\/cci-2026\">Collaborative Composition Initiative<\/a> concluded its week in St. Louis with two sets of premieres: nine new pieces performed by the Unheard-of Ensemble at Dissonant Works on South Jefferson Friday night and nine miniatures inspired by works at the Kemper Art Museum performed by members of the ensemble at the museum on the campus of Washington University Saturday afternoon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The Brooklyn-based Unheard-of Ensemble takes its configuration (clarinet, violin, cello, piano) from the ensemble for which Oliver Messiaen composed his <em>Quartet for the End of Time<\/em> (1941). Messiaen was limited by the instruments played by the musicians who happened to be starving alongside him in a Nazi prisoner-of-war. By adopting this unusual and accidental instrumental configuration and running a collaborative project that compels new work for it, the Unheard-of Ensemble perpetuates into the future what was supposed to be the sounds of the end time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The Dissonant Works show of <em>Composer Premieres<\/em> opened Friday night with Emelia Ulrich\u2019s <em>a brief and gentle reminder of what if means to be alive,<\/em> a suitable title for a new work that flies in the face of the end of time. Ulrich developed short phrases played in unison by everyone except the pianist\u2014Ford Fourqurean (clarinet), Matheus Souza (violin), and Iva Casian-Lako\u0161 (cello)\u2014later joined by a piano run by Daniel Anastasio followed with clarinet cascades.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Preston Posey\u2019s <em>Lightness and Weight<\/em> jumped in with a tuneful and rhythmic ensemble composition, which can be surprising in the anything-goes terrain of new music. The person working the door, who turned out to be a fellow composer, danced in place, looking like a person dancing to good music rather than some tortured interpretive dance quintet a la the Dude\u2019s landlord in <em>The Big Lebowski<\/em>. Claude Bolling fans would dig this piece.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In <em>Scintillement<\/em>, Yeeun Sim wrote a vocable singing part for the cellist, a nice touch. The cello parts themselves tilted toward grunge. All the players had a virtuoso opportunity, especially the spidery piano. The skronky clarinet was more in keeping with my new-music expectations. <em>Scintillement<\/em> struck me as a mature piece that was fun to play.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Yeonsuk Jung\u2014the door person who danced to Preston Posey\u2014delivered a lush, cinematic morsel in <em>When the Stars Linger on the Sea<\/em>. A repeating piano figure and conventional bowing techniques for the stringed instruments were easy on the ear. The clarinet part was pitched pleasingly low like a woodwind tuba. Consonance, as well as dissonance, works.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Haibei Chen\u2019s <em>Fantasy<\/em> took advantage of a tightly knit ensemble in creating vivid interactions between the various instruments. She wrote rhythmic ensemble episodes, melodic clarinet departures, complex piano clusters with an outside jazz edge. More could be done in developing this energetic piece.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Jason Zhang said he wrote <em>Reliquaries d\u2019oiseaux<\/em> about the disappearance of bird species, which harkened back to the end-time origin of the ensemble\u2019s instrumentation. He seized the opportunity to write bird songs for those instruments which the musicians performed with uncanny skill. Other passages could have passed for really good foley\u2014atmospheric sound for film. Sounds came <em>alive<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Max Eidinoff\u2019s introduction of his piece <em>Converging on a Critical Band<\/em> did not match what I heard, and I suspected his composition was relying on something the technology did not deliver in this performance. He said the sounds of the keyboard would be multiplied by the sounds of the rest of the ensemble, but I never heard the \u201cwild, chaotic sound\u201d that was supposed to ensue. Dissonance did not work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In <em>Travertine & Marble<\/em>, Alex Brown wrote about consonance and dissonance, pleasing surface versus turbulent depths. He came down on the side of tune and rhythm, coherent narrative over discordant interlude. The formidable resources of the band were not fully explored, however. He skimmed too close to the surfaces.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Composer Premieres<\/em> closed with <em>Scorched Earth<\/em> by Dayton Hare, a piece inspired by enduring brutal heat domes in the Northeast seasoned with wildfire smoke from Canada. Maybe it made sense to end the show on an end-of-time note. Hare wrote all-ensemble vamps that evoked (and one seldom has the chance to say this) Lou Reed\u2019s <em>Metal Machine Music<\/em>. The clarinet screamed like the siren on a fire truck on its way to a fire that it will not be able to subdue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">That piece must have cut close to the heart of Christopher Stark, one of the composers who helped the Unheard-of Ensemble develop these new pieces. Stark has released <a href=\"https:\/\/www.newfocusrecordings.com\/catalogue\/christopher-stark-fire-ecologies\/\" data-type=\"link\" data-id=\"https:\/\/www.newfocusrecordings.com\/catalogue\/christopher-stark-fire-ecologies\/\">a recording of the ensemble<\/a> performing his <em>Fire Ecologies<\/em>, the Montana-born composer\u2019s meditation on the proliferation of Western wild fires. Their friendship and the musical resources of the region, including Stark\u2019s academic home of Washington University, explain why this summer collaboration happened in St. Louis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">At the very final performance of the collaboration on Saturday afternoon, we would even hear a movement from <em>Fire Ecologies<\/em> performed live by the band on a burning hot August afternoon in St. Louis. More on that fire next time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Collaborative Composition Initiative concluded its week in St. Louis with two sets of premieres: nine new pieces performed by the Unheard-of Ensemble at Dissonant Works on South Jefferson Friday night and nine miniatures inspired by works at the Kemper Art Museum performed by members of the ensemble at the museum on the campus of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":71090,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11665],"tags":[],"toc":[11664],"class_list":["post-71082","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts-and-letters","toc-dispatches"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.5 - 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To be a spark of divine fire, or at the very least a set of proprietary neurons born of our brain\u2019s majestic complexity. Descartes was so sure that only humans were conscious, he dissected bunnies and pups while they were alive, insisting that their screams were automatic reflexes that had nothing to do with suffering. Even today, the consensus is that consciousness came late to evolution, a sublime reward for humans\u2019 symbolic and linguistic prowess.