In the context of computational text collage, I propose that “distance” emerges when the collagist acknowledges the material histories of their corpora and the collagist’s relationship with them—including the other human beings that brought these corpora into existence. Those others may be friends, mentors, ancestors, one’s earlier self, neighbors, or even perfect strangers. Regardless, the melancholy and the meaning of the collage arise only through the acknowledgment of the other’s absence.

Creators of large language models are very eager to conceal this distance. They do so by flattening the materiality of their corpora, thereby effectively severing the text from its own history and rendering uniform what had been equivocal—like bulldozing a graveyard. Yet the distance and the melancholy persist, despite this attempt at hiding it away. When I’m writing with a large language model, I am all too aware of the ghosts and strangers whose voices I’m speaking with. The keyboard beneath my fingers hums with frustrated mourning.

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