Dear FM,
I know we’d been planning for the past few years to make our 30th birthday out to be this extraordinary gathering of our favorite people in a wild, one-off Dungeons and Dragons campaign with costumes and magical-looking snacks. For reasons beyond our control (budget constraints, scheduling conflicts, and the place we were going to rent the space and costumes burning down), this did not happen. Instead of lamenting years of planning and work, I’m delighted that we chose to pivot toward a deeper, quieter experience.
I took my dog and drove four hours North to Cambria, a sweet (and surprisingly chilly) coastal town, where I met up with my grandfather’s brother to see his art gallery. I’ve spent over a decade in the performing arts, but knew very little about physical art and wanted a change in scenery and the chance to learn about something new.
I walked through my Great Uncle’s gallery mesmerized by what I learned were “mezzotints.” He specializes in living artists who create intricate works of art done in this style. Imagine a metal plate made of copper or steel. An artist will take tools with little spikes and grooves and rock them back and forth, pressing against the metal until an impression is created. They’ll spend hours, months, or even years pressing away on this sheet until a stamp-like image is made. They’ll then take that sheet, spread ink across it, and press it to paper. Some will spread the ink as they go, adding more depth to the picture and overlapping primary colors that can make a landscape look so real—more like a window to another world than a framed piece of art.
He showed me sheets the size of postcards and poster boards and everything in between. It made me consider the investment it takes to create works like this. Sure, the metal sheets and tools can’t be cheap, but I mean the skill it takes to create something like this. The investment of time, energy, and focus is necessary to cultivate any skill, and on a long enough timeline can be compounded into years of your life spent in dedication to that craft. If you remember that our individual existences are finite, you could see the value of art. What makes it compelling and special is not just the skill of the artist, but time.
It takes time to master techniques. Time to develop an “eye” or a “taste” for an individual’s style. Time to apply that knowledge and experience to the creation itself. An expert in anything will charge based on their experience level, not by how fast or well they do their work, but by how much time they’ve invested in mastering that craft. Time is a sacrifice—it’s something we know we don’t have an endless supply of, but we can sometimes forget and take it for granted—and it is our most precious resource.
We never know when we’ve run out of time until the moment we do.
In an age where technology affords us things like AI tools that can create images, sounds, and text from any prompt, there’s an unsettling fear that it might put human creators out of a job. Every time I stumbled across auditions to train AI voice-to-text programs I would feel my skin crawl. As a voice actor, it felt like being asked to train my permanent replacement, and I couldn’t bring myself to do them. It felt like I had shown up too late to join the game. The rules changed and they closed the roster for joining the team (and someone managed to throw a dodgeball at my face, just before they closed the doors). I used to hold this pessimism tightly.
And then I saw these mezzotints.
In this art, that I’m standing in front of, I see something deeper than paper and ink. I see sacrifice. Time, that could’ve been spent living life or doing anything else, is distilled into a collection of tiny meaningful markings that capture a snapshot of what being alive looks like and feels like to an artist. And then it hits me:
AI art will never supersede human art because the sacrifice needed to create will never be great enough to surpass it.
The very act of pouring oneself into their art, their experiences, their visceral emotions, their fears, their hopes, their essence, cannot be replicated in code. Server space and processing power pale in comparison to the exchange of blood and breath for art.
Humans want a way to leave a message to those who come after us. We want to leave behind a trace, proof that someone unique was here once. We want a legacy that will change the world. We want to know that we made something beautiful, engraved into time.
We all experience a life worth expressing beyond ourselves. Whether your impression is left through art, technology, or being a good neighbor, decide the mark you want to leave, then press and repeat. Pour what you have back into the life you want to lead—don’t let the slate be left blank.
Press and repeat.
Press and repeat.
Press and repeat.
Press…
—PM