Love and Magick are Our Best Hope

Douglas Rushkoff
6 min readJun 19, 2024

The easiest, funnest, and most likely path to averting apocalypse

Cynthia Sley sings OV Power with PsychicTV, from a video by Emily Hughston Hoffman

As I explained in my last few posts, I’m taking a bit of a hiatus this summer to focus on a couple of larger projects and also to “reset” my creative circadian rhythm after having succumbed to the implied pace of these platforms. It has given me the time to delve deeply into three creative projects, and already I realize that nothing will be the same.

The biggest shift came last weekend, at the tribute concert for Genesis Breyer P-Orridge that I performed in with PsychicTV and special guests including Cynthia Sley (Bush Tetras), David J (Bauhaus), Bob Bert (Sonic Youth), Shilpa Ray, Christeene, and Torii Wolf. The night before, Tribeca Film Festival premiered the new documentary on Gen’s life, which both set the tone and the agenda for the weekend. The movie made it clear that, at least according to Gen, the way to impact people is not to change their minds but to speak to their hearts and souls through music and art. Such forms of expression are less like treatises or manifestos than sigils — magickal ceremonies that recalibrate our collective perceptions, beliefs, and intentions. Reality become fungible.

As we gathered for the show the next night, we understood what the concert was for. Yes, in one song David J attempted to summon Gen while I monitored through a…

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Douglas Rushkoff

Author of Survival of the Richest, Team Human, Program or Be Programmed, and host of the Team Human podcast http://teamhuman.fm