Dear Humans,

You can make pretty good food by following a recipe. And you can make decent-sounding music by playing the notes on the page. And you can write an adequate sonnet by following the 14-line rhyme scheme.

But you won’t be a chef and you won’t be a musician and you won’t be a poet until you make it your own. Recipes and rules can be helpful for getting us there. But these rules were created to try to make sense of great artists’ work. And that art wasn’t made by following the rules of the time.

Because as humans we aren’t born to replicate; leave that to the machines. We are born to create.

Sincerely,

Mr. Curt