How I Tell It Now

"I sit with Shakespeare and he winces not."

Written by Edward C. Hopkins Jr.

William Edward Burghardt Du Bois began the last paragraph of his essay, "Of the Training of Black Men," with that sentence. He goes on to shout out other great writers whose works have earned their spots in the Western Canon: Honoré de Balzac; Alexandre Dumas; Aristotle; Marcus Aurelius. He also alludes to the Old Testament in his final paragraph's closing line: "Are you so afraid lest peering from this high Pisgah, between Philistine and Amalekite, we sight the Promised Land?" I read Du Bois's essay, pausing over the last paragraph's first line, before I read the best works the great writers he name-dropped wrote. After reading hundreds of great books, I revisited Du Bois's powerful paragraph. The same words had a different meaning.

Years of reading, years of writing, years of living, had changed me. I sat with Shakespeare before I returned to Du Bois. Shakespeare don't wince when we sit together. I teach him the dialect I learned growing up in Compton and Long Beach, that efficient, elegant, musical vernacular some scholars call AAVE. The Bard taught me the vernacular his folks and he used back in the day. Now that I've read everything he left us, most things several times, some things enough to memorize, I walk with Shakespeare. I carry him in my mind the way Du Bois did. I weave his ideas, along with the other great ideas I carry, into the aphorisms, essays, poems, philosophy, and fiction I write; the songs I sing; and the stories I tell.

When I courted her, I wrote her a poem about the first words we said to each other. I sang to her, a cappella, at our wedding reception, in the Tivoli Student Union, before our family and friends. I wrote the song I sang. I called it "Whatever It Takes to Make You Happy." I did a lot of macking in that song. The honest kind. The purest kind. The kind a man who has found his lifetime love can do if he has the gift of imagination, a good pen to go with it, and a voice that led gospel choirs.

Thirty years later, after giving her everything I can give her in this world, I made her a new one. I imagined Tenex Syndicate. All of it, its skylines, its streets, its buildings, its institutions, its smells, its tastes, its sounds, its characters, their lives, their minds, and their music, exists in my mind. Janet, my wife, is the muse. They owe their breath to her.

I can speak their world easier than I can write it. I choose to do both, as a gift to Janet, for thirty years of bliss, an offering, hoping my gratitude will inspire God and her to bless me with thirty more. I did the easy part first, the speaking. Artificial intelligence, along with my collaborator and muse, Janet, helped me bring the world, its characters, and their music to life in digital form. Having them around, being able to see and hear their digital versions, and soon being able to talk about them with you, the reader and listener, are helping me do the hard part, which is writing a novel that won't make Shakespeare or Du Bois wince.

I have mastered many AI tools. I know how to use them to bring the worlds I imagine to life in innovative, if not novel, ways. It took hundreds of hours, but I figured out how to make AI tools design complex workflows that enable me to create Tenex Syndicate images using a stunningly beautiful style that paints them as I see them. It took hundreds more hours, but I figured out how to make AI tools help me finish writing and produce Tenex Syndicate songs so they will sound the way they sound when the characters sing them in my mind.

I recorded myself telling the Tenex Syndicate story, speaking the world into existence. AI transcribed it. My story is the heart of the AI-led software that makes Tenex Syndicate now. Several AI tools and I worked together, through Visual Studio Code, to build a system that ties all the AI tools I've mastered together, and now serves as an extension of my imagination. I wield it to make Tenex Syndicate. Janet helps me write the lyrics. She helps me understand the world and its characters.

AI is a tool, and a collaborator. Sometimes, we paint together. Sometimes, we write together. Sometimes, I make it play music or sing for me. I could not bring Tenex Syndicate to life in any form other than the novel I'm writing and the story I'm speaking without AI. And AI could not bring any part of Tenex Syndicate to life without my imagination.

Before any of the AI tools I use could do any of the amazing work they've done to help me create this beautiful work of art, in Janet's honor, and, if all goes as planned, very profitably in her honor, I had to imagine it and I had to tell it.

Before I could tell it, I had to find and love Janet. She had to find and love me. For thirty years.

When the novel is finished, I will read it to you. I will record the audiobook.

Until then, you can visit the digital version of the Tenex Syndicate that I spoke into existence, the version AI helped me show you.