Yes. I Know. This Sounds Insane.

Andy Warhol spoke to me. Allow Me To Explain.

I don’t think you should read this. You might want to cancel and pretend you never heard this. Oh, and contradictions aside, this post is free to all. Why wouldn’t I want everyone to know this is insane?

I’ve been brainstorming the art direction for the fist issue of Xplisset Magazine and I’ve been incorporating some ofvghose design elements into thus Substack in case you haven’t noticed.

Today was a brainstorm day. There’s a lot of issues I wanted to solve such as where am I going to ultimately take this art direction? How do I solve this Spring Break slump without scaling back? Should I go back to work?

There are 2 ways I’ve managed to finagle solutions to very difficult problems as it relates to this Substaxk and this is how I’ve gotten this far. Either by staying up all night in a caffeine fueled marathon while looking out at the moon at 300am and writing frantically as I catch fire from the gods or by shelving my scheduled projects during the day and going to sleep with the intent of waking up with an answer.

Hey ya’ll don’t knock this. Some of the greatest scientific and artistic breakthroughs came during sleep. My particular breakthrough came using sleep. I don’t even think anyone noticed the lack of notes in the feed from me and the fact there wasn’t any Blackout Briefs and Intelligence Reports. The last brief got just one coffee (thanks someone) and very low engagement signals.

I’m not taking it personally. I figured out its the Spribg Break slump that just about every creator on multiple platforms that depend upon engagement complain about. I can use very strategically timed republication releases to try and mitigate some of this disengagement. Problem solved for now.

Should I go back to work? Kiss the daily reports good bye. The daily churn (cancellation rate) which has been an elephant in the background get’s worse if I go back to full time work. For now I’ve decided to just scale back on the long winded essays and focus on those daily reports ATH Intelligence Report and Blackout Daily Brief. I’ve also decided to go full steam ahead with the magazine. Problem solved for now.

Here’s the insane part. While doing research on Andy Warhol for the art direction I came across this photo up top. Back in the day I was so obsessed with Chevrolet brochures I even started a website featuring them. This was way back before high speed internet became so common place it's now the standard. You weren't just screen grabbing them off the internet and then reuploading them. No, I had to buy each and every one off eBay and rescan those damn things with a scanner.

Ok I lied ya’ll that’s not the insane part, rather, this is. When I found this rare pick I knew Andy Warhol was speaking to me. No not like a conversation. More like a nod and a wink. Stop. I can see what some of you are thinking. Go read Carl Jung’s theory of synchronicity.

That’s nothing compared to the full blown imaginary conversations I’ve had with completely fictitious characters I made up for my novels (yes, NOVELS, wink wink to any prying literary agents) as well as deceased historical figures. In Warhol’s case it was just this detached wink and nod letting me know it was ok to riff his style. If there was any doubt in my mind as to the veracity of his message to me, I happened to come across a Muddy Waters interview in Warhol’s 15 minutes of fame series where he admitted with glee that he loved it when musicians copied him because it just demonstrates how influential the art you created was.

Andy, thank you man. Maybe I’ll get to feel that spike of dopamine at the sight of someone copying me. Hopefully my minutes of fame will last long enough.

Ok this was cringe, I hope you forget it and I hope my parents don’tread this and I hope my future literary agent never mentions it. Oh I warned you not to read this now you have to Buy Me A Coffee. Bye