FUTURE IS NOW

Memory, machines, art, and the joy of becoming

Don’t know about you, but I am definitely living in the future.
I know this with a certainty engraved somewhere between my spine and my nervous system.

Let me tell you a short story.

When I was seven, my class was asked to draw the world one hundred years from now. I loved drawing. I had an exuberant imagination, so I went all in. Cars floating in the air. Kids flying to school in tiny helicopters. That was the future, according to a child’s logic. Take what you know and make it hover.

That same year, my mum was giving birth to my baby brother. My dad and I went to the hospital, but we weren’t allowed inside. Instead, they let us call her on a phone. A phone with a screen. I could see her.

Here’s the thing. I don’t know if this really happened. I don’t know if video phones even existed then. I might have invented this memory and believed it so hard it solidified into fact. I refuse to Google it. I want the memory intact.

Because for me, that moment was pure science fiction made real.

I was obsessed with phones back then. The old, stationary ones. The weight. The smell. The sound. I could talk to my best friend for hours until my grandma shouted that I was blocking the line. And I remember thinking what if I could see him while talking.
That felt more futuristic than flying to school.

Fast forward.

Today, I can video call someone from almost anywhere. If I have money, I can call you from a plane. I can show you videos I edited, play you music, and talk to you simultaneously. What was once fantasy is now background noise.

I recently watched Fathers and Daughters. Russell Crowe plays a writer who becomes distressed after reading that the typewriter is about to become obsolete. He loves it. He refuses to let go. The future is arriving whether he wants it or not.

And this keeps happening.

People said writing on a typewriter wasn’t real writing.
People said electric guitars weren’t real instruments.
People said samplers weren’t real music.
People said computers were cheating.

Now Bach is edited on computers.

And now AI is here.

People say AI music isn’t real. That you just prompted it out. And yes, often it’s terrible. But so is most mainstream music anyway, so I’m not sure what the moral panic is about.

I’m obsessed with AI tools. Genuinely obsessed. I feel privileged to witness them at their infancy. I recorded an album using Suno. Pure AI. I wrote the lyrics. I generated over twenty thousand songs to select nine. I cut them apart, rearranged them, rebuilt them.

I made an album I love.

If I had done this traditionally, it would’ve cost millions and taken years. Studios. Musicians. Engineers. Producers. Instruments. Time I didn’t have.
Instead, I did it in months.

Is it my music?
I hold the copyrights.
Is it fair?
Is it real?

I don’t care.

If it moves me, it’s real enough.

Somewhere along the way, the artist’s ego became more important than the art itself. Did cavemen sign the walls. Was art ever meant to be permission based.

When I was six, drawing with crayons, I didn’t care about ownership. I cared about joy.

AI will change everything. You can’t stop it. Whether you resist or not is irrelevant. But you can play. You can explore. You can let go of old versions of yourself.

You are not finished.
You are constantly becoming.

And joy, real joy, is rare these days.

Choose it.

Sending you my everlasting love.