Author Archives: bartyu19

Beyond Consciousness — the Case for AI as a Creative Force

As artificial intelligence continues to compose music, write stories, and create art that rivals human efforts, it forces us to question long-held beliefs about creativity. Must creativity stem from consciousness, or can it be judged solely by the innovation and impact of the work itself? In this exploration, we challenge the traditional boundaries of creativity, arguing that AI—despite lacking a mind of its own—can produce outputs that are as transformative and thought-provoking as those of humans. It’s time to rethink what it truly means to create.

Telling Stories to the Night

Amber light seeps into the dark, softening the edges of the things in the care home —chair, curtain, glass of water—until  everything becomes mere smudges of shadows. I take up my pen, as I often do at this hour, to write. Habit, almost: to trawl the day for small truths, to catch brief scraps ofContinue reading “Telling Stories to the Night”

You Simply Are: Two Plum Blossoms and the Art of Immortality

Your peers blossom in a sunlit room,By curtain, cabinet and New Year’s knot;They wear the season’s warm and hopeful bloom,Yet all that lives in time must live and rot.No sooner do they flower than they fade—For all that dwells in place must know an end,And every gift that light and context madeIs but a loanContinue reading “You Simply Are: Two Plum Blossoms and the Art of Immortality”

Unhousing Myself

I’ve been living in a hotel for a few months now, and I’m beginning to see it not as a temporary arrangement but as a possible long‑term way of life. At my age, why should I feel bound to the convention of maintaining a “home” in the traditional sense? If one can afford an extendedContinue reading “Unhousing Myself”

Where Grief Becomes Language

Give sorrow words; the grief that does not speak knits up the o’er-wrought heart and bids it break.  Macbeth, Act 4, Scene 3 Grief often reshapes the way we see art, and sometimes it reveals the hidden stories behind the works we think we know. Reading Hamnet made me reconsider Hamlet not as a monumentContinue reading “Where Grief Becomes Language”

The Mythic Life of Ordinary  Days

A simple morning routine—waking, making coffee, pulling back the curtain—quietly mirrors ancient myths of chaos giving way to order. By seeing our inner upheavals (especially grief and change) as underworld journeys within a larger cycle of renewal, we recover meaning and dignity in ordinary life, much like Joyce’s Ulysses turns one day in Dublin into an epic.

Deserted Rural Houses

Stories Carried Forward  — An Introduction In many families, the most enduring stories are not the ones that end well, but the ones that fall silent—stories marked by absence, disappearance, and unanswered waiting. These tales were written by my brother James some years ago, recounted to him in childhood by our father. James has alwaysContinue reading “Deserted Rural Houses”

The Ordinary as a Test of Freedom

I meet my brother for lunch every week. I tap a heart to my beloved. I scroll through my photo album and notice faces I haven’t seen in years. And then it hits me—how quickly time has passed, how quietly distances form, how easily a life can drift without anyone meaning to drift. In thatContinue reading “The Ordinary as a Test of Freedom”