The Thing That Makes us Humans Unique

I began listening to Pat Metheny in 1978, and I’ve been listening ever since.

Last night, I sat in Section C, Row G, Seat 9 at The Sheldon Concert Hall in St. Louis, listening and watching as Metheny and his band created beautiful music for two(+) hours.

As I sat there, tapping my foot, nodding me head to the beat, and smiling ear-to-ear, I thought…

…how awesome it is to create something beautiful and to experience another human’s creativity.

We humans are unique. We compose songs. We craft stories. We build things. We improvise.

We’re not robots.

Robots can assemble songs and stories resembling human creations. But when the robots do the work, there’s something missing — both for the human creator and the audience consuming the creation.

We humans experience something profound and fulfilling when we create.

Same goes when we consume someone else’s song, story, or other creation.

Human creativity lifts us and connects us.

We diminish the experience when we push a button and say to the robot, “Build it for me.”

This isn’t an anti-robot rant.

I’m excited about AI and its potential. I’m diving deep into ChatGPT and other AI tools to discover how it can help me and my clients create more quickly and effectively.

The key phrase there: help me. Not replace me. I don’t want a robot to be a ghost writer who assembles my content without my human touch.

I want to experience — and I want to help you experience — that profound and fulfilling something creators feel.

I want audiences — mine and yours — to feel the sense of connection that comes when they consume our creations.

That’s good for business, and that’s good for the soul.

One last thing…

Here’s a 1982 recording of Pat Metheny performing Are You Going With Me. It’s from his 1983 album Travels, and it’s the song that closed his set last night at The Sheldon.