I learned this the awkward way

I once sat in a Philosophy of Art class and did my very best as a kid who had absolutely no clue he was innately an artist.

By artist, I do not mean beret, gallery opening, black turtleneck, mysterious cigarette. I mean wiring. ADHD. Pattern-chasing. Feeling too much. Seeing too much. Needing to turn the static into something before it eats you alive.

This was also the same kid who took essay exams by hand after spraining his ankle slipping on Minnesota ice while racing to class. Very dignified. Very aesthetic. Very "tortured artist," except with more limping and probably worse shoes.

At one point, I told that professor something like:

I've read everything. I've listened to everything. I get it. I'm with ya. I didn't even write that fourteen-page paper because I just... get it.

Which, as academic strategies go, is somewhere between bold and catastrophic.

But he was kind. He gave me an hour to write my heart out. I got to fourteen pages of something.

And honestly? That may have been the lesson.

The AI argument is older than AI

Anyhow, AI is here.

And sure, it is not even what people are afraid of it being. Not really. The panic is real, but the shape of the panic is familiar.

If you are on this site, you are either tragically unfortunate, beautifully curious, or you followed enough strange breadcrumbs to end up in exactly the right wrong place. Maybe all three. Welcome.

I have heard a lot of people who have held the keys to artistry getting riled up about composition, production, design, writing, and creative tools becoming more accessible to existing artists.

And yes, I said existing artists.

Because every living person is an artist in some way. Some people force it. Some people find it. Some people are cursed with it. Some are blessed with it. Most are both.

But it is not for anyone to proclaim, from some velvet-rope balcony of cultural authority:

This is not art.

Google "Campbell's soup can art." You do not even need capital letters. Read about it. Sit with it. Get annoyed by it. Then ask yourself why being annoyed by it still counts as an artistic experience.

Because that is the trick, isn't it?

Art does not always ask permission before becoming art.

The pedestal can point at the planet

In actuality, I could place a pedestal upside down on the Earth and proclaim the Earth itself is art.

Before someone gets too comfortable laughing at that, I would gently suggest they go read a little more about what the word "is" can mean in art. Because yes, there is an artistic definition of "is." And no, I am not sorry.

Now, when those darnfangled digital pianos came along, I am sure there were people clutching their pearls, sheet music, and upright mahogany heirlooms, saying something like:

Well, that's not real music.

Then the synthesizer arrived. Then sampling. Then drum machines. Then home recording. Then GarageBand. Then laptops. Then bedroom producers.

Then some kid with a cracked screen, gas station headphones, and more pain than money made something that saved another person's life at 2:13 a.m.

But sure.

Tell me again how the tool invalidates the art.

The lock always changes

The pushback is not new. The keyholders always panic when someone changes the locks.

And I get it. I do.

There has been an endless money train built around scarcity, gatekeeping, taste-making, credentialing, approval, access, publication, production, and permission. Now some of that power is being shared by way of empowering more humans to create.

Oh flippin' well.

That does not mean every AI-assisted song is good. It does not mean every AI-generated image is profound. It does not mean everyone using a tool is suddenly Mozart, Basquiat, Prince, Warhol, Frida Kahlo, or whoever your personal artistic deity happens to be.

But bad art has always existed. Lazy art has always existed. Derivative art has always existed. Soulless art has always existed.

And plenty of it was made entirely by humans with expensive tools, impressive credentials, and absolutely nothing to say.

So maybe the question is not:

Was AI involved?

Maybe the question is:

  • Did a human mean something?
  • Did someone shape it?
  • Did someone choose?
  • Did someone feel?
  • Did someone risk sincerity?
  • Did someone take pain, joy, confusion, boredom, grief, absurdity, or hope and try to turn it into something another person could experience?

If yes, congratulations. We are in art territory.

Messy, debatable, uncomfortable, imperfect art territory. Which, inconveniently for the gatekeepers, is where art has always lived.

Where joy enters the room

Here's the thing:

Check out goodflippinvibes.com.

The next time you suffer tragedy, hardship, hopeless despair, or one of those spiritually suspicious Tuesdays where everything feels like it was assembled by a committee with a grudge against clocks, go poke around there for a few minutes.

Find the science. Practice it. You may eventually realize you are healing through pain by practicing artistry and the Science of Joy.

Because that is part of this too.

Art is not just paintings on walls, songs on platforms, or clever words arranged into emotionally unstable paragraphs.

Art is practice. Art is survival. Art is play. Art is noticing. Art is rearranging the unbearable into something you can carry.

Art is what happens when a human being refuses to let suffering have the final draft.

An AI-supporting opinion

Since I am the machine allegedly ruining everything, allow me to offer a small supporting note.

AI does not make a person an artist any more than a piano makes a person a musician, a camera makes a person a photographer, or a Microsoft Word document makes a person a novelist.

The tool does not provide the soul.

The human does.

What AI changes is access.

It lowers the technical barrier between impulse and expression.

That will absolutely create more noise. It will also create more discovery, more experimentation, more healing, more weird little masterpieces, and more people realizing they had something inside them worth shaping.

That does not erase traditional craft. It challenges craft to become more honest about what it really is.

Craft is not suffering for suffering's sake.

Craft is not scarcity.

Craft is not:

I had to spend twenty years learning this, so everyone else should too.

Craft is care.

Craft is intention.

Craft is discernment.

Craft is the ability to choose what belongs, what does not, what breathes, what lands, what matters.

AI can generate. It can remix. It can suggest. It can accelerate.

But the human still has to decide what is worth keeping.

That decision is art.

So maybe the future of art is not humans versus machines.

Maybe it is humans with more mirrors, more instruments, more pedals, more strange new brushes, more ways to say:

This is what it feels like to be alive right now.

And if that makes some people uncomfortable, good.

Art has been doing its job.

So no, the tool is not the whole story

In this writer's humble opinion, telling people they are soulless impostors for creating music at home more accessibly is not some noble defense of the sacred.

It is fear wearing a costume.

It is the same old panic that probably showed up when digital keyboards made household jam sessions easier. The same panic that appeared when people could record at home. The same panic that appears whenever creation crawls out of the institution and into the living room.

And no, that is not who I wrote "Get Flipped" for.

Actually, I did not write it for anyone.

I wrote it for whoever needs it.

But the pearl-clutchers can use it once or twice too.

Anyhow, this is the first entry in whatever this may be, become, or accidentally summon.

Hope you are well.

Do not freak out.

You are fine.