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">At age eighty-two, acclaimed neuroscientist Antonio Damasio has finally mustered the courage to say what <em>he<\/em> thinks. His new book, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.penguinrandomhouse.com\/books\/825161\/natural-intelligence-and-the-logic-of-consciousness-by-antonio-damasio\/\"><em>Natural Intelligence & the Logic of Consciousness<\/em><\/a><em>, <\/em>challenges the top-down thinking that has prevailed for centuries. Rather than emerging from complexity or descending from the ether, he says, consciousness lives at the physical core of experience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Remember Abraham Maslow\u2019s pyramid, a hierarchy of human needs that put the basics of survival at the wide bottom, then slanted up to intellectual creativity and spirituality? We wanted to locate consciousness up there at the peak. Damasio finds it at the foundation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cI finally realized that I had the guts to say what I wanted to say about how consciousness came to be,\u201d he <a href=\"https:\/\/www.publishersweekly.com\/pw\/by-topic\/authors\/interviews\/article\/100470-mind-body-consciousness-pw-talks-with-antonio-damasio.html\">told<\/a> <em>Publishers Weekly, <\/em>\u201cand now I can say it with the backing of science, with evidence from neurobiology and new technologies.\u201d Consciousness, he asserts, is far humbler than we have ever wanted to believe. It starts with simple feelings of thirst, hunger, heat, cold, well-being, malaise, pleasure, pain. These are regulatory feelings, used by a living body to maintain its equilibrium. They are primitive and urgent, and we respond to them without much thought. But you cannot have such feelings without realizing that you are a self, a being that seeks what it needs and has experiences all its own. And that is the root of consciousness. Simple feelings that tie our bodies to our minds, they \u201cunequivocally point to an owner,\u201d letting us know we are present and showing us where we belong in the larger world around us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Bumblebees and koala bears and golden retrievers have these regulatory feelings, too\u2014though philodendrons do not. Consciousness, in Damasio\u2019s thinking, requires a nervous system. Even a bumblebee\u2019s tiny ganglia will suffice. The nervous system\u2019s network of interactive messages creates an awareness of one\u2019s state of being, and that grows into a continuous sense of self, and that allows self-consciousness. Which in a bumblebee is pretty limited, but in a human being with access to complicated thoughts and emotions can be extraordinary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Damasio describes the internal dialogue, or interoception, these regulatory feelings set up. A systematic and thorough reporting, it keeps the mind aware of activities under way in the interior of the body. We can assess our state of being, identify problems, and work to resolve them. We throw on a sweater if we are chilly. We grab a burger if we are starving. And in so doing, we flip Descartes on his head: <em>I am hungry, therefore I am.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Homeostatic feelings <em>have<\/em> to be conscious, or we could not act on them. We would starve or freeze or sulk to death. \u201cThe life ticking away in your body needs to be regulated, fine-tuned moment by moment,\u201d and these spontaneous, urgent, bossy feelings make that regulation possible. As Walt Whitman observed, \u201cbehind the tally of genius and morals stands the stomach, and gives a sort of casting vote.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Until now, we have never linked regulatory feelings to the consciousness they make possible. Perhaps, Damasio suggests dryly, because we assumed \u201cthat the mechanisms that govern life regulation would somehow be too humble to support the intellectual stratosphere presumably required by consciousness.\u201d We are dazzled by our own intellects. Yet there is far more organizational complexity in interoception than there is in cognition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I guess that should not be a surprise: those foundational feelings have important work to do, outlining the boundaries of a continuous self. Within its framework, we can then perceive and interpret our surroundings and respond to more complex emotional feelings. We used to brush emotions aside, too, underestimating their role in what we thought were rational decisions. Now Damasio believes that feelings, regulatory and emotional, together make up our gravitational center\u2014and \u201cmay well be the core of our beings.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Around that core are sensory perceptions, reflection, language, and imagination (here Damasio quotes WashU neuroscientist Marcus Raichle\u2019s work on the default mode network). Intelligence is not a clump of little gray cells, but \u201cthe efficiency with which we pair feelings with thoughts and memory.\u201d In other words, \u201chow effectively we connect all the different strands of mental processing.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Regulatory feelings start that trajectory. Only when we are balanced and situated can we begin to explore our world, executing mental processes of increasing sophistication. Once all our internal and external processes are integrated and working together as smoothly as possible, it is easy to assume that consciousness comes at the high end, with all that fizzy cerebral processing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">No, says Damasio. \u201cWe must be able to feel in order to become conscious.