Music is Our Dreaming Tool
Pick Up on the Vibe of a Better Future
Amici mei,1 my friends, sometimes dreaming a better tomorrow is difficult. Difficult to find inspiration. Difficult to keep believing. Other times, our mind’s eye envisions the possible so clearly it shines. Even if we can’t quite find the words to describe it, we can feel it.
We know the vibe of a better future. Instinctively.
When we cross paths with people and places carrying that futuristic feel, we time travel. For a flash, we’re there. Then we return here, the taste of a better future still in our mouths.
Madonnnn’,2 we say to ourselves. Mother in Heaven, I want more. How do I get back there? Or bring it here?
Good questions for our times.
In our chest of magical future-building tools, we have many options to help us make such visions real. Among them is one of our most ancient powers— music.
Perhaps there is no faster way to transport the human soul. To our past. Around the many corners of our present. And into what could be our future.
Yes, music is our dreaming tool. Especially when dreaming feels impossible.
Music is what guides me as I write to you of better worlds and sketch paths forwards and backwards to see how we might get there. Do you do this too? Tell me what you listen to when imagining The Possible.
What’s that I hear some of you say? You never thought of such a thing. Well, put this letter down and start your future-dreaming playlist, subito!— ASAP!3 Collect the songs that make you feel as if you had grown wings.
Then give your list a great name.
Dedicate it to the place you live, something like LA 2030: Phoenix Out of the Ashes. Dare to name it after the hope that feels the furthest away, perhaps The Levant in Peaceful Coexistence. If such things are too big, try a name that solves a close-to-home need, like Safe Streets or Everything We Need, Right Here in Town
You’ll think of a good name, I’m sure. Then play it while you clean, walk, work, dance, play, or stare up at the sky. Travel wherever the music takes you. Sooner or later, you’ll catch a glimpse of a brighter tomorrow.
When I dream over music, I see such slivers of the place I live— La Florida of the Future4. Venice-like cities, half swallowed by the Ocean, the Gulf, and the Straits. Out of the Everglades and up the central spine of our peninsula is the fully connected Wildlife Corridor. Around it, a skirt of Oak and Citrus Food Forests. Under the forest canopies, cattle graze the Old Florida way created by Crackers,5 Black Floridians, and the Seminole.
At the outer edge of forests, larger towns and cities begin. Our high-speed rail connects them at lightning-fast speed— Miami to Atlanta in 3 hours. Hubs to every major Floridian city as well as our first international addition to Havana, Cuba. Faster than New York’s, we brag.
Out in the waters are the Sea Gardens, full of fish for us and seaweed for the manatees, a creature that we— like the first Spanish arrivals— still sometimes mistake for mermaids. Beyond them, the waters glint with sleek EV speedboats and solar sails cruising to and from our neighbors— Mexico, Louisiana, Haiti, Alabama, the Bahamas, Texas….
We the People own the economy. Space exploration and closed-cycle water purification companies with employee profit-sharing. Thriving cottage industries in every city neighborhood and small town, often co-opted between family and friends, community-minded folks, and faith-based groups. A not-for-profit hub dedicated to tropical disease research and emergency deployment. County-wide sign-ups for compensated work that takes care of local needs— invasive species control, storm rebuilds, public art, and elder check-ins. These work as an employment catch-all, providing a good-jobs guarantee, especially needed when enterprise ventures slow down and run low on work.
We sell excess sunshine back to the energy providers at a fair profit margin distributed to every state citizen. (This is, of course, next to running safe nuclear for energy consistency. It was the only practical way to hit our decarbonization mark back in the 2050s). And of course, we still have our tiki bars, theme parks, and delightful big box entertainment. Some outsiders think these things are gaudy, but we’ll never give them up.
We politic over Abundance— over the best way to grow Plenty— of safe energy, clean water, trustworthy food, storm-ready homes, fair economic opportunity, guaranteed freedoms, and citizen-controlled democracy. The Right, Center, Left, and Independents all have their thoughts on how to get there. We wrestle with each other over lab-grown meat, the role of robots, the decreasing need for human work, how to keep the public sector finely tuned, and if we should invest our resources into private, entrepreneurial hands or hold it in our commons.
