Alai Ganuza (Spanish Artist, born 1993)
“Pretty Big Eggs”, 2022.
Oil on Canvas, 100 × 100 cm.

Genre: Emo-writing.

In VFX, having something look real when it’s indeed computer graphics is supposed to be a good thing. “That fire/storm/hair/creature looked so real”, looking “photo-real” at one point was the industry bar. It’s what these AI companies are trying to do with image generation. Approaching realism is good, being wildly creative dysmorphic is bad. That’s how people judge if an AI model is good, if it sounds like a person, if it looks like the physical environment we are in, if it’s like things we are familiar with. Why are we trying to judge AI based on how we are? Why are we trying to judge their understanding of the world based on how this planet works? I guess the first step to communication is to understand, but the second step to communication is not imitation. 

Things are changing, fast. Last night, I went to a Hunanese restaurant that I always went to or ordered takeouts from. I’m not sure what happened, it was not the usual: loaded with msg, sugar, and starch, I felt my tongue burning like “The Hot Ones”, which indeed triggered an anxiety attack, did the cooks get recruited to somewhere else? I mean I know restaurants swap staff pretty often, just like people always switch jobs, but what the hell happened to their food?  If this is what $100 gets, how much do I have to pay to get quality food? Have all businesses become scams just like the startup culture, the VC culture, the grocery stores? How much value are we getting for the price? Where did the value evaporate to?  What’s real? That meat in your bowl isn’t real, the stories you are telling aren’t real, your life isn’t real, your reactions aren’t real, we are dishonest people, or is our dishonesty also real? The uncanny valley is getting very canny and hard to distinguish, could my life be rendered too, I was spiraling down a rabbit hole. Everything feels so hollow inside. The Gold Mountain harbors new gold, billboards on the highway flying past, find the next mine, live, work repeat. 

Someone told me, the only ways to make money are to cheat, lie and steal. I think he’s right. I thought to myself, are those my top skills on the resume? I cheat all the time, definitely a liar, though I haven’t gotten very good at stealing. Following rules is for losers, white lies aren’t that bad, stealing though, I had more or less of a problem with, since it usually meant taking something from someone, for some reason I felt bad about that. Government printing money, restaurants overpricing, founders pitching VCs, in the world of lies, how do you prove you are the real deal? 

I’m turning 33 this year, it feels like waking up from a long nightmare. Things I chased in my 20s don’t mean much to me now, even though it led me to where I am: but where am I? Sitting on this couch typing this nonsense, working through my stories, asking the questions that I have no answers for.  “Life is a series of misunderstandings leading us to the final truth, the only truth”, I agree with him, my life is nothing but misunderstandings, about myself, about others, about life. 

I’m not sure why I was so angry when I was growing up. Actually I do know, but it all seems so irrelevant now, that I can’t recall why I felt the way I felt. We all look for answers, but just like I always say, there’s no way of knowing what the answer is until perhaps moments after you die, when your spirit still lingers in your body, moments before it dissipates. Life only makes sense looking back, no one knows what lies in the future. 

Even at 33, my mom still tells me to find a job and fall in line, what the line is, i’m not sure. I’m not sure why after all these years of not talking and seeing each other, she still has the audacity to be so off-putting, who does she think she is to give me advice? To say she irritates me is an understatement, I will not describe what I picture in my head in my head sometimes, just so nobody gets concerned. She’s crazy, I’m not sure how else to put it. She’s someone that would physically and emotionally abuse you, only to blame it on her “limited worldview” later. Enabling my mom for who she is, the entire family is to blame. Is that just how people are, crowd together so they feel a bit of warmth, head toward some direction, even though they have no sense of direction at all. They don’t know where they are going, they fight, hurt each other, tolerating, cuz somehow being sad together is better than being sad alone.

I feel homeless, as in no matter where I go, I don’t feel like I’ve found a home. Home is a very strange concept at this point, perhaps home is where my cats are, home is wherever I am, wherever my books are. These bay area communities are sucking the life out of me, it’s suffcating, people crowd around me, asking me for my time, my money, my resources, is this how it is, using each other, or is it called a social exchange theory? Is it too late to believe in salvation, I need salvation, where is my salvation?  There’s too much hate and sadness wallowing inside, everything feels hollow, no substance, flashy but useless, leaves a bad aftertaste. That’s when something is bad, I thought, takes up your time, energy and space, and leaves you feeling awful afterwards, awful about yourself, awful about the world. I need salvation, how do I look for it? 

At this point I’m not sure what else is there for me to accomplish, I don’t feel the way I did before: I have to do this, I must get this out of my system, I want to express; it’s now replaced with: where am I, what am I doing, do I have to do this, does this mean anything to anyone? I start writing with a question, ending with the question unanswered, does this passage still mean something, or is it just another scribble killing time? So many stories with no end, Pedro Paramo, By Night in Chile, all movies have lost meaning, all stories have been told and retold, nothing new under the sun, but do we have to change, are changes always good? Journey with a beginning but no end, story with substance but no resolution. I better go back and take another nap now, as in dreams there’s no pain or confusion, only peace, and limitless possibilities.