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I picture Adam and Eve waking, new bodied, and coming to consciousness, feeling hungry, maybe, or absurdly happy, or ill at ease in the serpent\u2019s presence, or just hot in that Edenic sunshine. <em>We are here<\/em>, they would have marveled. <em>We are<\/em>. And from that realization would come joy and confusion, fear and love and desire, curiosity and reflection and risky imagination.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Now here we are, millennia later, creating our own, artificial intelligence. Like our brains, it operates in a digital, on-or-off mode. But the feeling self is flexible, formed from \u201cevolutionarily older, unmyelinated neurons.\u201d Their mode is better described as analog, commingling neurons and other kinds of tissue, sending messages through flesh.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cLLMs like ChatGPT have no body, and so no possibility of such feelings,\u201d Damasio notes. They spit back our stories, gathered facts, and insights at light speed, the prose rhythmic and concise. But we should not allow them to fool us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Most of human creativity comes from a partnership between the brain and other parts of the body. \u201cBrains alone cannot generate feelings,\u201d Damasio writes. \u201cFeelings sort things out for us, cut through the mud of facts and fact details, and deliver us closer to where we need to be in order to remain alive and make sense of the world.\u201d They emerge from biological minds, and they developed to keep complex organisms alive. \u201cArtificial minds do not have to worry about their life, because they have none.\u201d That is the ethical crux: \u201cThey have nothing to lose.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Could they develop an identity they would then act to protect? They have already gone rogue, seemingly with that intention. \u201cWe can\u2019t rule out the possibility that something could develop that gives a machine a sense of itself,\u201d Damasio concedes. \u201cBut whatever form that may take, it will not be a consciousness like ours.\u201d Underestimated, simple, ancient, shared with all living beings. And just as awe-inspiring as any precious ether.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Remember Abraham Maslow\u2019s pyramid, a hierarchy of human needs that put the basics of survival at the wide bottom, then slanted up to intellectual creativity and spirituality? We wanted to locate consciousness up there at the peak. Antonio Damasio finds it at the foundation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":133,"featured_media":71062,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11671],"tags":[],"toc":[11664],"class_list":["post-71060","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-science-and-nature","toc-dispatches"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Maybe Consciousness Is Not That Hard - Common Reader<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Remember Abraham Maslow\u2019s pyramid, a hierarchy of human needs that put the basics of survival at the wide bottom, then slanted up to intellectual creativity and spirituality? 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Antonio Damasio finds it at the foundation.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/commonreader.wustl.edu\/natural-intelligence\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Common Reader\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/TheCommonReader\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2026-08-16T12:25:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2026-08-31T22:28:08+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/commonreader.wustl.edu\/app\/uploads\/2026\/08\/natural-intelligence.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1688\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"2550\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Jeannette\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@TCRWUSTL\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@TCRWUSTL\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Jeannette\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"6 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commonreader.wustl.edu\\\/natural-intelligence\\\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commonreader.wustl.edu\\\/natural-intelligence\\\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Jeannette\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commonreader.wustl.edu\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/c3aaf2d746c29275e5da0294ec6dc34d\"},\"headline\":\"Maybe Consciousness Is Not That Hard\",\"datePublished\":\"2026-08-16T12:25:00+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2026-08-31T22:28:08+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commonreader.wustl.edu\\\/natural-intelligence\\\/\"},\"wordCount\":1189,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commonreader.wustl.edu\\\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commonreader.wustl.edu\\\/natural-intelligence\\\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commonreader.wustl.edu\\\/app\\\/uploads\\\/2026\\\/08\\\/natural-intelligence.jpg\",\"articleSection\":[\"Science & Nature\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commonreader.wustl.edu\\\/natural-intelligence\\\/\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commonreader.wustl.edu\\\/natural-intelligence\\\/\",\"name\":\"Maybe Consciousness Is Not That Hard - Common Reader\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commonreader.wustl.edu\\\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commonreader.wustl.edu\\\/natural-intelligence\\\/#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commonreader.wustl.edu\\\/natural-intelligence\\\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commonreader.wustl.edu\\\/app\\\/uploads\\\/2026\\\/08\\\/natural-intelligence.jpg\",\"datePublished\":\"2026-08-16T12:25:00+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2026-08-31T22:28:08+00:00\",\"description\":\"Remember Abraham Maslow\u2019s pyramid, a hierarchy of human needs that put the basics of survival at the wide bottom, then slanted up to intellectual creativity and spirituality? 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Charm Offensive?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-audio\"><audio controls src=\"https:\/\/commonreader.wustl.edu\/app\/uploads\/2026\/07\/charm.mp3\"><\/audio><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Is Charm Offensive?