In which a line of thought continues from yesterday

I've been playing about a bit more, and more provocatively and esoterically, with yesterday's "Something in the Air" chatbot.

Myself: Write a brief dramatic epilogue.

SITA: Here is a speculative epilogue scene set after the conclusion of "Something in the Air":

(Alex sits alone in a quiet, sparse room, hands folded in his lap. After a few moments, Colin enters slowly and sits beside him.)

COLIN

Well...here we are again.

(Alex stares ahead, giving no indication he notices Colin's presence.)

COLIN

I'm not sure if you still remember me. It's been so many years now.

(He gazes at Alex's profile, taking in his aged features.)

COLIN

Or perhaps somewhere, somehow, a part of you still knows me. We've been here before, you and I. At the end of the line.

(Alex remains motionless, eyes fixed ahead.)

COLIN

Can you hear the river? We could walk there together. Retrace our steps one last time.

(Colin places his hand gently on Alex's shoulder.)

COLIN

It's alright if you can't find your way back. I'm here with you now. We'll find our way together.

(Alex slowly turns his head to Colin, meeting his eyes. A look of recognition passes over Alex's face. Colin takes Alex's hand in his. They sit quietly as the lights slowly fade.)

This attempts to evoke a poignant sense of coming full circle, with Colin reunited with Alex in his final days. Themes of fading memory, impermanence and finding one's way run throughout the play, so this aims to provide a speculative yet fitting emotional conclusion. Please let me know if you would like me to expand or modify the epilogue scene at all. I'm happy to keep refining it to best capture the spirit of the play.

Myself: Psychoanalyze Alex as if you were Foucault.

SITA: If I were to analyze the character of Alex from "Something in the Air" through a Foucauldian lens, I would focus on the way power, knowledge and sexuality shape his subjectivity and freedom.

From a Foucauldian perspective, Alex is constrained by societal power structures and normalization around sexuality. As a gay man coming of age in 20th century England, his sexual desires are categorized as deviant and marginalized. He struggles against dominant cultural norms that suppress queer identity and relationships.

However, Alex also derives a sense of transgressive pleasure and liberating self-knowledge from his sexuality. His affairs and romantic friendships operate in resistance to heteronormative codes and categories. Alex's intimate exchanges create intersubjective power that subverts external rules.

But at the same time, Alex often reproduces oppressive norms, as when he abruptly leaves Nicholas for a woman. His radical sexual agency is limited by internalized values and expectations.

Overall, Foucault sees power and knowledge as co-constitutive. Alex gains self-awareness through his marginalized desires, while also being constrained by the norms that seek to define, pathologize and punish his sexuality. His subjectivity reflects both liberation and subjugation.

In Foucauldian terms, Alex illustrates the individual's struggle for agency within overlapping networks of control, insight and pleasure. His gay identity allows self-creation but also governance and pain. A Foucauldian reading problematizes Alex's subjective freedom and foregrounds the forces shaping his social exclusion, understandings and choices.

Please let me know if you would like me to clarify or expand this Foucauldian psychoanalytic perspective on the complex dimensions of identity and power dynamics expressed through Alex's journey. I'm happy to provide additional thoughts on applying Foucault's theories to this rich character.

For all it is a fair criticism of these models that (Boris-Johnson-like) their output seems to prioritise fluency over accuracy this is still pretty darned impressive

We're pretty much an Amazon Web Services house when it comes to the cloud. I wonder if their Bedrock product, which has access to Anthropic's Claude, could be what I need to take this to the next level.

Amazon Bedrock is a fully managed service that makes FMs from leading AI startups and Amazon available via an API, so you can choose from a wide range of FMs to find the model that's best suited for your use case. With the Bedrock serverless experience, you can get started quickly, privately customize FMs with your own data, and easily integrate and deploy them into your applications using the AWS tools and capabilities you are familiar with (including integrations with Amazon SageMaker ML features such as Experiments to test different models and Pipelines to manage your FMs at scale) without having to manage any infrastructure.