👋 Welcome!
Do you love music? 🎶 Yeah!
What about memoir? ✍️ That too!
Have you ever noticed sometimes the perfect song seems to come on 🔀 to almost magically ✨ soundtrack what’s going on in your life???
Yes?! OK, then this Substack 💌 is for you!
Shuffle Synchronicities is a spirited mix of music & memoir where we…
Shuffle 🔀 playlists, then write ✍️ & podcast 🎙️ about how the songs 🎶 seem to Synchronize with life ✨
Carl Jung👨🦳 was the first to introduce the concept of Synchronicity ✨ as “the coming together of inner and outer events in a way that cannot be explained by cause and effect and that is meaningful to the observer” after a confrontation 🤬 with his materialist mentor Sigmund Freud 🛋 produced a Synchronicity ✨ apparent to both of them but denied by Freud 👀, which led Jung to an intrapersonal crisis and interpersonal split 😶🌫️, but also the creation of his own school of psychology💡
Volume 1
Was featured on NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour 🎙 near the end of its run of 365 daily posts 🗓
It included guest post collaborations 🙏
With everyone from Rolling Stone and Pitchfork music journalists 📝 to indie film directors 🎬, Astrologers ♈️, a Rabbi ✡️, art-rappers 🎤, mental health therapists/advocates 🧠 and a micro-niche-famous meme admin📱, as well as of course many fellow writers and readers in the Substack community 🤓
Such as…
Rollie Pemberton (Cadence Weapon)
Ray Padgett (Flagging Down The Double E’s)
Annie Rauwerda (@depthsofwikipedia)
Dimitri Karakostas (@theworstpoet)
Bridey Elliott (Warty Roses)
Cornell Sanner (Surfboard C)
Jesse Raub (Good Ones)
Scott Frey (Sub Pub)
Tim Dillinger (God’s Music Is My Life)
Jennifer Lee O’Brien (post emosh)
Christopher Von Roy (The World According to Von Roy)
Wayne Robins (Critical Conditions)
Frederick Woodruff (WOODRUFF)
Dan Marshall (Peter Pan Man Dan)
Dave Hunter (The Whalespout)
Shayna Goodman (Blow Up Your Life)
Eli Enis (Endless Scroll)
Jackson Bliss (Mixtape)
Ila Parvaz (URF Tone)
Melanie Zoey Weinstein (feral masochism)
Christopher Von Roy again (The World According to Von Roy)
Rosecrans Baldwin (Meditations in an Emergency)
Rebecca Davey (Observables)
Jesse Meadows (Sluggish)
Swarnali Mukherjee (Berkana)
Volume 2
Will focus on collaboration with others 🙏
Will open up the format to Podcasts🎙️ with live-Shuffles and resulting Podscripts🎙️📇
And will experiment with the practice of Post-Memoir 🧼🗣
Dave Cowen 😎 may or may not be the first 🤣 to introduce the concept of Post-Memoir 🧼🗣, as “the ethical aesthetic of the extreme effacement of the personal identifiers and details of the other subjects in an autobiographical narrative” after a struggle 😖 with the ramifications of writing ⏳ daily serialized memoir ⌛️ without always receiving the consent of the other people in the stories 😬, which led to a crisis of conscience🥺 and the impulsive deletion of this Substack 🤪, but also an epiphany 🙌 about how to do it kinder, better, righter 🤞 :)
Who am I?
Published by The New Yorker & McSweeney 🎩
Now mostly DIY 👨🔧
Self-published books 📚 featured in The New York Times 📰
And one that Wikipedia lists as perhaps the longest sentence 📜 in the English language🏅
Besides a shoutout on NPR 🎙, Shuffle Synchronicities was in the top 25 of its paid Substack category 📈 throughout the year of Volume 1 👏
Find more ‘me’ and ‘non-me’ things at my 🔗🌴
Can We Guest Post?
Yes, please❗️❗️❗️
Any writer, on Substack or not; all people, whether ‘writers’ or not; are welcome to guest post 👐
Just like how Shuffle Synchronicities is post-music-criticism 🧐 in that there is no review of music as ‘good’ or ‘bad’ 🫶 there is also no editing of submissions 🤝
The only guideline is a shuffled-to-song is the starting point 😘
Contributors are gifted 🎁 Paid Subscriber status/benefits and perhaps more…
AKA every guest poster in Volume 1 was paid at least some 💸 ;)
If interested in collaborating in the format, email me 👍
Podcasts 🎙 & Podscripts 🎙📇
As mentioned above we’re also introducing Podcasts
The first one is with Kiana Fitzgerald!
And Podscripts
The first one of those was with Ray Padgett!
Also now a sub-Substack
Shuffle Synchroncities now includes a sub-Substack:
Serio Comics are enthusiasms for works of graphic literature 🖌️📒 that are partly serious partly comic 🎭
As I serially debut a graphic novel:
About a newlywed, progressive couple in Austin, Texas shocked to find themselves debating gun ownership after a mugging and even their plans to start a family together
Works of graphic literature enthused so far include:
ALL YOUR RACIAL PROBLEMS WILL SOON END written and drawn by Charles Johnson (published by New York Review Comics)
RADIUM GIRLS written and drawn by Cy (published by Glénat Editions & Iron Circus Comics)
SMAHTGUY: The Life and Times of Barney Frank written and drawn by Eric Orner (published by Metropolitan & Henry Holt Books)
DUCKS: Two Years in the Oil Sands written and drawn by Kate Beaton (published by Drawn + Quarterly)
IT'S LIFE AS I SEE IT: Black Cartoonists in Chicago, 1940 - 1980 compiled & edited by Dan Nadel (published by New York Review Comics & Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago)
EMBROIDERIES written & drawn by Marjane Satrapi (published by Pantheon Books and L'Association)
NUMB TO THIS: Memoir of a Mass Shooting written & drawn by Kindra Neely (published by Little, Brown)
LIFE ON EARTH Series written & drawn by MariNaomi (published by Graphic Universe and Lerner Publishing Group)
IMPOSSIBLE PEOPLE: A Completely Average Recovery Story written & drawn by Julia Wertz (published by Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers and Hachette Book Group)
THE INCAL and MADWOMAN OF THE SACRED HEART written by Alejandro Jodorowsky & drawn by Mœbius (published by Humanoids)
THE BOY WHO LOVED BATMAN written by Michael E. Uslan (published by Chronicle Books)
TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES written and drawn and originally self-published by Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird (then published by IDW and Nickelodeon)
THE SCULPTOR written and drawn by Scott McCloud (published by First Second and Macmillan)
NIMONA written, drawn, and originally self-published by ND Stevenson (then published by HarperCollins)
THE PRINCE AND THE DRESSMAKER written and drawn by Jen Wang, published by First Second
PASSOVER HAGGADAH GRAPHIC NOVEL written by Jordan Gorfinkel and drawn by Erez Zadok, published by Koren
THE TALK written and drawn by Darrin Bell, published by Henry Holt and Co. and Macmillan
and more…
Lastly
There was a debate if the archive of Volume 1 should be for Paid Subscribers 🔐
Then while writing this About Page there was a Shuffle 🔀 for a Synchronicity ✨
Based on the intention for an insight into this choice 🤔
Which got no joke/no lie 😮
“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 seemed quite clear what the Shuffle Spirits 😇🥰 were telling us