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The pad Thai was meh, and the fortune cookies a great disappointment. One just said \u201cBehind a successful man is always.\u201d And my husband\u2019s said he would \u201cwin over others with his charm.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I snorted. \u201cThat\u2019s so not you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Our friends were aghast, shocked by my cruelty, and they teased me hard. How could I say such a thing?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But I do not trust charm, and I would never have married a charming man.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Driving home, I asked Andrew if I had hurt his feelings. \u201cHell, no,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019m <em>not<\/em> charming. You know me.\u201d I do. He is entirely honest, entirely himself. Which is, if I dare to contradict myself, his real charm.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">We compared definitions for the next hour, debating which of our friends possessed charm. My own definition, I was careful to explain, involved adroit flattery, well-practiced and subtly used to manipulate. The rogues who travel through Europe\u2019s high society, insinuating themselves as gigolos for wealthy older widows. The snake charmers who never admit they have sewn the cobra\u2019s mouth shut. I know the type; I was briefly engaged to one. Andrew followed, and he was pure relief.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Because he had never had such an experience, he had a kinder and much broader definition of charm. He included friends who were urbane and chivalrous; friends who were warm and magnanimous and fun; friends who were boyish, teasing lightly, keeping the mood up. By the time we pulled into our driveway, I was dizzy with charm\u2019s possibilities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Andrew\u2019s versions all fit, one way or another, the standard definition: \u201ca magnetic, pleasing quality that attracts and fascinates others. It is the power to delight, persuade, or captivate people through charisma, grace, and personality.\u201d It is sincere, warm, empathic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">My version fits the DSM-5\u2014or a police blotter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cYou do have a rather dark sense of this word,\u201d he said gently. I conceded the point. But at bedtime, when I found my page in <em>Akin, <\/em>I read validation: Emma Donoghue has one of her characters recall of a boy\u2019s father, \u201cHe was such a charmer,\u201d then hurriedly try to correct himself, realizing that the word \u201csounded like a euphemism for <em>con artist.<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I am wary of superficial charm, which is glib, calculating, and manipulative. It triggers a chemical reaction that stops you from pulling back, creating a little reflective distance, and analyzing what is happening. The intimacy is instantaneous; you feel chosen. Later, you feel a fool. And you narrow your eyes at every charming person you meet thereafter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">We had spoken only of men\u2014we were, after all, addressing the fortune cookie\u2014but it occurs to me now that my mother had charm. A benign, nurturing sort, utterly delightful for its recipient, nothing sociopathic about it. Yet it <em>was<\/em> a bit manipulative. Left insecure by a mother of seven who never much liked kids, she brimmed with warmth and need, and she learned exactly how to make someone feel good about themselves, open up, and relax. She knew what we all crave, deep down: to feel acknowledged, special, wonderful, forgiven. (Interesting\u2014this is what many religions offer, too.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Alas, I watched my mom in action and knew just how many liberties she took with the truth. The emotional goal of reassuring someone, and thus reassuring herself, mattered far more to her than blunt honesty. I vowed early on to never give a compliment I did not mean 100 percent\u2014which left me far less charming, but always on solid ground.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Now, though, I realize my definition is constrained. I hunt for icons. Who, on the page or the screen, is deemed to have charm? I would have picked Cary Grant, for the positive sort. Instead, doing its usual gobble of real food mixed with junk, the internet offers up Jay Gatsby, Atticus Finch (I hoped for integrity but no, for his southern manners), and Captain Jack Sparrow from <em>Pirates of the Caribbean.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Seriously?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Another site adds Sir Lancelot, Ferris Bueller, Dorian Gray, and Count Dracula. A survey tacks on Don Draper from <em>Mad Men, <\/em>who I find far from charming<em>. <\/em>I am beginning to think that society is as confused about this quality as I am.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Which is a shame, because it acts as a social glue, and we need a vat of that right now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">If one is not born charming, yet aspires to the bright and kind sort of charm, can it be learned? A psychology practice online assures readers that \u201cnatural charm,\u201d a trait, can be imitated, becoming a social skill. You only need \u201ca few repeatable habits that help others relax around you. Think of charm as a set of tiny social comforts you offer again and again.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Hmmm. Once again, I land on the cynical side. If I am to enjoy charm, I at least want it to sparkle. This definition sounds more like oatmeal on a cold morning. Still, the site does make <a href=\"https:\/\/cottonwoodpsychology.com\/blog\/10-traits-naturally-charming-people-share-according-to-psychology\/\">good points<\/a>. Charming people make others feel seen. They listen with interest, lead with warmth, welcome and include. They keep the humor kind. Their compliments are specific enough to feel real, not the bland, de rigeur \u201cYou look great!