What I’m doing with AI wouldn’t surprise anyone who knows me. I’ve always created my art on a computer. That’s been true since the beginning — graphic design, website design, internet architecture, building strange little digital worlds before most people even knew what a browser was. I’ve always learned new tools by breaking them, pushing them, discovering what they could do beyond the manual. That’s my process. It always has been. When AI showed up, it didn’t feel like a disruption. It felt like déjà vu.
The same sensation I had in the early internet days — standing at the edge of something new, watching everyone else squint at it while I could already see the shape of what it might become. Back then, people didn’t understand what I was doing until AOL arrived and suddenly the world took notice. Now, people are tech savvy, but they’re still carrying old fears and half understandings about this new tool. I get that.
But for me, this isn’t a leap. It’s a continuation. And the truth is, I was never built for the performance side of art. The idea of standing on a stage, presenting myself, calling attention to what I make — that’s never been my gig. For me, it feels presumptuous, self-centered, like I’d be pretending to be something I’m not. Working with others was always possible, but it never felt natural. I always felt held back, like I had to shrink myself to fit the room. I’ve always done my best work alone, away from eyes and expectations.
AI finally gives me a way to make the music I’ve been hearing in my head for decades without needing a band, a stage, or an audience. It lets me work the way I’m wired — quietly, privately, fully inside the story. The songs for Not Every Year come from the book I’ve been carrying in my head for a lifetime. The stories are mine. The melodies are mine. The emotional temperature is mine. AI is just the studio band I never had. I’m not trying to be an artist in the public sense. I’m just finally able to finish the work I’ve been building toward for forty years. And if it feels like déjà vu, that’s because it is — another moment where the world is shifting, and I’m simply doing what I’ve always done: learning the new tool, exploring its edges, and letting it help me tell the stories I’ve been carrying all along.