Handmaiden [Óhù Nwányị̀]

Companion mixtape link (click here if you don't see an option above to play)

L-Y-R to the I-C-S
Niggas still fussing 'bout who be the best
When Diggy Dog bounce through I put all that to rest
Anyone try test I put two in they chest.

Quest or no Quest I leave venues a mess
Don't ask me to collab'; me and you don't mesh
I stay fresh from the flesh, never fronting effects
In the name of J. Christ all mics'll get blessed.

Peep how I possess flavor, style, finesse
Microphones, honeys: two things I caress
To all you fake jiggy niggas—still not impressed
Queens, I rep it to the fully, you'd think I own the Mets.

—Phife Dawg & skit friends, from De la Soul - Art Official Intelligence: Mosaic Thump - Ghost Weed #2

Handmaids ran to attend their master,
all cast in gold but a match for living, breathing girls.
Intelligence fills their hearts, voice and strength their frames,
from the deathless gods they've learned their works of hand.
They rushed to support their lord as he went bustling on
and lurching nearer to Thetis, took his polished seat,
reached over to clutch her hand and spoke her name:
"Thetis of flowing robes! What brings you to our house?
A beloved, honored friend-but it's been so long,
your visits much too rare.
Tell me what's on your mind. I am eager to do it—
whatever I can do…whatever can be done."

—from The Iliad, Book XVIII, Robert Fagles translation

Ghost weed has been in the news lately. The idea is from one of my favorite skits in all Hip-Hop. In De La Soul's Art Official Intelligence: Mosaic Thump, they've invented a strain of cannabis (oh hey, happy belated 420, ya'll!) that makes you sound exactly like your favorite rapper when you smoke it. As if we don't got enough AI madness going on, someone went and fed a deep learning model some ghost weed.

Let's just hope fools know better than to mess with Phife Dawg (R.I.P.)

For the upper-case P Poetry quote I decided on Homer, then picked the Robert Fagles translation. Look, translating H-Dawg is a monster. It makes translating Dante's La Divina Comedia seem like a doddle. My main foray into teaching myself Ancient Greek (nah, just don't ask why), was through Pharr's Homeric Greek, which was a real pleasure, until I ran out of steam about halfway through. That exercise made it quite clear that one should really suppress ones's expectations for any translation. Dealing with the intricately patterned original you can feel a bit like you're trying to read sentences off plays on a Scrabble board.

That said, it's a bit puzzling that many of Homer's translations, including famous ones such as Alexander Pope's omit or gloss over Hephaestus's Golden Handmaidens. Pope just has the elliptic:

The monarch’s steps two female forms uphold,
That moved and breathed in animated gold;
To whom was voice, and sense, and science given
Of works divine (such wonders are in heaven!)

Richard Lattimore omits them from his translation. Auden doesn't mention them in The Shield of Achilles his great poem based on that great passage from Book XVIII, though to be fair he doesn't really claim to be touching on Thetis's entrance, the part that would mention them. Like Auden, most translators put most of the work into describing the shield itself, and not the goings-on of Hephaestus's workshop. Samuel Butler does also touch on the handmaidens in his prose translation

…but there moved swiftly to support their lord handmaidens wrought of gold in the semblance of living maids. In them is understanding in their hearts, and in them speech and strength, and they know cunning handiwork by gift of the immortal gods. These busily moved to support their lord, and he, limping nigh to where Thetis was, sat him down upon a shining chair; and he clasped her by the hand, and spake, and addressed her: “Wherefore, long-robed Thetis, art thou come to our house, an honoured guest and a welcome? Heretofore thou hast not been wont to come. Speak what is in thy mind; my heart bids me fulfill it, if fulfill it I can, and it is a thing that hath fulfillment.”

So what's with all these fugazi translations? OK OK you want the original(ish) Greek? Here you go. Sheesh!

ὑπὸ δ᾽ ἀμφίπολοι ῥώοντο ἄνακτι
χρύσειαι ζωῇσι νεήνισιν εἰοικυῖαι.
τῇς ἐν μὲν νόος ἐστὶ μετὰ φρεσίν, ἐν δὲ καὶ αὐδὴ
καὶ σθένος, ἀθανάτων δὲ θεῶν ἄπο ἔργα ἴσασιν.
αἳ μὲν ὕπαιθα ἄνακτος ἐποίπνυον.

I used boldface for the key line of the simile—the golden maidens, lifelike but not alive.

