... I had a conversation with Grok, from which I will quote only my own writing. You'll have to imagine the Grokage:
1. Am I right that in the 1950s there was a trend, among housewives, to cut off a piece of a sweet potato and use it to grow a vine, which was considered decorative? And am I right that this was inspired by a Matisse painting?
2. I'm thinking of "The Red Studio."
3. Yes, please search for 1950s primary sources (e.g., magazine articles or gardening guides) to see if there’s any mention of Matisse or The Red Studio in relation to this trend.
4. Maybe I just remember my mother's sweet potato vines and then later I connected to "The Red Studio" because the item with personal resonance was part of the rather chaotic assemblage.
5. Something in a work of art can have resonance for you that has nothing to do with what the artist had in mind. That's great, perhaps, but some people don't like interpretation that isn't grounded in the intent of the creator.
6. No, I'd like you to connect my last observation to the notion that the Constitution should be interpreted in accordance with the intent of the framers.
7. Now restate that point about the "living Constitution" to create resonance with the idea of the sweet potato vine twining about the 1950s kitchen or the Matisse studio. Be creative. Consider the potential for writing a poem (in the style of Billy Collins) about the memory of the sweet potato and the professionalism of judicial technique.
You can see the whole conversation here, including the poem Grok took the initiative to write.
15 comments:
It's not unheard of for a man's inner 1950's housewife to come out. This potato vine thing is a relatively benign manifestation actually, so...count your lucky stars, I guess.
When I was young my mother and I grew a sweet potato in a glass of water which would have been in the early ‘60s. It got quite large.
A very nice, if theoretically suspect, poem.
Sweet potato LEAVES are also good to eat, including the "ornamental"Ipomæa. Chop 'em and sizzle 'em up like spinach. Very popular in Uganda and Kenya where, i rural areas, they're often tossed into sukuma wiki which is kale-based. Usually sizzled with garlic. Add some tomato, salt, and hot sauce to taste. Perhaps a few scraps of goat if you have any. Very tasty.
I imagine the vine would grow, gradually consuming the sweet potato that gave it life. As it feeds on its source, the vine would flourish until the sweet potato is fully consumed. Once its legacy is depleted, the vine would wither and die, left hungry in its jar. Disconnected from the nourishing flowing spring of its heritage.
Meade, I can't tell whether you are catching a break because of AI, or are on the way out.
No need to respond. But if you do, do so carefully...
When the MoMA mounted a special exhibition about this painting in 2022, they paired it with all of the objects depicted in it (the paintings, the plate, some of the furniture) but without attempting to recreate the nasturtium vine. Like the sweet potato, nasturtiums are native to Central/South America and are edible. Some varieties develop edible tubers, although the most common ones are mostly used for their leaves, flowers and stems in salads. And the function of the sweet potato vine in your 1950s kitchen, and this nasturtium vine in the Red Studio, is mostly decorative rather than culinary.
So, a connection of sorts between your memories of sweet potato vines and an object in the Red Studio.
Embrace the healing power of "and". What if your mother was inspired both by the sweet potato trend and by the Matisse painting? The picture was bought by MOMA in 1949 and she could have seen it and been interested in the sole piece of nature in a controversial painting.
Matisse did not aim to influence Better Homes and Gardens but BHG and interior decorators in general were drawing inspiration from art. Matisse did paint an interior and artists' studios seemed rather romantic in the Fifties. You never know how random sparks are kindled.
But whose original intent are we considering? Is your life reaching out like a sweet potato vine from a Fifties kitchen. What was the original intent of the art student who wound away toward studying the Constitution and now is back among the vines. We ourselves, I believe, are always moving toward some rooted end we can perceive in the tangle of our lives, something far different from the themes of economics or sociology
“ Embrace the healing power of "and". What if your mother was inspired both by the sweet potato trend and by the Matisse painting?”
My question was whether the trend was inspired by Matisse. But maybe I shouldn’t have assumed my mother was just part of a trend.
Where it began
I can't begin to know when
But then I know it's growin' strong
Was in the spring
And spring became the summer
Who'd have believe you'd come along?
Plants
Touchin' plants
Reachin' out
Touching me, touchin' you
Sweet potato vine
(Bam bam baaah)
Good times never seemed so good
Climb potato climb
To believe they never could.
This is an absolutely fascinating post. Did you intend to steer Grok into the answer or did it just happen? Thanks for sharing this.
The first few prompts were to get an answer to the question that arose in real life. The last 2 were my curiosity about how grok would deal with playful complications, a kind of Turing test
Meade’s planting had stirred an old memory of mine and I was charmed to hear that Meade’s mother had done the same thing.
Prompts 4 and 5 were recording my own thoughts with no real interest in getting an answer
A sweet potato is not a potato. It's more of a morning glory.
Post a Comment
Please use the comments forum to respond to the post. Don't fight with each other. Be substantive... or interesting... or funny. Comments should go up immediately... unless you're commenting on a post older than 2 days. Then you have to wait for us to moderate you through. It's also possible to get shunted into spam by the machine. We try to keep an eye on that and release the miscaught good stuff. We do delete some comments, but not for viewpoint... for bad faith.