My friend Kevin sent me a link this morning to a video on YouTube; Procol Harum’s Whiter Shade of Pale illustrated by AI. The creator of the video had used MidJourney to create all the images, and had created an image for each line of the song.
That got me wondering what AI “imagines” when it reads a poem. I decided to give it a try with my own poem, A.D.D. written several years ago (original post). I use NightCafe.Studio for a lot of the artwork here on the site, and so I decided to feed each stanza of my poem to the “Stable Diffusion” algorithm, with no other prompts or guidance, to see what the AI would imagine from reading my words. Here’s the poem again, this time with AI imagery:
A.D.D.
Pretty girl in the red coat And the black stockings And the Audrey Hepburn black hat — Donna makes a reference To Breakfast at Tiffany’s I don’t quite understand.
Tales of New York Told from Grandpa’s letters And photographs on the roof. Manhattan is not a mountain top; It never will be. She’s too good for that.
The girl in the red coat Is here with friends They chatter for a while In the back room Before getting a table By the radiator. Her friend with the beard Wears an interesting coat.
What’s that policeman doing Out in the street? I think I parked legally For what it’s worth.
JK (or JC? No, it’s RJ) spits poetry The partner in crime says, Speaking briefly of [trying hard to remember … nope] And now Cliff’s on his way to Six months in Afghanistan.
A woman reads from her laptop Muttering vaguely about technology Everyone else has papers or books Loses her place When she tries to scroll too fast; Mutters a vague “oh, sh..” Under her breath As she finds Her place And continues reading.
An older man speaks Of thinning the buffalo herd, And all I can think is that You can’t roller skate there (in the buffalo herd), And so I missed his point Altogether. But he won’t do Haiku Unless he can do it in Japanese, too.
Homeless man walks by Outside the window — Or maybe he’s just some guy traveling through — A hiker or something — He’s got a pretty decent pack and shoes and supplies For a homeless man.
Le Hinton. Black on most days, I chuckle Because I think I get it — Reminds me of Elliott. Le closes his book In the key of G-minor. My favorite key.
Now, there is music. The man in the red shirt Smiling his way across the street I see through the window Comes in very late — The night is almost over.
The man in the red shirt Sits at the table next to the girl In the red coat And the black stockings And the Audrey Hepburn hat There with friends. What’s he drinking?
And now, The lovely lady singing About the weather Has a cold behind; Shouldn’t there be a song about tuning? Why didn’t she dress in Layers?
Dream a Little Dream of Me Brings childhood memories: WBAL used to play records, And sometimes you could hear them As far south as Georgia. We all sing along With the chorus Because it’s the only part Most of us remember.
Driving home — Shoot. Is that my turn? How long have I lived here now? We laugh about it, But is scares me sometimes. Thank goodness for Maggie.