The moon rising over the Pacific, taken by me in Santa Barbara, California.
There’s almost no point in me saying what I am about to say, because the only way to truly know it, is through experience: So if you’ve experienced it, you already know; and if you haven’t experienced it yet, my words will feel like trite cliché.
But I’ll say it anyway, because it might help one of you, and I can say it with complete conviction: it really is in your hardest, darkest times that you find your light.
It was in the moments of most exquisite suffering this summer that I was suddenly blown open and confronted with the rawest and most beautiful parts of myself.
I shit you not, I wept in a central London park one morning in July, feeling so full of the love of the universe.
Thank you to all of you who wrote to me after the last letter, your messages touched me.
Now it’s time to pick myself up, dust myself off, and keep walking.
Turning the gears
My creative energy evaporated back in July, like water poured onto a hot stovetop, and it is only slowly, tentatively, returning.
This too has been a lesson in self-forgiveness and acceptance.
Whereas an older version of Adam would have berated himself for being “unproductive” and then guilt-tripped himself into work, this newer version of him simply accepts his creative desire for what it is, no judgement.
However! This does not mean sitting around doing nothing. Every day I am moving my hands over something, be it paper or piano keys; noodling with no expectation of result, almost to try and remind my muscles how art making works.
As I have said before: action ➡ motivation. Let’s see if this evolves into something I can show you in the next newsletter!1
New work from this summer
Indiana Jones And The Great Leap of Faith
Expanding on this letter I wrote to you back in December, this video reveals how taking a bold leap into the unknown is really about leaping into a higher version of yourself. The brief reference to Indiana Jones in my article becomes the video’s core metaphor…although unfortunately — thanks to YouTube copyright rules — it means this one can’t be monetised.
The weird origin of deepfakes
I’ve been asked by the BBC to story- and picture-edit a series of explainer films about different kinds of disinformation. The first of those videos — called Dawn of Deepfakes is now online. It traces deepfakes from crude Photoshops to AI-powered porn. I worked with a talented team of reporters, producers and animators at the BBC, and I even ended up narrating the film! If you enjoyed Operation Infektion you’ll like this.
A short essay about living and dreaming
You’ve heard of lucid dreaming, right? Those dreams where you become aware that you are in a dream and can do anything? I wrote this short article to ask what if you chose to live lucidly too?
‘I put it to you that our awakened state (what we all call “reality”) is actually no different to our dream state. It is, after all, one of several levels of consciousness that are available to us. We know for a fact that our minds and bodies cannot tell the difference between, say, an assault in a dream and one in “reality”.’
Nothing is threatening and everything is possible — because it’s all just a dream!
The next edition should drop on or around October 25th.
Funny story exclusively for anyone reading this on my website: while I was away feeling sorry for myself, my mailing list was hijacked by spam-bots in something called a subscription bombing attack. I returned to find bots had tried to subscribe 4,000 innocent people to my newsletter in order to overwhelm their inboxes. Big thanks to Buttondown for identifying and blocking the attack. I’ve made my signup form much more secure from now on! ↩︎
Until another Sunday soon,
