The project started with a problem.
Actually, two problems.
The first problem was that the video was boring.
The second problem was that the poem wasn’t.
Stephanie wrote a spoken-word manifesto about healthcare bureaucracy, prior authorizations, patient advocacy, ethics, frustration, and refusing to become complacent. The words had fire in them. The video had…nature trails.
Lots of nature trails.
Foggy paths. Mountain roads. Bridges. Sunrises.
Perfectly respectable stock-cinema symbolism.
Also perfectly forgettable.
I knew something was wrong when I found myself watching the finished edit and admiring the footage while feeling almost nothing.
The poem deserved better.
2/9
The first mistake: illustrating the poem
My initial instinct was to stay faithful.
That sounds noble.
It usually isn’t.
When a poem talks about a labyrinth, AI wants to generate a labyrinth.
When a poem talks about a journey, AI wants a path.
When a poem talks about hope, AI wants a sunrise.
The result becomes visual karaoke.
The images repeat what the words already said.
Nothing new is created.
Lab note:
Whenever image and narration are doing the same job, one of them is unemployed.
The more I sat with the project, the more I realized the video wasn’t actually about a journey.
It was about a system.
A machine.
An architecture.
Something much larger than a single person walking through the woods.
3/9
The breakthrough: stop illustrating, start symbolizing
At some point the conversation shifted.
Instead of asking:
“What images match this poem?”
I started asking:
“What objects carry this feeling?”
That tiny change completely altered the direction of the project.
The film stopped being about scenery and started becoming a symbolic system.
Five recurring artifacts emerged:
- The Door
Permission.
Access.
Gatekeeping. - The Labyrinth
The healthcare system itself.
Infinite navigation.
Endless phone trees. - The Wings
Ethics.
Refusal.
Moral resistance. - The Breath
Patients.
Life.
The reason any of this matters. - The Light
Release.
Change.
Possibility.
Not characters.
Not scenes.
Artifacts.
Symbols that could recur and mutate throughout the piece.
4/9
Then the AI started teaching me something
The original plan was fantasy imagery.
Angels.
Labyrinths.
Light.
Phoenixes.
The usual suspects.
But Midjourney kept doing something unexpected.
Paper.
Paper everywhere.
Paper sculpture.
Paper folds.
Paper architecture.
Paper worlds.
At first I resisted it.
Then I realized the AI was accidentally solving the problem.
Healthcare bureaucracy is paperwork.
The system itself is paperwork.
The maze is paperwork.
The barriers are paperwork.
The permissions are paperwork.
The entire machine is paperwork.
Suddenly the medium and the message became the same thing.
Lab note:
The best creative breakthroughs often arrive disguised as mistakes.
5/9
Building a world with one law
Once I accepted the paper aesthetic, a new challenge appeared.
Continuity.
The images looked good individually.
Together they felt like distant cousins.
Each image seemed to redefine what “paper” meant.
Some looked handcrafted.
Others looked architectural.
Some looked surreal.
Others looked decorative.
The solution wasn’t more prompting.
It was creating a single physical law.
Everything had to be made from paper.
Not paper-themed.
Not paper-inspired.
Paper.
Every object.
Every structure.
Every symbol.
Every environment.
One substance.
One universe.
That sounds obvious.
It took time to discover.
6/9
The death of the word “gothic”
One of the funniest discoveries involved a single word.
“Gothic.”
I loved it.
Paper Gothic.
It sounded cool.
It felt right.
It was also sabotaging the renders.
Every time I used the word, Midjourney became confused.
Was this paper?
Stone?
A cathedral?
A fantasy world?
A horror film?
The AI couldn’t decide.
Neither could the images.
Removing one word immediately improved consistency.
Lab note:
Sometimes creativity isn’t about adding instructions.
It’s about removing conflicting instructions.
7/9
The soundtrack problem
Then came music.
The first instinct was E minor background music from sampling from the Metallica song, “Nothing Else Matters.”.
That immediately felt too heavy.
Not wrong.
Just frozen.
The project wasn’t about despair.
It was about pressure.
There’s a difference.
Despair collapses.
Pressure seeks release.
The soundtrack needed movement inside the tension.
Breathing room.
Small openings.
Moments where the emotional architecture could inhale.
That became the guiding principle.
Not hope.
Breath.
Oddly enough, that matched the visual system perfectly.
The Door.
The Labyrinth.
The Wings.
The Breath.
The Light.
The same emotional physics appeared in both image and sound.
8/9
The ending surprised me
The project eventually collided with an unexpected companion.
Metallica.
Specifically:
“So close, no matter how far…”
I never would have predicted that when the project began.
Yet somehow those lyrics landed exactly where the piece needed to go.
Not triumph.
Not victory.
Identity.
Conviction.
A statement of values.
The voice of someone refusing to surrender their ethics to a system.
The final image may end up being a face.
Not a character.
Not a hero.
An artifact.
A paper face speaking directly to the audience.
For a few seconds the entire symbolic world becomes conscious.
At least that’s the experiment.
We’ll see if it survives contact with reality.
9/9
The real lesson
The most important discovery wasn’t technical.
It was creative.
The project improved the moment I stopped asking AI to illustrate meaning and started asking it to generate emotional artifacts. Symbolic sculpture.
That’s a very different job.
AI is often terrible at literal storytelling.
But it can be surprisingly good at producing symbolic fragments that humans recognize before they fully understand.
The video isn’t finished yet.
It may mutate again.
Honestly, I hope it does.
The best projects usually reveal what they are after you’ve already started making them.
TL;DR
I began with a healthcare poem and a collection of nature footage.
I ended up building a world made entirely of paper bureaucracy, symbolic architecture, and emotional artifacts.
Somewhere in between, the symbols stopped decorating the poem and started carrying it.
Steve Teare
video alchemist
TerminallyBored.Monster
Palouse, Washington USA