People crave human-made material, they crave not just the story but the story behind the story, how it was made, the struggles, the choices, the late nights, the odd connections, the people. Even when the end result is bad, a trashy novel, a B movie, a sophomore album, we can still gather together and shoot the shit, did you hear about x, did you know y, that’s a nod to z. There’s a word for that cultural depth, that meta story that sits below the surface of the piece of art your listening/reading/watching/tasting: provenance.

One thing that generated slop lacks is provenance. There is no history behind it, it’s a shallow immediate response based on weights and maths, it’s all machine, no meat. And the individual, the care the “writer” took in crafting “their” story is just as deep.

What rests in that depth that’s been lost in a sea of “content?” It’s the ability to read into a piece, to wonder at the choices made, at the mental state of the writer, at the era and its political leanings and economic outcomes, it’s in finding that your favorite book is in fact one volley in a feud against another author; should I read that now?

The writer wrote a word, but in so writing that word a choice was made and that choice was informed by the life lived by the writer. Like a wine, you’re not paying for spoiled grape juice, you’re paying for where, when, how the the grape was grown, fermented, bottled, you’re paying for the story, for the provenance of the human endeavor behind the Cabernet. Drink up you filthy animal.