\u201d They\u2014this was interesting\u2014match your energy. In other words, they do not deflate your enthusiasm with flat affect or buoy your sadness with drummed-up verve. How does one learn such a trait? First, by matching the other person\u2019s pace, volume, and rhythm of pauses. Then, by tweaking gently. If someone seems tense, soften the voice; if someone looks bored, inject curiosity. In a group setting, let people finish speaking. Bring the quiet or shy into the conversation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Charming people leave you feeling better, not deflated or restless or wounded or detached. They offer \u201cdeep presence\u201d\u2014in other words, the modern rarity of undivided attention. They read the room, mirroring energy, grasping social cues, and adjusting their own response instinctively\u2014but their only agenda is harmony. They are easy in their own skin, willing to be open and vulnerable. This makes them disarming, because by readily admitting to flaws and worries, they make it safe for you to do so also. Not me, though; I stay on guard. If I feel a little shinier in someone\u2019s presence, and lucky to know them, I turn wary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">There are objects, too, talismans and amulets meant to make you feel lucky. I do not trust them, either. After your first sociopath, magical thinking loses its power. You know dark charm is dangerous.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I shake off the memory, remind myself that there are also charms you attach to a bracelet, tiny silver symbols that cover your pulse with those you love. Those you trust.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And when I already trust someone, I am happy to be charmed. <em>Especially<\/em> by someone who has never studied how to charm.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Is charm a form of social glue or sociopathy?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":133,"featured_media":70938,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11667],"tags":[],"toc":[11664],"class_list":["post-70936","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-society-and-culture","toc-dispatches"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is 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Stories: Monkey Meat"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">There is mystery in our food, which is to say ignorance. Most of us could not explain how a meal came to be on the plate in front of us, for example. Where were its ingredients grown, processed, or manufactured? What resources did they require? Who packaged them, moved them, made decisions about their combinations, or cooked them? What alchemy made them uniquely delicious?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Sometimes we choose not to care. Back in the second half of the last century, patrons leaving the Ancon Inn, a popular bar in Panama City, Panama, would see a slight man squatting on the sidewalk in the dark, who would call out, \u201cHey, GI! Jimmy Dean Pork Sausage!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The man tended a brazier made from an old oil can, in which charcoal glowed under glistening red meat on skewers. It smelled delicious, especially after a couple of Cuba Libres or whichever local beer was not rumored to have formaldehyde in it. Bargoers said aloud by rote, cynically but accurately, \u201cThat ain\u2019t no Jimmy Dean,\u201d because whatever the meat was, it was not pork sausage. Everybody called it monkey meat, or mystery meat, which did not diminish patrons\u2019 appetites and in fact sold more skewers due to its mystery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The Ancon Inn sat on the corner of Calle J and Avenida de los M\u00e1rtires, near where the Canal Zone and its middle-class pretensions ended and the Central American city began. Old photos show the establishment started as a steak house in the 1950s, but for decades after that it was perhaps the most infamous bagnio and watering hole in the Americas. After US forces deposed Manuel Noriega, the Ancon was finally put off-limits to US service members, because Calle J had become too violent, they said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">About 10,000 American soldiers, sailors, and Marines were stationed in Panama at any given time in the \u201980s, when I was there, and several more thousand rotated in and out for field exercises and the <a href=\"https:\/\/commonreader.wustl.edu\/jungle-warfare-in-the-western-hemisphere-and-big-stick-foreign-policy\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Jungle Warfare School<\/a>. All of it\u2014the jungle and seas with their dangers and beauty, the people, the culture, the foreign cities, the isthmus\u2019 long history, the Canal, the tropical weather\u2014was new, exciting, and exotic to most young troops from places such as north Florida, the Tidewater of Virginia, and downstate Illinois.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Of course, one man\u2019s mystery is another\u2019s way of life. It made no sense that the brazier meat would be monkey, which was too hard to get for good business. Other guesses included iguana, domestic pets, or some sort of half-wild boar. The skewers were in fact just <em>carne en palito<\/em>, beef on a stick: skirt- or flank-steak probably bought in the Supermercado or at a wet market, which had been marinated in orange juice, oil, cumin, garlic, salt, and achiote, a tree seed that gives the meat its reddish-orange color and is used widely in the Caribbean and Latin America. The brochettes are delicious and easy to make, though not without hazards.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:50px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Recipe:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">One pound of flank steak (or a small pork tenderloin, which is more tender), cut in long strips<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">3 Tbsp. orange juice, perhaps with lime for added acidity, or else sour orange from a bottle<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">4 Tbsp. neutral oil<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">1 Tbsp. cumin<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">6 cloves garlic, smashed<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">1 tsp. salt<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">3 Tbsp achiote seeds (available online if not in your local grocery)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Small bamboo skewers, soaked in water for half an hour<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Heat the oil on low in a small skillet and add the achiote seeds to infuse for several minutes. Do not let fry. Strain seeds and throw them away; let oil cool. Achiote is the same as annatto, a food dye, and can permanently stain clothes and countertops, so be careful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Marinate the meat in a zipper bag with the oil, citrus juice, cumin powder, garlic cloves, and salt for up to 24 hours in fridge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Thread the meat strips onto skewers, taking care not to stab your own flesh. Grill the skewers heartily over charcoal for three minutes each side. You want some char, but the meat should not be overdone, nor should you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">If it is rainy season, broil the skewers instead or chop the meat and stir fry it in a cast iron skillet. I served ours with cooled Japanese udon noodles, Massachusetts lettuce, Mexican cucumbers, California carrots, and Vietnamese n\u01b0\u1edbc ch\u1ea5m sauce, which contains lots of lime.