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If you crave further confirmation that Silicon Valley is a magical place where magical thinking reigns, consider the tale of Roku, the video streaming company that filed to go public Friday, when alert people everywhere were headed out for a long weekend.
Spiritual life can certainly follow the pattern one sees in the fake martial arts, with most teachers making nebulous and magical claims that never get tested, while their students derange themselves with weird ideas, empty rituals, and other affectations.
And the nature of magic is all in the person's experience. Whether the magician is using a highly complex sleight of hand or he's just got two cards that are the same, it doesn't matter: it's how it's sold and how magical it is for the person that matters.
I can hold a cup of sake on a full moon in Japan, and the reflection of the moon in that little cup can make me feel so enthusiastic about beauty. That one good, magical moment can give me enough to create other things like the teardrop earring or necklace.
Quite often, intent on conveying how things can go wrong for a culture (science fiction) or an individual (horror) or all of magical creation (fantasy), works of fantastika often preclude comedy, because humor gets in the way of messages of doom or struggle.
Gravity Falls' normally follows very particular rules: we start out in reality close to the world as we know it, usually one magical element presents itself, and then it's essentially vanished or hidden back to where it came from by the end of the 20 minutes.
I spent 12 years of my life writing stories without black people. That's insane to me. It's insane that I could have believed in magical portals and dragons and all that stuff, but to believe a black person could be experiencing those things was unimaginable.
I love San Francisco so much. I call it the Emerald City and have been coming here since 1992. I have a few old friends that live here, and my aunt and uncle live in Oakland. I think it's a magical city - it's big, sexy and very 'cosmo' with a small-town feel.
The ability to have somebody read something and see it, or for somebody to paint an entire landscape of visual imagery with just sheets of words - that's magical. That's what I've been trying to strive for - to draw a clear picture, to open up a new dimension.
All around us right now, tucked into the valleys and along the coasts, bookshops glow in the winter light. Think of them like singular, magical, and multi-dimensional recipe boxes. They wait for us to pluck out a card, to stand over the stove, to start cooking.
I'm not too comfortable going into the details, but yes, my love story with Andrei is beautiful and magical. We first met while I had gone diving in the Maldives. He didn't even know who I was when we first met. It was only later that he found out I'm an actress.
I think a lot of times our culture has an attitude toward art and the production of art that separates artists from the rest of us, like making art or music or painting or whatever is some magical thing that you have to be inspired to do, and special people do it.
I realize that, to many readers, Hard Fantasy may seem to be a contradiction in terms. Fantasy, according to most generally recognized definitions, differs from both 'real world' fiction and 'science fiction' in that magic or magical creatures are active elements.
Back in 2000, I had come to a crossroads in my life, unsure about what career path I should pursue. Shepherd, bouncer, philosopher king, ventriloquist or perhaps man on the flying trapeze. Fortunately, I was guided back onto the path of the magical world of music.
Movies have these transcendent moments where everything is just right, from the dialogue to the music to the lighting to the narrative context; everything is just perfect, and something magical happens - the film breaks through the screen and does something to you.
What I take from writers I like is their economy - the ability to use language to very effective ends. The ability to have somebody read something and see it, or for somebody to paint an entire landscape of visual imagery with just sheets of words - that's magical.
Remember travel agents? Remember how they just kind of vanished one day? Well, that's where all the other jobs that once made us middle class are going, to that same magical, class-killing, job-sucking wormhole into which travel agency jobs vanished, never to return.
As I've gotten older, I've wanted to represent Las Vegas more. Represent the Southwest. It's a magical place. The desert. I do understand people's criticisms, but it's a magical place and a beautiful city, even though there are a lot of things that are wrong with it.
I was on the wheelchair for six months and lost all hope of returning to the field. I thought my career was over, but my brother kept on encouraging me. 'All that you need to do is to be resolute to return to the field,' he said. These words turned out to be magical.
Wes Anderson's mind must be an exciting place for a story idea to be born. It immediately becomes more than a series of events and is transformed into a world with its own rules, in which everything is driven by emotions and desires as convincing as they are magical.
I want a little black girl to pick up my book one day and see herself as the star. I want her to know that she's beautiful, and she matters, and she can have a crazy, magical adventure even if an ignorant part of the world tells her she can never be Hermione Granger.
As a father and now a grandfather to three wonderful grandchildren, I know how magical the first year of a child's life is but also how much hard work it takes. Being able to spend as much time as possible with your loved ones is absolutely vital, especially early on.
In my experience, durable progress must be fashioned out of more than obscured truth, slogans, and empty promises. You do it through hard work. By going everywhere. Listening to everyone. Being honest with people. Being ambitious without indulging in magical thinking.
There's something really magical about having a child - it's like permission to begin again, start over, reevaluate some things, check yourself. Recognize yourself. And that's kind of what happened with me - I realized, in a few places, I was going down the wrong path.
Painting is the most magical of mediums. The transcendence is truly amazing to me every time I go to a museum and I see how somebody figured another way to rub colored dirt on a flat surface and make space where there is no space or make you think of a life experience.
Anyway, it fell through because they ran out of money. That was when I learned not to waste your time getting your hopes up or to believe something until it actually happens. We broke up for various reasons, but it was a good band. Jim and Don produced some magical music.
