When Words are not Enough: Creative Responses to Grief (Quickthorn)

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The emphasis on ‘continuing bonds’ and their own way of maintaining a relationship with Josh, is both emotional and practical. Echoed in the other case studies they illustrate how creativity can shape a future where the deceased still play a part even while physically absent and how this is a normal and restorative aspect of the grieving process. Grief can also be a wonderful educator with new discoveries to be had.

True enough and well said. But it needs this important qualification. There is a sense in which AI is not in competition with us at all, even potentially, when it comes to being a writer, because it cannot ask itself the questions Hales asks and which every writer must ask about themselves and their writing. It cannot hold itself to account or be held to account by others. Ouch. Are we squirming yet? It won’t do us any good to shake our heads at the obtuseness of the chief priests and elders, and then walk away as if this Gospel isn’t for us. Because it is for us. The judgment implicit in Jesus’s story of the father and the two sons is directed at every one of us who claims the name “Christian.” We are meant to be uncomfortable, to be confronted, to ask ourselves: which son am I? Am I the son who makes promises I fail to keep? Am I the son who talks the talk, and sincerely believes that my sacred-sounding words are enough? Am I the son who doesn’t see repentance as a lifelong business, a business that didn’t end at the altar call, or the confirmation service, or the baptism, or the newcomer's class at church, that first drew me to Jesus?

The Good Grief Project

In short, I choose the completion that is most likely to be correct based on statistical patterns learned from my training data and the context of the text at hand. This strikingly accessible book isn’t just for those currently bereaved, their families and friends; it’s a book for us all. Loss, and all that comes with it are a given. Something we all have to navigate and support others with.

I can’t remember now how long we battled it out. It felt like hours. In the end, my father— louder, stronger, and not as exhaustingly past his bedtime as I was— won. He called the couple and handed me the phone. I said a very petulant and unconvincing “sorry,” and the next morning, I returned the keychain. Jimmy Edmonds is ​a photographer and documentary film editor with over 100 TV credits. He is also a Winston Churchill Fellow and BAFTA award-winning filmmaker with several critically-acclaimed documentaries to his name, including Chosen for Channel 4 and Breaking the Silence for BBC1. O]nly of a living human being, and what resembles … a living human being can one say: it has sensations; it sees; is blind; hears; is deaf; is conscious or unconscious.” — Ludwig Wittgenstein. Steven Hales has recently claimed the human race is rapidly running out of tasks it can perform better than computers. The day is nigh, he reports, when AI will overtake us as the most capable and savvy denizen of the planet, leaving us dispirited and idle. I am not eager to add myself to the long list of King Canutes drowned by the rising tide of AI as I try to stare it down. So in this essay I set no limit to what novels AI can write, what music it can compose, games play, theorems prove, programs code and what not. And I shall not quibble much over words like “intelligence”, “understanding”, “thinking” and their cognates. These words are used in many senses. I often say Siri understands my questions and knows what she is doing.But that is still not enough for the kind of human understanding I have been speaking of. A robot — I mean a stilted, mechanical automaton of hard metal and plastic — may be able to mow your lawn and clean your house, but it cannot luxuriate in the aroma of a freshly mowed lawn or appreciate the beauty of the garden it tends. As it washes your clothes and irons them it does not know the significance clothes have either as ornamentation or as modesty or as protection. It does not shiver in the cold or feel ashamed or embarrassed at being exposed in public, or enjoy the sensation of velvet or wool. It may be built to imitate some of the environmental movements humans typically display in response to cold or danger like moving away and seeking out heat or safety, but it does not do so because it is afraid or anxious. And if it does not do these things, it is not because it is brave or spartan. Crucially for AI, one needs to have a human-like body and physiology to have these physical conditions of emotion: if no heart, then no racing heart. This does not mean that the body has to be, say, carbon-based like ours, but it needs to resemble ours in the sense that it could, at least, go close to fooling us that it was human. Computers are parasitic on the human world with its distinctive embodiment. They might make products, including literature and music, which have a place in that world, but the criteria for whether those products are good or bad come from a world that they are estranged from. Eurochart Hot 100 Singles" (PDF). Music & Media. Vol.19, no.52. 22 December 2002. p.23 . Retrieved 8 March 2020.

When Words are Not Enough shows us that searing loss isn’t necessarilythe end, but a possible beginning.’ These are all very different and uniquely creative responses to trauma following the death of a loved one. Together they illustrate how creativity can shape a future where those who have died still play a part, even while physically absent. This is a normal and restorative aspect of the grieving process. Out of time

At a loss for words

Such an inspiring book – full of moving stories of people who have found active ways to respond to their grief, from photography through to (my favourite) cold-water swimming.Jane and Jimmy’s ten ‘lessons learned’ about the loss of their child wisely reject any idea of ‘moving on’ or ‘closure’.Indeed, this beautifully designed creation is itself an exampleof what the book is all about. Professor Sir David Spiegelhalter When I was four years old, an elderly couple who attended my father’s church invited our family over for dinner. There were no children to play with at the parishioners’ house, so as the evening wore on, and the grown-ups kept talking, I got bored. The hosts kindly set me up with crayons and paper at a desk in their study, but after a few minutes of listless doodling, I got tired of that as well, and started exploring the contents of their desk drawers instead. To all this it can, of course, simply be said that, if I am right, then AI researchers should just start attaching computers to bodies that are alike ours in these respects, who will look and sound like us, feel like us to the touch, be virtually indistinguishable from us (like the replicants of Ridley Scott’s Bladerunner or the “synths” in the British television series Humans). We can put the computer inside the heads of these bodies. Some important differences will remain, I believe. But I am happy to agree that at some point these beings may well be capable of the sort of thought and understanding I have been calling human. They will become an “ I” to a “ Thou” with one another, and perhaps with us. (Let’s hope they will be our fellows and not, as some fear, a Cain to our Abel.) Released as a single on 3 December 2001, "Words Are Not Enough" / "I Know Him So Well" charted at number five in the United Kingdom and number 21 in Ireland in December 2001 and was the group's last single to be released before their Boxing Day split later the same month. An animated music video was made for "Words Are Not Enough". This first publication from The Good Grief Project explores the many ways that bereaved families find to express their loss. The authors’ son was killed in a traffic accident in 2011. Ten years on they reflect on their journey and how they have used their creativity to survive their grief and maintain an on-going relationship with their son Josh.