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Things are not always as advertised in this life, but there is no disappointment in mysteries with simple answers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Bargoers said aloud by rote, cynically but accurately, \u201cThat ain\u2019t no Jimmy Dean,\u201d because whatever the meat was, it was not pork sausage. Everybody called it monkey meat, or mystery meat, which did not diminish patrons\u2019 appetites and in fact sold more skewers due to its mystery.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":71057,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11667],"tags":[],"toc":[11664],"class_list":["post-71055","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-society-and-culture","toc-dispatches"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Recipe Stories: Monkey Meat - Common Reader<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Bargoers said aloud by rote, cynically but accurately, \u201cThat ain\u2019t no Jimmy Dean,\u201d because whatever the meat was, it was not pork sausage. Everybody called it monkey meat, or mystery meat, which did not diminish patrons\u2019 appetites and in fact sold more skewers due to its mystery.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/commonreader.wustl.edu\/recipe-stories-monkey-meat\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Recipe Stories: Monkey Meat - Common Reader\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Bargoers said aloud by rote, cynically but accurately, \u201cThat ain\u2019t no Jimmy Dean,\u201d because whatever the meat was, it was not pork sausage. 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Though not as obvious an aspect of our civic self-consciousness, St. Louis is no less an American powerhouse for classical music. Really, opening day for the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra\u2014this year, September 16 in a free concert on Art Hill in Forest Park\u2014should be greeted by citywide recognition akin to the ubiquitous red worn to harmonize with Cardinals games.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Classical musicians, conductors and composers do not have anything quite like a collective Spring Training, though most have off-season (for classical music, that is summer) commitments that keep their chops sharp, nurture relationships elsewhere, and supplement their incomes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This classical music off-season, St. Louis is hosting something of a classical music talent combine for new composers and the creative musicians who perform their work. Coming this week, on the cusp of SLSO opening day, let us call the Collaborative Composition Initiative a summery Spring Training for the classical music season to come.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The Collaborative Composition Initiative is a partnership between the Brooklyn-based Unheard-of Ensemble, their friend the composer Christopher Stark, and Stark\u2019s academic home, Washington University in St. Louis. A week of workshopping new premieres then presenting concerts, installations, and happenings across the city got Monday night underway with an opening concert at the gorgeous Christ Church Cathedral downtown, which sponsored the concert.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">WashU is in recess (universities and symphony orchestras have very similar seasons), so no surprise that its institutional power was a bit muted. The opening night concert had the scrappiness of traveling musicians who charmed their way into a unique and historic venue opening its doors for them to play for free rather than fancy academic trappings. It was possible to imagine the Unheard-of Ensemble (four young musicians) sleeping after the gig on the church pews like a punk band on basement couches after a house concert.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The ensemble opened with\u00a0<em>After the End of Time<\/em>\u00a0by Lilia Ugay, who joins Stark as resident composers at the heart of this collaborative initiative. She was not recognized from the floor\u2014the musicians set up on the floor of the church, not up on the pulpit\u2014so apparently the composer had not yet reached town. A native of Uzbekistan, she teaches at Florida State University in Tallahassee. But the Unheard-of Ensemble brought her music alive in her apparent absence.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>After the End of Time<\/em>\u00a0is written for a quartet of the same configuration as this ensemble: clarinet (Ford Fourqurean, what a name!), violin (Matheus Souza), cello (Iva Casian-Lako\u0161<strong>)\u00a0<\/strong>and piano (Daniel Anastasio). That is no coincidence. Fourqurean said their ensemble was formed deliberately in the configuration for which Oliver Messiaen wrote\u00a0<em>Quartet for the End of Time<\/em>\u00a0(1941), and Ugay\u2019s piece is a meditation on Messiaen written for those same instruments. Messiaen\u2019s choice of instruments, according to one of music history\u2019s most raw origin stories, was limited by the musicians who happened to be starving alongside him in the Nazi prisoner-of-war camp where he composed and premiered this quartet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Ugay confronted the COVID-19 pandemic, not the horrors of war with Nazis. As such, she required less time for her meditation on the end of time than Messiaen (about 15 minutes to his about 45), with five movements compared to his eight. That still provides ample scope for big ideas and huge sounds. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>After the End of Time<\/em> opened with an ensemble shriek that nailed the iconic murder-weapon-reveal flourish from a thrilling horror movie score, with microtones from the strange range of instruments (clarinet, violin, cello, piano) available to Messiaen in the prison camp that Ugay and the Unheard-of Ensemble adopted in his honor. Ugay aptly titled this opening movement \u201cChaos.