I love it when people come from all over the place in separate vehicles, and they all come to this venue and become one energy. When that happens, it's a very magical thing. I think that helps the world go around, and it's what we do as performers - bring people together.
The first view of the Earth is magical. It is a very overpowering realization that the Earth is so small. It affected me. I could not get over the notion that in such a small planet, with such a small ribbon of life, so much goes on. It is as if the whole place is sacred.
I always thought it was strange when these artists like Kurt Cobain or whoever would get really famous and say, 'I don't understand why this is happening to me.' There is a mathematical formula to why you got famous. It isn't some magical thing that just started happening.
Magical realism allows an artist like myself to inject layers of meaning without being obvious. In American culture, where there is freedom of expression, this approach may seem forced, unnecessary and misunderstood. But this system of communication has become very Iranian.
Sardinia is beautiful. The people were so friendly, and the food was incredible! I also loved Florence. I spent two months there as part of a school study-abroad program. On the weekends, we would get to travel wherever we wanted, so I would explore. That was a magical time.
It's a magical thing, the guitar. It allows you to be the whole band in one, to play rhythm and melody, sing over the top. And as an instrument for solos, you can bend notes, draw emotional content out of tiny movements, vibratos and tonal things which even a piano can't do.
I miss aspects of being in the Arab world - the language - and there is a tranquility in these cities with great rivers. Whether it's Cairo or Baghdad, you sit there and you think, 'This river has flown here for thousands of years.' There are magical moments in these places.
I think 'The Witch' was actually my 100th job. Only took me 100 jobs to get a lead! But it did change things a lot. It was a magical thing for Rob Eggers to pick me out of the all the actors he could have for that part. It was an amazing part. It's changed my career massively.
I like ambiguity because you may be the villain in someone else's story and the hero in your own, and I think very often, African-American characters are either one thing or the other. You shouldn't have to be perfectly good or perfectly bad. You don't even have to be magical.
Oh, I love making independent films, it's such a special, magical thing because you collaborate with a small group of people and everyone's pitching in. You'll see producers setting up the lunch table and the sound guy driving a van. We're all really there because we want to be.
When you're young, you think that clothes are almost magical, and that if you wear the right thing - to school, to the prom, on the date, etc. - something's going to happen. Black, it's the anti-magical thing. It comes from the recognition that it is not going to be 'the' dress.
In Olympia, Washington, many of us were writing songs that were the equivalent of bloodletting: This is the sound a wound makes; this is the screech of a scar. But Mary Timony was always more kaleidoscope than microscope, creating magical worlds replete with weaponry or sorcery.
My mother was working on her college degree throughout my childhood, and being the youngest in the family, that meant being dragged to a lot of her classes. She majored in playwriting, so I was exposed to theatre from a very young age, and it was just the most magical world to me.
At 11, I went to live with my maternal nan and granddad temporarily, after my parents separated, and Nan would let me have a go on her piano. My grandparents were like something out of the Noel Coward play, 'This Happy Breed,' and it was magical to hear them sing music-hall songs.
I've had years of bizarre hallucinogenic magical experiences in which I believed I had communicated with entities that may well have been disassociated parts of my own personality or conceivably some independent entity of a metaphysical nature. Both would seem equally interesting.
I remember being glued to the TV as I watched the Olympics as a kid. There was something so magical, almost otherworldly, about the Olympics. My favorite part was that moment right before it all started. The moment where the athlete would stand up ready to face whatever lay ahead.
Imagine life without any algorithms at all, you wouldn't be able to do anything. This is already completely encompassing. We have a habit of over-trusting what mathematics or computer scientists tell us to do, without questioning it, too much faith in the magical power of analysis.
Every decently-made object, from a house to a lamp post to a bridge, spoon or egg cup, is not just a piece of 'stuff' but a physical embodiment of human energy, testimony to the magical ability of our species to take raw materials and turn them into things of use, value and beauty.
When a story is flying along, and I'm so into it that my 'real' world goes away, it can feel magical. I cease to be, my desk and computer ceases to be, and I am my character in his world. Psychologists call this a 'flow state,' and it's better than publication, money, awards, fame.
Anyone can wear glitter, even a woman in her 60s. It's all about techniques. Instead of applying glitter all over the face, you can just add a little to the inner corner of your eyes or on your brow bone, or even on your Cupid's bow. It just adds this magical element to your makeup.
When I started out I thought just hearing one of my records on the radio would be magical. Fortunately, that naivety has always stayed with me. Because when you've had massive success and it tapers off people lose interest in you. So you have to work even harder to generate interest.
I believed then - in a deep, easy way that is impossible for me as an adult - that there was more to this world than meets the eye. Trees had spirits; the wind spoke. If you followed a toad or a raven deep into the heart of the forest, they were sure to lead you to something magical.
The best strikers make you sit up and take notice because every time they get the ball, you think that something amazing could happen. Of course they'll score goals, but they'll have something in their game which makes you think, 'Wow, he can win this game by doing something magical.'
I had some friends that went to this hypnotist to stop smoking, and I kind of love things that seem magical. And I liked that it was in Santa Monica, and I had to go near the ocean to get my brain washed out or whatever. So I went there. And I went on a Thursday, and I got hypnotized.