Why magic eye?

My other idea for a name would probably have been better

I could have called it Stereogram, I suppose. That would probably have been cooler. That would also probably have been more marketable. And that would have allowed me to connect my interest in culture and music far more deftly. On balance, I probably should have called it Stereogram. For some reason, though, ever since I decided to start writing publicly, l keep on coming back to the idea of those novelty Magic Eye pictures that briefly dominated the home decor landscape of the early to mid 90s. For those too young to remember, or for those who had better things to do back then, these were abstract, chaotic, colourful images that, when stared at for long enough, revealed a clear, hidden image beneath. The idea was that, by looking at the image in a slightly different way, you could train your eyes to see what was underneath the chaos (usually something a bit disappointing like a car or a boat) with greater clarity. There was something very rewarding when, after squinting your eyes and trying to look “through” the surface, you finally saw the true image that lay under the abstraction.

That’s what I’m trying to do now: To look at the world around us in a slightly different way, to help train the mind to see what’s under the colourful chaos that surrounds us and make sense of it in a new way. But not, like, in a self help kind of way. More for fun.

To be clear, i’m not for a minute suggesting that this newsletter contains authoritative truths that will help us all navigate the world with confidence and grace (how boring would that be?), but I am hoping that it will contain some new perspectives (some smart, I hope; some utterly preposterous I imagine) and invite some ways of thinking that help us see the chaos around us a little differently. And in doing so, I hope to encourage us all to explore new dimensions and opportunities that lie below that chaos so that we can start to find the magic in a world that’s all too often complex, paralysing and I should probably find a new word for chaotic. Because I believe that seeing the world in terms of complexity is no fun. And I believe that underneath every big complex picture, we should always be striving to find the simple picture that gives us that feeling of reward.

By the way, the official name for a Magic Eye picture is a stereogram and, while that definitely sounds cooler and more marketable, it also sounds a bit too worthy and serious. So let’s stick with Magic Eye.