The Soul of a Rowboat

AI ain't a poet, AI ain't an artist, AI ain't a musician

Collage: Judson Stacy Vereen

This collage tells a story. 
I have contemplated it 
for a few weeks now. 
I still don’t know 
what the story is.

I know that Judson Stacy Vereen
created it,
with deliberation. 

I know that 
a person birthed 
this assemblage
into the world, 
and thereby
invited 
conversations 
about its meaning,
attempts to decode its message, 
and inquiries 
to determine
the artist’s intent
(or, possibly, 
his total lack thereof). 

I am thinking now
that  
the story of the collage 
is that 
it was fashioned 
by a human.
__________

When I was a young man
I sat on the Board of Directors
of a fledgling small-town museum, 
a somewhat rag-tag endeavor 
dedicated to preserving
the legacy of local shipwrecks
and daring rescues of shipwrecked sailors.
The museum was housed in the shell 
of an historic but-yet-unrestored 
boathouse and lifesaving station, 
a building whose inhabitants 
in the 1800s were the progenitors 
of what would become 
the United States Coast Guard.

The exhibits told stories 
of shipwrecks and saviors,
especially the greatest lifesaving hero of all, 
Joshua James (1826 to 1902), 
a renowned sea captain who
with his crew of oarsmen
navigated wooden Surf Boats
(made by their own hands)
through the raging winter waves 
of coastal New England’s 
Nor'easter storms,
rescuing desperate sailors 
grounded on treacherous shoals 
of death and destruction
just offshore.

At my first Board meeting,
the Director of the museum’s
Boston Harbor rowing program,
a man who was 
spiritually descended of James,
scoffed audibly 
about modern-day
boat builders
who use power tools
to fashion their hulls. 
“Those boats have no soul,”
he said with disgust, 
“and their builders are Charlatans.”

Everyone on the Board of Directors 
nodded in agreement. 

Except me. 

I held quiet, 
startled and confused,
wondering what possible difference
it made to construct a boat 
with power tools 
instead of hand tools. 

What can be wrong with using power tools?
Don’t they speed up the boat-building process?
Don’t they result in beautiful boats 
which navigate perfectly 
and hold fast to the elements? 

This scene has clung in my memory for decades.
I did not understand 
the moral imperative of hand tools.
And, I did not know 
what everyone else understood 
but I was missing. 

Recently I heard a renowned poet's work 
rendered musically by AI,
the poetical lyrics restructured
with a credible voice
and musical score
of haunting sound and tactile beauty.
This work was 
culled from the 
exhaustive consumption 
by silicon chips 
of every human poem and song
ever published. 

Commentators applauded, gushed even.
I was left startled, confused. 

Is this poetry?  Is this music? 
Is this art?

It then occurred to me  
that wooden boat building is an art form. 
And art is both the object created
and the human process of creation.

The deepest art, the real stuff,
is 
the courageous, 
painstaking, 
decisive act 
of creating -
a combination 
of intentional mind, 
visionary eye, and
skillful hand. 

A boat built with hand tools,
painstakingly, with love, 
has human spirit abiding
in each nail hammered,
each seam and angle joined,
in the smooth surfaces 
of the hand-planed wood. 
The beauty is outer and inner. 

The soul of the builder infuses the boat. 
 
So back to the Vereen collage. 
I have no idea what it means. 
It doesn’t matter. 
It was created by a human. 
That is what it means. 
It was created, 
not manufactured.
That is the point.

May the point be not dulled.