Shuffle Synchronicities 🔀✨Returns

Shuffle Synchronicities—the NPR-celebrated and formerly Top 25 in Music Substack—is back!

Learn how something greater communicates with us through the music we love.

What Is Shuffle Synchronicities?

You may have stumbled upon the phenomenon yourself, with me here, or perhaps seen it trending recently on TikTok as Shufflemancy…

The idea is simple: You ask a question, hit shuffle on your music player, and interpret the first song that plays.

This often taps into the power of Synchronicity, which has many definitions, but here’s one:

How Is It Helpful?

When our inner experience meaningfully coincides with an external event.

We become aware of a correspondence between ourselves and something greater.

We can then work with this communication to help us guide our half of life.

History

Volume 1

• Shuffle Synchronicities was Top 25 in the paid Music category of Substack

• Its year of daily memoir was featured on NPR

• And it included 50 guest posts from Rolling Stone and Pitchfork journalists, musicians, micro-niche famous meme admins, and many more (full list here)

Volume 2

• Expanded to Podcasts with live shuffles and resulting Podscripts

• Experimented with Post-Memoir—an ethical aesthetic approach to memoir writing that effaces personal identifiers

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Volume 3

• Shuffle Synchronicities transformed into a Teaching

• A Year of a Shuffle Journal updated daily in Post-Memoir style is available to all

Volume 4

• Ask The Music a new video/podcast series to promote the practice was created

• Interviews with musicians asking questions of their own music

• Available on IG, TikTok, and YouTube as well

Volume 5

• Recorded a song with local unhoused musician Colin Ryan

• Filmed an iPhone documentary about helping him record an album Superwords and reconnect with his family

Who Am I?

Dave Cowen ☀️💛

Published by The New Yorker & McSweeney’s

Books featured in The New York Times

And one that Wikipedia lists as perhaps the longest sentence in the English language🏅

Find more at my linktree 🔗🌴

Example

A question about how to handle Paid Subscriptions 🔐

Led to a Shuffle 🔀 ✨

Resulting in…

“Price Tag” by Jessie J, B.o.B

With lyrics like:

Seems like everybody's got a price
I wonder how they sleep at night
When the sale comes first and the truth comes second

And:

It's not about the money, money, money
We don't need your money, money, money
We just wanna make the world dance
Forget about the price tag

🤯

It initially seems like everything should be free?

But I believe the Shuffle is truly saying:

Even a song idealizing giving away your creative service to others for free.

Still has to be paid for.

So, please consider a Paid Subscription!

Your support finances the time, energy, and resources needed to produce this work.

Produced by

Shuffle Synchronicities is produced by the creator of SerioComics.

Enthusiasms for the best in graphic literature.

Q&As with their makers.

And you can now read my debut graphic novel on Substack.

Monthly Gun Debate Update

There is also a monthly gun debate update as part of Serio Comics for those interested.

Subscribe to Serio Comics

Thank you!

Whether you’re passionate about music and meaningful coincidences.

Exploring graphic literature and the gun debate.

Or someone else’s work on Substack.

There’s something here for everyone.

And I hope you find, enjoy, and support it!