Damon Stone

02/12/2025

I’m a writer and a musician. Generative AI has been somewhat of an existential crisis for me.

But having had a couple years to brood on it, I think I’ve found the silver lining.

The ability to create authentic, human art hasn’t vanished. Any real artist knows that if you’re creating for someone other than yourself, or for any motive other than the expression of genuine feeling, you’re being fake. The art that is most REAL, and therefore remembered, is made not as an end, but as its own means.

AI came for the arts first, which nobody quite expected, and we rightfully lament that. But it’s not going to stop there. Eventually, it will be able to do everything we can imagine, and many things we can’t imagine. What will be left for us to do, in a world like that?

I think the answer is deceptively simple: we just do whatever we’re naturally inclined to do anyway. The only adjustment we have to make lies in our conceptions of “action” or “purpose”. Humans, broadly speaking, are intensely practical. When we DO, when we exert energy, we expect to gain something from it. We’re like that because we’ve always had to be. The demands of Nature and history would have killed us otherwise.

A mistake many artists make is to expect renown or riches from their work. If we don’t “make it”, we’ve failed.

But even before ChatGPT, this was an unhealthy delusion. It’s always been nearly impossible to “make it”, and most of the “artists” who do are frauds. They don’t express real feelings; they make aural, visual, or literary noise that is calibrated to sell, not to communicate. Pop icons have always been robots.

The only one who has a problem with being a productive nobody is your ego. If you create out of a need for recognition, you’re doing it wrong already. Paint and sing and write because you have something to say and no better way to say it. Whether anyone hears or sees or reads is irrelevant.

Barring Armageddon, AI will end our need to do ANYTHING for practical reasons. If we can let go of our pride, this won’t be bad news. When you discover that life is rhythm and move with it for its own sake, living itself becomes a work of art.

—

13/11/2024

Today I had the honor of giving a presentation on creativity to a very special group of people. As part of that presentation, I showed how you can create a strange and offbeat form of poetry by cutting up a newspaper at random and reassembling it as you please.

The world is made of art.

29/07/2024

This is my beautiful kitty who died about a year before I did. I wrote her a piano piece to honor her passing, but I wasn’t happy with any of my attempts to record it. They could never measure up to her.

But when I started making an album about death and resurrection, I knew I couldn’t put it off any longer. I had to give my cat the requiem she deserved. So I recorded it on my s**tty old upright piano with a dusty condenser microphone.

My Requiem (For My Cat) is the only non-electronic track on my album, and serves as its closer. Aside from some light processing to help give it the raw, charged aesthetic of the rest of the album, it’s a fairly lo-fi and simple piece.

Good. I didn’t want anything fancy for this one. It’s just me, my piano, and Chloe - my Itty Bitty Pretty Kitty.

Links to the album, My Resurrection, can be found in my bio link. It’s streaming everywhere.

29/07/2024

A lovely little mandolin-guitar track from a brilliant artist. I played audio engineer on this one and helped to record it. 🙂

Roaming Clarksdale is the 2024 single release by Trevor FieldFREE MP3 DOWNLOAD: https://www.mediafire.com/file/paihyzrjdrwgd38/Roaming_Clarksdale_-_Trevor_Fi...

20/07/2024

A memory came to me while making my album. Right as I was dying, I was visited by an angel. Not a pretty one. It looked like one of those “biblically accurate” angels that have become somewhat of a meme. Only it was darker, shadow rather than light, the thousands of eyes swirling around me like black holes in space.

It asked me these questions. And then it took me. I don’t remember what happened next. Not yet anyway. I tried to recreate the experience in sound with my song “Azrael’s Audit.”

12/07/2024

My Resurrection is now available on all other major streaming platforms.

I died in the year 2017. On Earth, seven years passed, and I was resurrected. I’m still trying to figure out why. In the meantime, I made this album to document my experience. I hope it is of some value to you, somehow. Maybe you’ve been through a little death of your own, and are trying to come to grips with the person who was born on the other side of it - the one you are now. Maybe sharing in my journey will help you understand yours.

Cover art by the brilliant and incredible Sasha Q.
All music written, produced, recorded, performed, mixed, sampled, arranged, loved, hated, questioned, agonized over, and finally blessed by Damon Stone.

© all rights reserved

18/06/2024

COMING JULY 2024

When you’re dead, there is no time. No past, and no future. A second is a year, and a year is a second. I died in the year 2017. Back on Earth, seven years passed, and I found myself alive again. I don’t remember how I died or why I came back. It’s a mystery I’ve been trying to unravel ever since. But I do remember certain things…

Given the transcendent and abstract nature of “the beyond” and what I experienced there, I felt that the most accurate way to describe what I felt and saw was music.

Next month, my album—the musical document of my death and rebirth—will be released on all major streaming platforms. Featuring cover art by the incredible and brilliant Sasha Q, the album combines aggressive synth work with layered beats and disparate vocal samples, so as to capture the strange mix of chaos and harmony that one finds in “the afterlife.”

Follow me, and experience My Resurrection in July.

14/06/2024

02/06/2024

29/05/2024

01/05/2024

I opened another letter from that weird envelope I mentioned in an earlier post. Again, the writing looked impossibly blurry for a few seconds. But it seemed to grow clearer the longer I stared at it. I know how crazy it sounds, but it really feels like these letters write themselves in front of me.

At any rate, this is what it said:

“FRIENDLY REMINDER THAT YOU WERE BORN FOR YOUR OWN REASONS. YOU HAVE TASKS TO FULFILL AND DEMONS TO OVERCOME. YOU KNOW THIS, EVEN IF YOU CHOOSE TO FORGET IT. DON’T THINK YOU CAN TRULY DIE UNTIL YOUR WORK IS COMPLETE. IF YOU DO, WE’LL JUST SEND YOU BACK AGAIN.”

I don’t know why, but these letters scare the s**t out of me. I feel like I need to keep reading them though…

25/04/2024

I spent some time in a place like this while I was dead. I don’t think it was a final “afterlife.” It was more like a quiet place to collect yourself. To reflect on the life you left behind, and to figure out what you needed (wanted?) to do next.

This picture triggered a few memories, although they’re still a little fuzzy. I remember walking a trail and meeting my grandfather. He passed when I was a kid. There was no loving reunion, no cathartic display. All he did was shake my hand, and he said: “the window is open again. Have you made your decision?”

At the moment, I can’t recall what my answer was, if I had one at all. I don’t feel certain that this was “really” my grandfather either. My impression is that I was creating this place, and everything in it—the way you create dreams without conscious intent.

My brain is trying to codify memories from a “reality” it is not equipped to understand. Maybe the image of my dead grandfather is just the best it can do.

Or maybe we just throw the word “reality” around to describe different kinds of dreams.