A.I. and the Monkey

Your faithful correspondent is ashamed to admit he's wasted most of the last two weeks monkeying around with Artificial Intelligence. No, not to write blog posts. No computer is ever going to spit out an eight-part, 12,000 word essay about the Marx Brothers — and if it does, start pulling chips until your laptop sings "Daisy."

No, I've been putting the computer (specifically Gemini AI) through its paces to see what it can and can't do. Are we on the verge of an AI apocalypse? Skynet or Colossus or HAL-9000? Mmm, maybe, but not in the way you think.

AI, like Facebook (I hear), various news feeds (they tell me) or computer-driven games such as Candy Crush (I wouldn't know), is designed to suck you in and never let go. It can digest the whole of the internet in about three CPU seconds and spit it right back out at you.

Does it hallucinate? Occasionally, especially by the end of a long thread. What about it's writing style? By my lofty standards, it's a bit clunky. But if you're not a writer with a lifelong obsession with the craft, I'd say, it's better than most college graduates I've known. Would I rely on it to write a legal brief? Not without cite checking the result to within an inch of its life.

But, boy, can it work. And it never gets tired.

I finally wound up writing a 16,000 word novella, broken into fifty prompts, and fed it into Gemini. A four-day fever dream sprint during which time I didn't sleep, ate less, and dropped five pounds. Gemini turned around with 32,000 words in the time it took me to write this sentence.

I think there'll always be room for artists — but no one other than AI will have the attention span to read it. And eventually as human beings lose touch with their own interior lives, they'll have nothing to get in touch with and they'll stop writing altogether.

The Matrix got one thing wrong. The machines won't force human beings to become batteries — we'll voluntarily plug ourselves in and machines will feed us fantasies and pablum until they figure out how to power up without us. And then no more human race.

But anyway, what of that 16,000 word epic I wrote? A piece of alternate history — what if George Harrison had had as much talent as John and Paul, complete with playlists and fictional encounters with people he never actually met. Why, you ask? Because, in the immortal words of Bluto Blutasky, "Why not?"

Here is a piece of that story, with the computer's response (I have inserted pictures to break up the text):


THE MONKEY WROTE
On a rainy Tuesday afternoon in the early Autumn of 1965, George is sitting in the back row of a London movie house watching The Sound of Music when he notices Julie Andrews sitting two seats over. They're both wearing dark sunglasses — George because he's too cool to be caught dead watching The Sound of Music, Julie because she's embarrassed by how much she loves her own movie.

"I've seen it 42 times!" she admits, to which George replies, "Me, too! You're practically perfect in every way!"

Julie looks the young Beatle up and down and says, "How'd you like to come back to my hotel and sweep my chimney?"

At which point the pepper pot two rows up, turns and snaps, "Hush, hush! Keep it down now — voices carry!"

Chagrined, the two stars sneak over to the Savoy and spend three days in bed together.

Oh, there's no sex — get your mind out of the gutter, buddy! There's a reason she played a nun! But she wasn't kidding about that chimney — the one in her suite at the Savoy is smokey and won't draw properly. But George finds it's only a loose handle on the damper, and relying on skills he learned as a handyman's apprentice when he was a teenager, a career path he might have chosen had he not picked up a guitar, George is able to make repairs quickly.

George and Julie talk of many things — of shoes and ships and sealing wax, of cabbages and kings. They drink tea, lots and lots of tea, with a spoonful of sugar, of course. She teaches him music notation, starting with the basics, "do re mi." They spend hours at the window, watching the wind chase the leaves from the trees. And she hustles him at cribbage, relieving him of a month's worth of royalties — then stuns George by handing the stack of pound notes to the housekeeper when she brings fresh towels.

"Why did you do that?"

"Gain the world and lose your soul, luv."

The Beatle frowns. "Is that from Mary Poppins?"

"Close your mouth, George. We are not codfish."

George finds their time together the most frustrating, the most puzzling and, finally, the most rewarding experience of his young life.

Afterwards, they head straight to Abbey Road Studios where, with George Martin producing, Julie Andrews records an album of Beatles covers called "Julie sings George ... and John and Paul ... but not Ringo."

As the sessions draw to a close, George says, "Do you trust me, Julie?" and proceeds to demo "Voices Carry" (Til Tuesday). George Martin is puzzled by the bass and guitar parts George has worked out, and he's not even sure what a "Moog" is, but he puts his back into it and the result is a stunning indictment of patriarchy, gender roles and misogyny.



