Being Human

Looking back and Looking Forward

Looking back: I began writing about art and creativity on Substack a few years ago because I had to. My whole long life has been a compulsion to be creative—in every way: painting, writing, and music. Why? Because I was born that way. So were you.

Go ahead, draw a line on paper. You can do that because you are human. It lifts us above Nature and takes us to the Supernatural—no other creature on earth can do that. Draw another line. Then another. Make a picture. Hum a tune. Make one up. Write about something you can’t see, but only feel.

We humans have been doing that since we climbed down from the trees hundreds of thousands of years ago. It was a divine gift.

I began drawing and making art as a little kid. So did you. We moved to Arizona when I was six and I fell in love with wide open spaces full of subtle and ever-changing colors.

In college I majored in art and would slip off to local canyons in the early mornings and watch, and listen, to the canyons come alive.

I received an Army commission through ROTC and kept making art. I went to Vietnam and imagined works of art everywhere—in the jungles and the swamps. When I got back, I painted some kids I saw in a village. They were outcasts and it hit me hard.

I went back to Tucson and began teaching boys with serious emotional problems in a residential treatment center. I taught the academic subjects through art. These tough guys connected and absorbed the subjects while expressing themselves in ways that they couldn’t before.

I then taught kids with learning problems on an Indian Reservation. I worked with an old Indian potter there. She left the reservation as a young woman and returned as an old woman. She re-taught herself the ancient ways of living and making pots. It let me see the world through her eyes.

I spent 25 years on Capitol Hill in DC in various ways, and painted the Capitol building in various ways. It is not so much a building as a composite of ideas and principles. It can look any way you imagine.

I have written songs, and books, and a play. I wrote a column on art and artists for a DC paper for 20 years. Now it’s Substack. I don’t want to stop. I can’t.

Looking forward: Today, that incredible intellectual and spiritual gift we were given hundreds of thousands of years ago is being handed to machines. A few humans, the high tech masters of the universe, are racing to replace us with artificial intelligence and humanoid robots.

AI can create visual images in any art style, or in the manner of any particular master. You want a congressional debate scene in the manner of Salvador Dali? You got it. You want your house and yard painted in the manner of a Van Gogh? You got it. The programs can make dead people come alive. They can clone voices. You can write a song and have it sung by Elvis, or Pavarotti.

Even now, it’s hard to tell what’s real. In 2026, will anything be real? How will we know? We can’t depend on anything digital. We must continue to make art and interact with it personally. Original art will matter more than ever. Real human art has a feel. It will touch you if you let it.

In any case, I can’t let myself stop writing, painting and being creative. Neither should you. PTSD be damned, don’t let anything stop you.

1. Cave art.

2. “Sabino Colors” – James John Magner

3. “Children in a Village” – James John Magner

4. “Ricky Painting a Mural” – Photo by James John Magner

5. “Laura Kerman Firing Pots” - Photo by James John Magner

6. “Disappearing Trees” – James John Magner

7. “Autumnal Cannibalism” - Salvador Dali

8. “Magner” – James John Magner