Category: free thoughts

Welcome to the Smartocracy

The big epidemic of this age is not Covid, or some other transmissible medical sickness, but rather, an epidemic of certainty. Everyone is so effing sure that they’re correct about everything.

I may be wrong, but I’m never in doubt.
— Marshall McLuhan

The nanosecond we learned the world was borne of quantum uncertainty, and that life is just a random Card Sharks play, we embarked on a paradoxical defensive adventure to narrow the scope of accepted truth.…

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Free Thoughts: Performance Magic Distractions

I always say “wordless” instead of ambient when I describe my instrumental interstellar flights (even stuff w/ abstracted dialogue). But now, after all these years, I wonder, is ambient music actually wordless?

That is to say, is a melody a form of lyric?




In an unrelated performance story:

My biggest performance fear is to be cringe.…

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Free Thoughts: Timeless Styles

“Trendy is the last stage before tacky.” / dall-e2, 2023
“Trendy is the last stage before tacky.” / dall-e2, 2023

Trendy is the last stage before tacky.
— Karl Lagerfeld


“Victorian Party” / Chicago, IL / 📸: unknown / ca. 1970
“Victorian Party” / Chicago, IL / 📸: unknown / ca. 1970

True style is timeless. In theory, there’s no such thing as “poor” style.

You either have style or you don’t.…

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Thoughts Aloud 2023f

The most important thing you can do with your art is to deflect, not reflect, reality.


Is there a switch we can flip, that doesn’t involve a mushroom cloud, that would make everything go back to normal?

And by that I mean, a switch that would just shut everybody the fuck up and create a world of empathic listening?…

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Thoughts Aloud 2023e

Someone somewhere is working on a faucet that stops while people are brushing their teeth, and then re-starts only when it’s time to rinse. This faucet will be voice-control only, with no lever(s), and you will have to train it to recognize your saying, “Water, please,” with a mouth full of toothpaste.…

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tuesday prompts

“the programmer of our universe’s Simulation, pointillism oil painting”

“A person who believes everything is an illusion”

“Boston Dynamics robot breast feeding a baby boy”

“Why are you here?”

Out Loud Thoughts 202301a

Let’s say you’re eschewing car travel to walk up Campden Hill Road, from Kensington to Notting Hill, London. Wearing a pair of Nike Air Force Ones, you are drawn uphill by memories of the mythical Geales for fish & chips and sticky toffee pudding, when out of nowhere you step in a pile of human feces on the street that entered the street-shitter’s GI system as a Double Big Mac Happy Meal.…

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Thought Corral 202210b

I write every day. I just don’t want to publish every day. Would that I did not think in drafts.

Hard to “Build that brand!” tho, when you have no routine around creativity.

otoh, deadlines make the writer, lest the lines go dead.


Running out of storage on a device hooked to a cloud is a feature, not your fault


Listening to music is a form of mind reading.…

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