A Tiny Story In A Tiny Book

Fairy Houses & Other Forgotten Human Magic

“What about these snap beans, Jean?”  We are looking for fairy food.  Our backyard has become living quarters to a series of magical hang outs for the fairy who lives here.  One in a tree, made of oyster shells, moss and shade overhangs, one a clover patch A-frame made of wood chards, with a tiny leather blanket.  A wardrobe with tiny hangers made of garden wire, a homemade book the size of a nickel, a button lamp, a spool of turquoise thread for sitting at the table.  Now, the fairy needs food. 

Jean pulls apart a bean pod, collects bright peas.  They join rice and sesame seeds in a little cup in her tight hand.

“What about this?”  I pull seed pods off a winter green gone to seed.  To me, it looks like a perfect miniature green bean. “She’d love that, right?”

“Can I eat it?”

“Um, no, let’s not eat it.”  I can’t remember what this bolted plant is. 

“Mom.”  Jean looks at me seriously.  “If I can’t eat it, a fairy definitely can’t eat it either.”

Oh.  I didn’t realize.  I never thought about it like that. 

Beloved Rosie made this bed, lamp & sandals.

My hair is covered in silver foil when I get a request to appear on the national evening news within the next hour to talk about music and the consequences of AI.  “Can’t make it.  Not camera ready.” I send word along with a picture of the black apron and the chemical hair glaze. I hardly ever even have a haircut these days; it’s been years since I had somebody doing something fancy to me.  But considering what it might be like to be onstage again has me trying a few things to dial up my confidence.  I explain to the kind woman tending me that I’ve been on the board of the Artist Right’s Alliance for many years, and that the evening news journalists probably really want Rosanne Cash to appear anyway.   

“Yes, I saw some AI photoshoots.  They aren’t using models anymore.”

Photoshoots.  The only time in my life I ever want to take drugs because it’s so boring.  I mean, sure it’s fun for the ego to have a squad of people working up your details, but the image is the point.  The human present is beside the point.   I’ve always meant to write something about how photoshoots made me feel, about how early I had to start asking for photos to not be retouched, about how the system was automatic, about the disorienting feeling of standing up for yourself as more than an object in those moments, about how despite the primal human feeling of longing to be loved or beautiful, how easy and replicable the illusion of looking perfect in a photo is.

“Wait, what do you mean, AI shoots?”  

“They don’t have to use a model, or a crew, just an AI generated —-”

Of course.  I had never thought about it like that.  The flood of images of not just retouched women but imagined ideals drowning social media and putting ideas into tiny heads about what they should look like. Retouching on steroids.  

In the salon mirror, I am wrinkled, fragile, imperfect, inefficient, unpredictable, flawed.  It’s hard enough for a human to embrace being human. There must be something intangible, out of reach of words, but important about it, though I can’t say just what. I must be, quietly, somewhere, more than just my human flaws and bruises.

Later that afternoon, I do appear on the nightly news.  I can’t remember what I said but my just-done hair looked good.  Maybe I said something along the lines of AI companies are using musicians’ work to train AI without transparency, consent or compensation.  That the market will soon flood with robot-generated content, and algorithms will center that content because it is, for platforms, cheaper than human content.  Only humans get royalties.  Maybe I said we are primed for this transition by the passive way we listen to music now.  Maybe I said I recently learned you fall down in the algorithm if you haven’t released something in the last six weeks, and that doesn’t sound like the pace of the high-level artistic production, at least for me, but an automated robot is more efficient than I am. I didn’t say that technology always introduces itself as inevitable, problem-solving, frontier-widening.  I didn’t ask about the worldview we are heading toward, who does it serve, what agency will I have?  What I know I said is that what is happening to musicians is a litmus test, and it is going to happen to everyone.  

“I think we got everything we need,” said the producer, through zoom.  “I just have one more idea I’d like to try.  That is if Tift is game.”

“I’m not taking my clothes off,” came my off the cuff reply.  I was laughing.

“Um.  Wow.  Um.  Something just happened here. I —”  

“On my God. I’m so sorry!”  Oh my God, I’m about to be canceled. “Preemptive photo shoot trauma! I’m so sorry. That was not appropriate.” 

Whatever good I’ve done here, they’re calling the robot next time. 

        

On Saturday, after I have pushed myself at an inhuman pace, through an inhumane list of things to do, where I am hurried not Zen, disoriented by headlines and often unsure where I am going, I sit around making fairy clothes with Jean in our garden, with a sense of being rather than doing.  We lull on a blanket with friends, sewing tiny slips and hats, poke around in the garden so that it might grow into something deserving of our fairy, and build evening fires in praise of the last spring chill.  This past week, Jean has shouted out “Follow that Cheeto truck!  My precious Cheetos!” on the way home from school, contained galaxies of chewing gum in her mouth, and lost every sock she owns in her room.  She’s announced that Monkey Bars are the latest threat to humanity because three kids at school now have broken bones because of them. She’s sung me her new song that goes With a Little Bit of Magic Anything is Possible.  Brushing her hair, looking straight in the mirror, she told, “Mom, why can’t I look like you look?”  My knees nearly gave — why on earth would a luminous seven-year-old want the wear and tear of gray which I have just throw tons of money at to hide with any shade of her burnt strawberry cheeks?  I insist to her that she is beautiful; she returns in kind. I have written down other funny things she did that I meant to remember, but I’ve lost the paper.  I’ve forgotten most of them.  I can’t take in how tangible her magic is or how fast it comes.  I can’t go slow enough or open wide enough. Maybe what makes me human is my constant inability to conceive of how vast and important being a fallible human is. 

At bedtime, Jean has laid jars along the picnic table to make potions out of cherry juice, lemonade, Gatorade and whatever is in her secret sauce. She tests each by the spoonful.   Every mouthful is a different flavor – like the medicine Mary Poppins gave Jane and Michael.  Whatever each person needs, the medicine meets them, in their favorite flavor.  

“Mom, I need your help labeling these and then let’s put them in the fridge.”

I write the labels just as she tells me.  Special Ingredient Do Not Drink, Forgotten Ingredient Do Not Lose and Almost Finished Just Need the Right Ingredient Potion.  There is Love Potion That Makes You Feel Happy But Not In Love, and Kind Potion That Makes People Feel The Urge Not To Bully And To Be Kind To People And Children.  And, of course, Life Potion That Makes People Feel Life Is Important And They Are Really Loved.  All lined up in the refrigerator.

 A last goodnight in the quiet clover patch, Jean straightens the HOME sign she’s made the fairy, refreshes the moss and flowers.  The tiny house is a respite, a reminder that life is happening for us and not to us.  The tiny story in the tiny book:  today was a very magical day.