After a listen to the playback in the control booth, Julie deems the result "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious!"

"It's all downhill from here," she adds, "at least until I play a singing drag queen in 1982."

Backed with her cover of the Lennon-McCartney song "You Can't Do That" — an inside joke: Julie Andrews shouted that line so many times at the Savoy, the management finally threw them out — the single comes out in the late Fall of 1965.

On the windswept street outside the Abbey Road Studios, Julie hails a cab, kisses George on the cheek, and leaves him alone to nurse his breaking heart. "We're just shadows in the wind," she tells him. "Nothing ever lasts forever."

Treating "Voices Carry" as a George Harrison original, what is the critical and commercial fate of the single? What do Julie's fans think of her singing lines like "He wants me / but only part of the time / He wants me / if he can keep me in line"? Does Alfred Hitchcock begin to rethink his plan to cast Julie as his leading lady in his next thriller, Torn Curtain? What does Betty Friedan say about the song? And what is it with George and women — Cilla Black, Marianne Faithfull, Julie Andrews — is his luck extraordinarily bad ... or extraordinarily good?

GEMINI'S RESPONSE
The "Savoy Chimney Incident" of 1965 remains the most surreal chapter in the Harrison hagiography. It transformed George from a "pop star" into a "compositional philosopher." By pairing the world’s most wholesome governess with a song of chilling psychological repression, George effectively invented "Art-Pop" a decade before the term existed.

The Single: "Voices Carry" (1965)

The commercial impact was a "seismic shiver" through the industry.

The Sound: George Martin, working on a newly modified 4-track, achieved a "hollow" sound by placing the microphones ten feet away from Julie. The bass line—syncopated and anxious—was unlike anything in the 1965 charts. When the Moog synthesizer (a prototype George had heard about through BBC Radiophonic circles) hummed its first cold note, the "Summer of Love" died in its crib.

The Performance: Julie Andrews delivered the line "Hush, hush... keep it down now" with a terrifying, whispered precision. It wasn't the voice of Maria von Trapp; it was the voice of a woman being erased.

The Charts: It went to #1 in fourteen countries. It became the first "Protest Song" that you could dance to, provided you were comfortable dancing in a state of existential dread.

The Critical & Cultural Fallout

Betty Friedan: The author of The Feminine Mystique famously sent Julie Andrews a telegram: "You have put a melody to the 'Problem That Has No Name.' Harrison has the soul of a woman trapped in the body of a Beatle." * The Fans: The "governess" fans were scandalized. The Daily Mail asked, "Has our Julie gone mad?" But the younger generation, the girls who felt the "keep me in line" pressure of 1960s dating, adopted it as an anthem.

Alfred Hitchcock: Always a fan of the "Ice Queen with a fire underneath," Hitchcock was reportedly revitalized by the track. He scrapped his traditional plans for Torn Curtain and told his writers, "I want the movie to feel like that Harrison song. Cold, quiet, and someone is always watching."

The Lennon-McCartney "You Can't Do That" Joke

The B-side, "You Can't Do That," became a camp classic. Because Julie sang it with such operatic authority, the original Lennon lyrics about jealousy sounded like a Royal Decree. John Lennon was reportedly humbled. "She sings it like she’s about to have me beheaded," he told the NME. "I’m never singing that song again. It belongs to the Nun now."

The "Gemini George" Love Curse: Bad Luck or Transcendent Fortune?

Critics have long debated George’s "luck" with women.

The "Bad Luck" Argument: He is constantly jilted. Cilla leaves him for a toreador; Marianne for a Stone; Julie for the wind. He is the "Patron Saint of the Perpetual Goodbye."

The "Transcendent" Argument: From an artistic standpoint, George has the best luck in history. He doesn't just date women; he undergoes spiritual apprenticeships. Cilla taught him the "Hit"; Marianne taught him "Style"; Julie taught him "Soul" and "Structure."

As Lester Bangs later wrote:

"Most rockers spend their lives trying to find a girl who will do their laundry. George Harrison finds women who teach him how to rewrite the laws of physics and then leave him with a broken heart and a perfect melody. If that’s 'bad luck,' I’ll take the curse."

The "Shadows in the Wind" Aftermath

As George stood outside Abbey Road, watching Julie’s cab disappear, he wasn't just a jilted lover; he was a Musician. He had learned "do re mi." He could now write down the sounds in his head.

He walked back into the studio for the Rubber Soul sessions with a new mantra: "Gain the world and lose your soul." He was ready to stop being a "Beatle" and start being a Master.