One point of interest: in the story of Pandora, from Hesoid's Theogony, she is created, the first woman, as a massive terracotta statue, and then brought to life by the Olympians, and Athena in particular. The description of her given wit and skills—the very words used—are eerily close to those Homer uses for Hephaestus's Golden Handmaids. So all women as divine robots, say the holiest of Greeks? Oh Handmaids indeed!

Yes, yes, tradition is viral, especially as it lives in language, and I'm laying that on a bit thick, but I'd say only a bit. Hesoid's litany of Pandora's divine "gifts" are appalling. But that's a diversion for another day.

Back to Hephaestus's Golden Handmaidens, Homer is very pointed in his use of simile. They deceive us through seeming intelligence, but they are very absolutely positively not actually intelligent, you gullible sod! Mind you, Hesoid does the same re Pandora, which really feels like he's emptying both barrels on women. There's nothing quite like a Greek simile in English. The words "like" and "as" just don't carry the load of subtext. The Greek masters (Masters) are foreshadowing: just because ChatGPT can write you a clever-looking poem, the thing ain't no actual poet, you gullible sod!

The basement handmaiden

Ultimately that's what brought all this Art Official Intelligence business to mind, in addition to the recent ghost weed AI (Dall-E Hey! GPT-Ho!) revelations. It's everywhere now, but it's also been here for ages. In one of the lectures I gave last week at Elizabethtown College I asked the students who amongst them were gamers. Almost all the hands went up, of course, and I said: "Congratulations! You built the modern AI revolution." Yes, a lot of the phenomenal progress we're seeing is because graphics cards of mind-boggling power have been made relatively cheap due to market-forces in the gaming industry. It turns out these same cards are great for training AI models at massive scales, and that's how most AI companies do it.

As I've said before in this very newsletter, I know that the modern marvels are an accelerating cycle of cheap hardware and clever software, but I'll admit the acceleration of this cycle has taken me quite by surprise. To be fair, even some of AI's most ardent boosters have been taken by surprise. So yup, looking at my smartie, it's about that time. Let's jump in. A couple of weeks ago my son and I scrapped together an AI rig out of an old Alienware gaming PC that had been sitting idle, buying for it a new 2TB SSD and Nvidia RTX 3060 graphics card. I'm having fun experimenting with the latest pre-trained models. Pretty much every day a new model or framework is released that raises the bar yet again.

We named the server sofola after Zulu Sofola, a Nigerian playwright and author who should be much better known and appreciated. No handmaid, that one! She left behind a wide-ranging gamut of powerful work. I hope to share some cool bits from my home-brew AI experiments in future posts.

Having mentioned Elizabethtown College, I do want to give a shout out to that august institution—and especially Prof. Jesse Waters—for their kindness in inviting me, their great hospitality to me while I was here, and the great interest and attention of students in coming to the sessions, asking good questions, and showing me their own work. I've had gratifying feedback so far, and I'm putting some work into doing more such lectures, seminars, presentations, etc. The idea really comes down to the Loomiverse idea—joining muse and tech, colonial with post-colonized, ancient with future.

Hand laden

For a new African music recommendation, take the new Tiwa Savage collabo with the effortlessly photogenic Arya Starr, and with Young Jonn, whom I hadn't heard of before. I like the creative effects on the log drums on this chill, Afro-house style track. It's quite something to see the explosion of lavish sets in Nigerian music videos, as the money pours in from all over the world, but at least my people had better never forget that we dance to express ourselves.

Bonus mention of the Msaki x Tubatsi album, now out. I'd recommended one of their singles in an earlier post, and this sweet album fulfills the promise of all the early tracks.

I came across a fun remix album of Ukranian pop music from the 90s, by C.J. Plus, a DJ from Odessa. These are instant party jams, even if like me you'd never before heard Ukrainian pop.

CJ PLUS - Буремні 90-ті, by CJ PLUS

9 track album

c.j. plusBandcamp New & Notable Aug 31, 2017

Bonus mention of Odyssey by Laura Roy, a gorgeous, aching ballad.

On the Hip-Hop tip, have a taste out of left field. Bootie Brown, formerly of Pharcyde, joins Bristol, UK DJ Duo The Allergies for the silly "Stanky Funk".

On Sunday I'm planning to livestream a extended version of the companion mix linked at the top, which I hope you've been listening to while reading. Please do consider sharing with others, and subscribing, if you haven't (button in the lower right). Ever new sounds for the listening, new plays on the field of words, fresh takes for tech's sake, with the side sauce of odd juxtapositions. Dá àlụ́-nu!

❧ Égwú 🪘 Ókwú ✍🏿 Ígwè 📡 Ńdụ̀ ❣️