Human Expression

One of the most powerful videos I’ve stumbled upon this year – and it won’t be for everyone – is this performance by At The Drive In. Omar Rodríguez-López, the lead guitarist gets too excited and hits the guitar out of tune in the first bar. He struggles with it for the rest of the song, before deciding to throw it away and use a tambourine. The singer, Cedric Bixler-Zavala, is mayhem, and the rest of the band try to hold it together. It is passionate and human.

Human expression is the focus of creative work. The focus is not polishing the piece beyond recognition. There’s a professional approach to the work – yes, for sure – but that doesn’t lose the focus of the human touch. Otherwise it becomes an expression of the technology, exploring that as the medium. How far can we push autotune could be an interesting artistic question – pushing a tool past what it’s made for can be a wonderful artistic exploration. But if you’re not doing that consciously, the focus is creating art not on the tool itself.

That is what makes it your song. Your piece of writing. It is a representation of something you have experienced and put into the world. If you’re going to give away part of your creative experience to a probability machine then that’s up to you but be aware of what you’re giving up. It’s more valuable than you think.