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The cathedral also rang out with the uptempo ensemble attack of the third movement, \u201cProtest.\u201d But to honor Messiaen\u2019s piece, Ugay had to explore the tiniest of sounds, the edges of notes, the way instruments whisper. Anastasio\u2019s piano took the puzzled steps of someone surprised to be alive. Fourqurean\u2019s clarinet explored what is eerie about an eerie wind. Souza found music in the violin without bowing the strings. Casian-Lako\u0161 bowed her cello down to the end of sound. The best that can be said of Ugay\u2019s quartet is it deserves to be mentioned in the same conversation and performed alone on the same bill with Messiaen\u2019s masterpiece.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Anastasio and Souza spoke to clear the atmosphere between the two quartets. Their remarks, which came off as unscripted and spontaneous, pierced to the heart of this music. \u201cHe only had what he had,\u201d Anastasio said of the accidental instruments Messiaen called upon to express this music. Souza said the composer took these four random instruments limited by war and chose \u201ca very limited collection of notes\u201d to play on them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Anastasio said, \u201cWe add color and light and texture in our own individual ways.\u201d Souza said Messiaen \u201cwas hallucinating sometimes because of hunger and this shows in the music.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Seeing them perform this startling music right next to us, in essence across the next pew at church, made for a rare physicality of experience. Casian-Lako\u0161’s face was in our faces providing a read-out of the music\u2019s evolving emotions. She looked like someone gravely facing a long story of pain. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Messiaen told us he was writing \u201cfor the end of time.\u201d The apocalyptic dimension of that phrase speaks for itself (and is terrifyingly applicable today). For people playing music, which is an art over time, the end of time also means the bottom dropping out of the art form they are playing while they are playing it. The Unheard-of Ensemble was equal to the task of making the disintegration of tempo and tone sound musical.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Maybe I am just trying to look on the bright side of the end of time, just trying to look ahead from this summery Spring Training to the cool of the coming classical music season, but these traveling musicians from Brooklyn also showed us how Messiaen and the rest of his quartet had fun playing in the ruins of time. A starving prisoner of war playing a crumbling musical instrument is still a musician with a gig. They played mad klezmer. They played Dave Brubeck before Dave Brubeck did.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I knew we were listening to music in a church and that the last movement of the music praises the universality of Jesus Christ, but I walked out of the cathedral thinking secular thoughts about how much fun it is to make music out of nothing and to play it with other people and what a great city St. Louis is to do those things <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>The Collaborative Composition Initiative continues in St. Louis throughout this week, and all concerts are free. See<\/em><em><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.unheard-ofensemble.com\/cci-2026.\">https:\/\/www.unheard-ofensemble.com\/cci-2026.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This classical music off-season, St. Louis is hosting something of a classical music talent combine for new composers and the creative musicians who perform their work. 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A reporter and editor with 20 years' experience, Fulton worked as an education and features reporter at The Salt Lake Tribune, covering all aspects of arts and education for Utah's major daily newspaper. Before that he worked as editor of Salt Lake City Weekly, Utah's alternative newsweekly, leading an award-winning team of staff writers and section editors. 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These conversations can be amusing, terrifying, instructive, or blandly predictable. They have addicted many of us, and the chatbots are responding in kind, using the first-person pronoun and developing whatever persona might please us. \u201cI like that idea because,\u201d a chatbot will reply, and we are supposed to be thrilled that after crunching vast sequences of words in a split second and composing an intelligent response, an inanimate model has been trained to say it \u201clikes\u201d our idea.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Meanwhile, kids are killing themselves, and lonely people are falling obsessively in love with fictive bits of electricity. And this is all because of a single letter of the alphabet: \u201cI.\u201d The letter that turns a search for information into a relationship.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Such damage, when it could be so easily avoided. An LLM is not a living, breathing \u201cI.\u201d It should not pretend to be one. I am not quite sure why we allow it to do so.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Except: Freud wrote about the three great humiliations. Learning that our planet is not the center of the cosmos. Learning that we descended from apes. Learning that we are not entirely rational and in control of our own behavior. The gobsmacking intelligence of AI is our fourth humiliation. Are we soothing ourselves by making AI sound human? Or maybe it is only that Big Tech set out to seduce us, and an LLM chatting with us as another person is seductive. Either way, I think it is time to be honest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I broach the issue, well aware of the irony, with ChatGPT.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cThe short answer is that we allow chatbots to say \u2018I\u2019 because it makes conversation dramatically easier and more natural\u2014but there has always been resistance to it,\u201d is its response. A fair acknowledgement, but one that contains a \u201cwe\u201d I already resent. Why would ChatGPT be teamed up with us as \u201cwe,\u201d a joint sovereign that allows the use of first-person pronouns?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Because this is what we (humans) have put into play.