Trees love to toss and sway; they make such happy noises.
What you just heard is an AI created podcast based on eight quotes by Emily Carr, a famous Canadian painter who had a great influence on Canadian artists and beyond. I recently wrote about a trip to Vancouver island, where Emily Carr spent some time beginning in 1898. This was a time when the western frontier was still wild. Cities and settlements were small and crude. There were no planes, trains, or automobiles to travel into some of the most remote regions across the Salish Sea.
There is something bigger than fact: the underlying spirit, all it stands for, the mood, the vastness, the wildness.
The rocky shores of the Gulf Islands are a misty world of stormy wonder through the cold season and enjoys long-hours of warm sunlight in spring through summer. Emily Carr painted the landscapes of the region, perfecting her craft while living among the "Nootka" indigenous people, which was a bold feat given the attitudes towards women and "Indians" at the time. Her work pushed more than just boundaries not only in art but also in society and culture at large. Her totem depictions, along with those of daily life, not only possess artistic value but anthropological as well.
It is wonderful to feel the grandness of Canada in the raw
So, as a follow up to my previous blog post, I wanted to show some more photographs of the area and sprinkle them with some Emily Carr quotes. I looked for quotes about nature and found eight quotes that I thought encapsulated Ms. Carr's personal thoughts on the matter. You can see these quotes under each pictures included in this post. At the time, I got distracted by some other shiny object, so I put the quotes aside and forgot about them until the other day, when I was testing NotebookLM, an AI note-processing software courtesy of Google. I took the quotes and added them to a 'new notebook'.
To my surprise, the software processed the quotes and provided me with the following summary:
The provided text consists of excerpts from the writings of Emily Carr, a prominent Canadian painter. These excerpts reveal her deep connection to nature, particularly to trees, and her profound appreciation for the raw beauty and vastness of Canada. She expresses the trees' inherent vitality and their ability to evoke feelings of both joy and melancholy. Carr emphasizes the importance of experiencing the "underlying spirit" of nature through emotional and intuitive understanding rather than merely observing facts. She encourages readers to connect with the soul of nature through their own inner spirit, ultimately advocating for a deeper communion with the natural world.
Mind blown!
Enter into the life of the trees. Know your relationship and understand their language, unspoken, unwritten talk. Answer back to them with their own dumb magnificence, soul words, earth words, the God in you responding to the God in them.
There was neither horizon, cloud, nor sound; of that pink, spread silence even I had become part, belonging as much to sky as to earth.
I saw that there was an option to generate a podcast with two hosts discussing the meaning of the quotes. I chose that option. To my thrilling surprise and mind-boggling disbelief, the audio you just heard was created. Holy frijoles! Remember, all I copied into the software was the eight quotes and nothing else beside an initial line stating, "quotes by Emily Carr, Canadian painter." The AI created the summary, analysis, and discussion.
Isn't this really cool? You know how close I was to putting on some white robes, carve a wooden staff, and go downtown to shout, 'the end is nigh! Our AI savior cometh!'?
Heh. As you can see, I was a bit excited. So, after taking a deep breath, I began to calmly (not shaking with excitement or laughing maniacally) put together a video that included the audio, text, and images using MS Clipchamp. The video fell into place like the pieces of a puzzle. Emily Carr's thoughts, voice, and ideas just shined through this new medium like light through a prism.
I hope you enjoyed it! Thank you for traveling along with me.
The spirit must be felt so intensely that it has power to call others in passing, for it must pass, not stop in the pictures...
Cedars are terribly sensitive to change of time and light - sometimes they are bluish cold-green, then they turn yellow warm-green - sometimes their boughs flop heavy and sometimes float, then they are fairy as ferns and then they droop, heavy as heartaches.
Oh, the glory of growth, silent, mighty, persistent, inevitable! To awaken, to open up like a flower to the light of a fuller consciousness!
Writings by Emily Carr (per Wikipedia)
Fresh Seeing. Clarke, Irwin and Company, 1972
Growing Pains. Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre, 2005
Hundreds and Thousands. The Journals of Emily Carr. Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre, 2006
Klee Wyck. Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre, 2004;[58]
Pause: A Sketchbook. Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre, 2007
The Book of Small. Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre, 2004
The Heart of a Peacock. Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre, 2005
The House of All Sorts. Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre, 2004
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