We rollback corporate interest out of the center of our government and into the fringe, where it belongs, lest it choke the Will of the People. We protect the price of essentials- always asking, how do we move this cost closer to zero? As always, for price-gougers, we have no tolerance— not just in the wake of great storms but in every aspect of our lives.
We do better, but not perfect, with the reality that “sometimes the opposite of a good idea is another good idea”6. We test our options in volunteer cities and towns, then measure success in units of Happiness. We grit our teeth when the results prove us wrong. Sometimes we learn from it, sometimes we still try to sabotage the evidence.
We have our underbelly— corrupt officials, mafias, pirates, predators, win-takes-all competitors, power-hungry players, and the damned snakeoil salesmen. Such characters we humans likely will never shake. But on a few things we have learned to agree:
Abundance is the goal. Innovation is the way. Resilience is key. Democracy is non-negotiable.7
This is the spirit in which these letters are written to you, woven with music that feels right to share in this moment. Let these songs be the soundtrack to your reading, or simply a way to tune in and pick up on the vibe of a better future. Or at least, my imperfect, semi-utopian imagining of it.
Perhaps my taste in music is not yours, but give it a listen. Reread the glimpse of La Florida with Serity playing—a song that feels like a mermaid’s voice rising as a fresh salt wave breaks over you, washing everything clean.
Shake off the stress with a moody club banger that carries a message I know you need to hear: Your Poetry is Your Purpose. Dance around and jot down flickers of The Possible in a few lyrical lines.
Float on the futuristic clouds with Kali Uchis’ Telepatía, as a daydream unfolds in your mind— a romance blooming between two lovers in a lush, green city while butterflies flutter in heart-shaped patterns around them.
If you’re supporting these letters with the gift of a paid subscription, a full future-dreaming playlist is waiting for you below the footnotes. Listen in the order designed to carry you through the highs and lows of what’s possible. Or hit shuffle so the Cosmos can lead. Just know—the final song is about the brilliance I see in you.
Dive into the Azuli sound. Build your own better futures playlist. Listen deep. There’s no wrong music, no single right way. Ma’, ricorda questo,8 just remember this, you must follow one simple magical rule—
Dream big.
Ci vediamo là.9
I’ll see you there,
Azuli
My friends. Sicilian & Southern Italian languages. Pronunciation: ah-MEE-chee MAH-ee
Madonna! Mother Mary, Mother of God! An exclamation used to express to anything from shock to deep longing. Similar to "Oh my God!" in English. Brooklynese/Neapolitan root. Pronunciation: mah-DOHN
Right now! Immediately! Brooklynese/Italian. Pronunciation: SOO-bee-toh
La Florida is the name the Spanish gave the peninsula. Roughly, it means the “the flowering place.” Pronunciation: LAH floh-REE-dah
In Florida, 'Cracker' refers to a group of white American cowboys, primarily of Scot-Irish descent, who migrated from the U.S. South and herded the wild cattle left by the Spanish. In this context, it is a historical term, not a racial slur or a reference to slavery
“Sometimes the opposite of a good idea is another good idea” - Rory Sutherland, “Alchemy: The Surprising Power of Ideas That Don't Make Sense.”
Throughout history, shared ideas—like constellations in the night sky—have helped align societies, even amid disagreements. Abundance has recently been proposed as one such idea, a guiding belief that could bring order to our shifting political landscape.
Left-leaning journalists Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson explore this in their book of the same name. In a convo with right-leaning journalist Bari Weiss, they note that despite divisions, history shows foundational agreements emerge—in the US, you see this in FDR (left) and Eisenhower (right) both supporting the New Deal or Reagan/Bush (right) and Clinton/Obama (left) both embracing what’s called the “Neoliberal” version of capitalism, which agreed on growing Big Business and cutting/privatizing the public sector.
As old structures shift underneath our feet, Abundance—the belief that our goal should be to build, create and tap into Plenty—could be a new point of agreement, a new guiding constellation. Even as different groups—from libertarians to socialists— debate how to achieve it. If you're curious, I encourage you to check out the cross-political discussion below and this criticism outlining the current obstacles inside the Left that stand in the way of adopting Abundance (and why the Right could get there first)
But, remember this. Brooklynese/general Southern Italian root. Pronunciation: MAH ree-KOR-dah KWEHS-toh
I’ll see you there. Italian. Pronunciation: Chee veh-DYAH-moh LAH