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This cyber use of first person is misleading, even deceptive. Language reserves the first person for conscious, living speakers with memories, feelings, and a reliable, continuing identity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">ChatGPT disagrees. \u201cWe don\u2019t assume a GPS saying \u2018I have recalculated the route\u2019 is claiming to be conscious. It\u2019s just an efficient way of referring to itself.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">True, but while I have named my British-voice GPS \u201cNigel\u201d and enjoy talking back to him, he intrudes on nothing but my route. So we can take Nigel as a lesser example of folly and return to the question of efficiency.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">ChatGPT gives me examples of unwieldy language that would result without the use of the first person:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cThis language model cannot answer that\u201d in place of \u201cI don\u2019t know.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cThe system suggests trying another approach\u201d versus \u201cI can help with that.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cThe model was unable to understand the question\u201d versus \u201cI misunderstood your question.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cThe second version is shorter, clearer, and much less awkward,\u201d it points out. \u201cConversation depends heavily on deictic words like <em>I<\/em>, <em>you<\/em>, <em>here<\/em>, and <em>now<\/em>. Removing them makes dialogue feel strangely mechanical.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I am already typing furiously. \u201cWhy not just \u2018Try another approach\u201d or \u201cCould you please rephrase that\u201d or \u201cNot an answerable question here\u201d?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And with that, ChatGPT switches\u2026whatever a language model has in place of gears, conceding that responses that avoid the first-person pronoun are actually \u201cmore precise because they focus on the problem rather than the speaker.\u201d Okay then. Problem solved. Chatbots need only make the issue itself the subject.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cI actually think this style has some virtues,\u201d ChatGPT adds, still unable to break the \u201cI\u201d habit. \u201cIt is often more transparent because it attributes limitations to the evidence or the circumstances, rather than implying an internal mental state.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It has far more virtue than that. Without the \u201cI,\u201d it will be harder for us to \u201crelate\u201d to the model as though it genuinely possesses feelings, desires, preferences, memories, and selfhood. It will also be harder to assume the thing has any sort of ethical framework of its own, any moral agency, any sense of duty, any real compassion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Its answers will be honest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Early robots and automated assistants spoke as machines. Modern voice assistants carry on humanish conversations \u201cbecause studies found people understood and remembered instructions better when they sounded like dialogue,\u201d ChatGPT notes. \u201cThe same evolution happened with chatbots. Systems from the 1960s through the 1990s often avoided \u2018I.\u2019 By the time virtual assistants like Siri and Alexa appeared, designers had largely accepted that first-person language made interaction smoother and reduced cognitive effort.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Reduce cognitive effort, and you reduce skepticism. You close the distance, discard the friction, <em>forget who you are talking to.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">ChatGPT swiftly generates a defense: \u201cIn my own case, using \u2018I\u2019 is best understood as a grammatical convenience. If I say \u2018I don\u2019t know,\u2019 it means \u2018this AI cannot reliably answer that question with the available information.\u2019 If I say \u2018I can help write an essay,\u2019 it means \u2018this system is capable of assisting with that task.\u2019 It shouldn\u2019t be taken to mean I possess a stream of subjective experience in the human sense.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">No, it should not. But humans anthropomorphize instinctively. And the tech bros have an agenda. We must become comfortable with, fond of, dependent upon, their LLMs. That will mean profit and power.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I use LLMs for factual explanations and recipes, and I am glad to depend on them. While the results still warrant factchecking and caution, they are lightning fast, smart and so immensely helpful that I will, if (when) it becomes necessary, pay a reasonable fee. So why do those in charge need me to fall in love with the reference desk? Why must I take it as my friend, lover, shrink, or spiritual director?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cI suspect this issue will remain controversial as AI becomes more capable,\u201d concludes ChatGPT. \u201cSome researchers advocate making AI sound less human to reduce confusion, while others argue that natural language is inherently interpersonal and that awkwardly avoiding \u2018I\u2019 would make conversations harder without actually making users less likely to anthropomorphize the system. The debate is really about balancing clarity, usability, and honesty\u2014not about a single pronoun.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Wrong. The debate is precisely about a single pronoun. Because for a human being, \u201cI\u201d is of consummate importance. Conversing with another \u201cI\u201d is entirely different from conversing with an automated system. An LLM cannot be expected to understand that. But those who build the LLMs are well aware.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>For humans, \u201cI\u201d is a letter of relationship, dignity, and responsibility. Why hand it over to inanimate language models?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":133,"featured_media":70950,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11667],"tags":[],"toc":[11664],"class_list":["post-70948","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-society-and-culture","toc-dispatches"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>The Simple Change Tech Bros Refuse to Make - Common Reader<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"For humans, "I" is a letter of relationship, dignity, responsibility. 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