Thank You
First, I want to give my sincere thanks to everyone who paid for a subscription here, without you I would have had to turn to a life of crime.
I dumped most of my serfbucks™ on film gear for future projects and I was on track to miss a rent payment — I’d done the math and I should have been fine, but this month was an unusually expensive perfect storm.
I do think I was backed into that corner for a reason. I’ve been reluctant to accept payment for anything until now and in retrospect, funding a project this big by myself using only ad revenue and the income from a menial day job probably wasn’t the best long-term strategy. In practice, this means high stress, little time and glacial progress.
I wanted to charge $3.33 a month, because I think my ramblings are about as valuable a cup of coffee, but apparently Substack’s minimum is $5. Don’t worry though, in a couple of months, I’m sure $5 will actually be less money than $3.33 is right now.
Really though, thank you again. It means a lot. I can now focus on this part of my life way more than I have been, which means we can actually start getting somewhere.
New Videos
A lot of people ask when I plan to upload again, and my answer up until right now was: “don’t hold your breath.”
If you work alone on something like this, churning out videos every few weeks like some other people can would mean cutting corners somewhere.
I could compromise on originality, slashing prep time. I could compromise on quality, slashing production time or I could compromise in my personal life, slashing leisure/social/upkeep time.
I try not to do any of this because it’s ultimately self-sabotage. Subscriber/view counts are arbitrary metrics that track nothing real. I would rather have 1 of you than 1000 of the types I could lure in as a click-baiting distraction artist with a regular upload schedule.
I really believe that you people are where the future starts and I’ve crafted my work very intentionally to attract you and repel others.
Nonetheless, it has been a long time and even I’m starting to miss my videos, so I think I owe it to you to continue with the script I was working on before The Big Project began and work on that in the foreground.
It’s for an updated version of The Shape of Everything, a video about the metaphysics of meaning, so that’s already making its way to you.
After that, there’s a few more ideas I want to turn into scripts, and I’m sure even more will come to me before they’re all finished, so once the engine’s running again, there shouldn’t be nearly as much downtime between videos for the foreseeable future.
Upcoming topics are:
Coherence and the Age of Aquarius (Why the Better Story Wins)
Information Theory and the Cosmogram
The Place We Go When We Dream
The Big Project
It turns out that writing a ten episode live-action series in a couple weeks isn’t easy. The series (working title: Metaphysicist) is being written, but inspiration is one of those things that often doesn’t come when you call it.
This is the current episode layout and the working titles.
The Architect
I Remember the Future
The God Machine
The Quaternity Test
The Watchtower
The Forbidden Fruit
Smoke and Mirrors
American Egypt
The Devil’s Bargain
Apocalypse
The whole thing is a true story which I documented as it happened. I will change nothing except in the interest of pacing and effective visual storytelling.
It goes into the real-world psionic experiments behind the scenes of my public theoretical work — a spooky dimension of this project which I’ve been secretive about not only because it’s intensely personal, but also because these experiments were shockingly and consistently successful; I’ve never even heard credible accounts of successes on this scale. The story will knock your socks off.
This project is very important to me, but some unfortunate backstage drama has complicated my plans with it for the moment. One way or another, it will happen as long as the world does not end first — fingers crossed.
Since this is more of a long-term project now, let’s hope that OpenAI’s Sora or something like it will be available (and reasonably accessible/affordable) before the rubber meets the road.
Wild Dogs
I released a pilot chapter for a story called Wild Dogs last summer. It follows a pair of constellating private detectives in a post-reality civilization who solve unusual crimes using dreams and synchronicity and shoot down a UFO en route to Las Vegas.
I’d intended to continue with it, but I never did. I want to pick it up again, not just because it’s a fun story but also because my fiction tends to smell things coming and likes to tell me stuff I don’t know yet, so I should always be writing a story anyway.
I’ll try and release another free chapter sometime in the next few months (depending on the amount of interest). After that, the plan is to make it a monthly serial behind the paywall.
Q&A
A lot of you seem to have a lot of questions you’d like me to answer. Often difficult ones that require considerable thought and care to answer well.
In the beginning, I tried to respond to everyone as well as I possibly could, but the volume has increased substantially and now answering questions thoroughly (properly) means not getting to other things. My inbox has become a black hole.
The only solution I can come up with is the paywall.
Each month (about halfway through the month), I will post a thread for Q&A questions for paid subscribers. Then at the end of that month, I’ll answer all of them along with any questions I receive elsewhere that I think I can and should answer. Some answers will be visible in the free preview, but the full Q&A will be behind the paywall. This will mean:
Who gets answered and who doesn’t is less arbitrary.
The volume of questions is lower, so I can give better responses.
My answers are available to anyone, not just whoever asks the question.
Subscribers get more back for their money.
I spend more time on the stuff everybody wants to see more of.
It’s not a perfect system, but it’s a better system than no system and it’s a step in the right direction if we want to see less nothing from me.
Anyways, that’s all I have to report for now, but hopefully this is the start of much more output with increasing regularity.
Thanks again to everyone for your support, your time and your attention. I wish you all the best and hope you enjoy what’s on the way!
Keep pouring the Truth.
Your “ramblings” are invaluable, an imagination that takes the shape of the cup.
I pray you’re doing well my friend. God bless you.
Incredible. I can't wait