There was a time when I was the boy in Cormac McCarthy’s "The Road," wary of the darkness and unsure where the fire might be found. It’s tempting to think that all the struggle in my career to date and the times I’ve rejected the call to do my work has hindered my development as an artist.

from The Road, cinematography by ***Javier Aguirresarobe***

As AI advances into the realms of my hard-won professional expertise, I see now how important that struggle was in forming my devotion to the fire I’ve been called to carry.

Let me be clear right from the start: I make no apologies for or defenses of anything, except the creative spirit. And not just that nebulous idea of man’s inherent drive to express ourselves through art and innovation. I mean the thing that drives me to wake up everyday and do the work that has put food on my family’s table for the last quarter century.

So, I get it. These are ominous times for the creative class. The common view seems to be that the looming presence of learning machines, capable of mimicking our vast troves of written and visual works, casts a daunting shadow, threatening livelihoods. This anxiety breathes its hot, potent breath in the faces of those who sustain themselves and their families by a craft.

We wring our hands, If a machine can do what I can do, then what value do I offer? How will I survive? And, Is the art form to which I’ve devoted my life about to go extinct?

“Every event has two handles,” Epictetus taught, “one by which it can be carried, and one by which it can’t." Which handle, which story, will we choose to cling to: that of the approaching shadow’s power or the story of the fire capable of pushing back the dark?

Judge me by the work on this website and you’ll catch of glimpse of a writer, a filmmaker, a photographer. However, I believe the monicker of artist supersedes the work I put out. Anyone reducing an artist to what they produce echoes the Capitalist Notion that a venture's only worth lies in its commodification, its product. Make no mistake, from those same decrepit depths comes the narrative that AI will replace you.

But you, dear artist, are more than what you make and write. Your purpose, like mine, is to carry the fire and nothing else. Artists are formed by the act of making, not the economic viability of their output. This matters because so much of the “artist vs AI” dialogue centers around economics. AI makes things cheaper to produce. But, at least in the arenas in which I’ve made my career, this isn’t the first time that new technologies led to massive shifts because of budget implications.

Not so long ago, a prosperous industry was dedicated to capturing light in emulsion on celluloid. Expertise in creating, processing, treating, and editing film was highly sought after. But that workflow was time consuming and expensive. Today, that industry has largely vanished (and those budget dollars reallocated) thanks to digital image sensors, a change that brought with it explosive growth and birthed whole careers that didn’t exist when I entered this business.

When technology infiltrates any industry, it disrupts the status quo, leading labor to either adapt or fade into obscurity. This is a natural phenomenon, and despite its seemingly daunting implications, wisdom guides us to align ourselves with the ways of nature. Just ask the Luddites.

As a storyteller, I view disruption of the ordinary world as the start of a story, not its end. It's the moment the hero answers his calling or vanishes from existence. If the hero surrenders, their story, and its fire, vanishes. So, it’s in our interests as “warrants of the child” to speak rationally, and frankly, about the things which threaten him, and the fire we are to pass down to him.

From my perspective, three barriers prevent an artist from living up to their calling in moments like these, three impediments that keep us from stepping into the story assigned by fate with the great disruption of AI:

Certainty, Conformity, and Fear

These are self-imposed impediments, rising from within us, suggesting that it's not an external existential threat, but we ourselves, who pose the greatest danger to the survival of the arts. Let’s take a look at each of them as they pertain to artists.

OBSTACLE no. 1: CERTAINTY

“It is our obligation”, Steven Pressfield wrote in The War of Art, “to enact our own internal revolution, a private insurrection inside our own skulls” against the forces that resist our work. And, make no mistake, the current discourse around AI, and the absolute mania that prompts well-meaning professionals to say things like “filmmaking will cease to exist.”

That kind of certainty is a pitfall. We must beware the voice that proclaims "this is how it is," extinguishing the curiosity that propels all creative endeavors and pushes back the darkness with our fire. Certainty, often masquerades as moral conviction. It narrows perspective.

Embracing the certainty that new technology is harmful to the creative class might well blind you to its potential as a powerful tool, one that could augment your creative abilities and propel the industry you're part of, or aspire to join. I am far more troubled by the thought of what would have happened to my career had the digital sensor not been invented than I am by the loss of physical film as a medium for storytelling. Remember:

Innovation follows a question mark, while a period snuffs out curiosity.

OBSTACLE no. 2: CONFORMITY

Though conformity offers safety in numbers, it comes at the cost of surrendering our individual voices to the crowd. The mob casts a wide shadow and lacks the ability to appreciate nuance or fine detail.

"All good and precious things," John Steinbeck rightly noted, "are lonely."

Carrying the fire is a solitary endeavor, and for good reason. No mob with torches has ever enticed me to join. So, as voices rise on social media, think before giving yourself over to the whims of popular opinion, even one that claims to be fighting for your best interests. Like scar tissue formed around an old wound, what we perceive as protection often stifles our sensitivity and flexibility, traits required to transform the profoundly personal into an expression possessing universal resonance.

OBSTACLE no. 3: FEAR

The greatest threat, however, is fear in all its forms, from low-grade anxiety to doom and gloom prognostications. Fear paints a menacing portrait of AI as the usurper of our place in the creative act. How many are likely to quit their pursuits, or never take them up, because they believed this idea that AI will replace their irreplaceable effort? Fear breeds fear; this is not the way of the fire carriers.

Still, it is staggering how many thought leaders within the creative community have taken to their pulpits to preach a gospel of fear, thinking it drives action more acutely than inspiring a better vision. To propagate fear is to relinquish agency.

The fire teaches us an immutable truth: those who possess the flame command respect, even from the darkness. Fear, by contrast, is born in the shadow. Those who spread fear, tell you to be afraid, have set down their torch, or never held one to begin with.

In their desperation to cling to a position of authority, many in leadership allow fear to determine their agenda. So, as you try to make sense of the discussion, understand that opinions reveal the character of its holder. Be wary of this as you form your own opinion on whether "AI is bad" or if it has a place in your creative process.

The other day I wrote that, as artists, our role has always been to envision a place of belonging in this world, to expand the territory for those coming up behind us. We cannot abdicate this duty to fear of the unknown, to conforming to the comforts of the past, or letting our minds become overly rigid and resistant to new ideas.

This one question remains, as it has always been and will always be:

Do you have the fortitude required to carry the fire?

Our collective future depends on your acceptance of the assignment in times like this. It's up to us, the bearers of the flame, to ensure that the creative spirit endures, shining brightly in the face of this and every future adversity.

director + writer + photographer

Carry The Fire