Like feeling the rain on your skin, no one else can feel it for you.
This is a deliberate reference to the lyrics of Natasha Bedingfield’s thematically-relevant song “Unwritten”, right? (Seems much more likely than coincidence or cryptomnesia.) I can empathize with it feeling too cute not to use, but it seems like a bad (self-undermining) choice in the context of an essay about the importance of struggling to find original words?
You’re correct, it is an allusion. In earlier drafts I did mention, [...] Bedingfield’s song was written just after the dot com boom, but applies equally to AI writing on Substack dot com. It is a clearly joking reference, but I left it included specifically for readers who notice the connection and dig into the lyrics, which were originally figurative, but map closely to my point in that section when taken literally (emphasis my own):
Staring at the blank page before you Open up the dirty window Let the sun illuminate the words that you could not find Reaching for something in the distance So close you can almost taste it Release your inhibitions Feel the rain on your skin No one else can feel it for you
I do recognize that including high-variance tactics mean they won’t always land with readers. It might be relevant to revive the rest of Orwell’s quote from my epigraph:
[...] Phrases like a not unjustifiable assumption, leaves much to be desired, would serve no good purpose, a consideration which we should do well to bear in mind, are a continuous temptation, a packet of aspirins always at one’s elbow. Look back through this essay, and for certain you will find that I have again and again committed the very faults I am protesting against. [...]
This is a deliberate reference to the lyrics of Natasha Bedingfield’s thematically-relevant song “Unwritten”, right? (Seems much more likely than coincidence or cryptomnesia.) I can empathize with it feeling too cute not to use, but it seems like a bad (self-undermining) choice in the context of an essay about the importance of struggling to find original words?
You’re correct, it is an allusion. In earlier drafts I did mention, [...] Bedingfield’s song was written just after the dot com boom, but applies equally to AI writing on Substack dot com. It is a clearly joking reference, but I left it included specifically for readers who notice the connection and dig into the lyrics, which were originally figurative, but map closely to my point in that section when taken literally (emphasis my own):
I do recognize that including high-variance tactics mean they won’t always land with readers. It might be relevant to revive the rest of Orwell’s quote from my epigraph: