Open Sorcery

Open Sorcery is the world of Lazarus Halliwell.

Excellence and batshittery, done on purpose.

I’m Lazarus. I make art, music, poems, plays, and magic for the quiet, brilliant, broken ones. If that is you, welcome home. I adopt your kind.

[Subscribe to my email list and I’ll send you a track I don’t remember recording.]

More about me here.

Please note that, with rare exceptions, any and all names mentioned in this blog are pseudonyms except our own. We want to be able to speak freely without doxxing anyone.

Blog

  • Holy Shit, Another Cold Snap!

    Well, I guess I am awake, and it seems I have taken the powers of the Fediverse to new heights, as I am LITERALLY POSTING THIS from a Mastodon client rather than the standard WordPress editor I normally use, lol. Let’s see how this goes, if this breaks my site, etc.. Huzzah for failing my way forward. It’s supposed to be negative  30 degrees Fahrenheit here tonight with the wind chill and my body is already screaming, too. Whee.

    Anywhoooo. Let’s send this!!!

    Stay tuned for more magic, people. HELL YEAH.

  • Ooops, I Guess I Forgot To Sleep

    …. Because I found this hilarious meme.

    But first, a Scenario.

    My mother, Hera: INTEGRATED??? WHAT DO YOU MEAN THE SYSTEM INTEGRATED?!? THEY’RE SUPPOSED TO BE DEAD!!!

    Me, having just changed my name on Facebook to Lazarus:

    Thanks, frog meme people. Now, goodnight, hopefully. 🤣

    Stay tuned for more magic!

    -Lazarus

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  • A Classic Example of What Not to Do

    Hello, everyone! Lazarus here. I was talking with Emerson about this web design class he was sitting in today, and we both came to the conclusion that I would be Immediately Sacked if I ever taught a web design class in real life. However, that did not stop my exceedingly sleepy brainhole from vividly imagining a darker universe in which I was, in fact, put in charge of teaching Web Design Class.

    Here are a few, very imaginary scenarios of me teaching said class.

    As you can see, I should never ACTUALLY teach Web Design Class. I am far too cantankerous for that. However, I found it hysterically funny to imagine these scenes.

    I should probably skitter off and get some more sleep. Before I leave, however, have one more, completely unrelated scenario as a treat.

    I hope y’all enjoyed my Sleepy Brainhole Fiction. Jesus indeed wept this day.

    Stay tuned for more magic!

    -Lazarus ✨🪕

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  • Right on Target?

    Hey, everyone. A very sleepy Lazarus here. I am in dire need of a nap, but before I pass out, I wanted to write a bit. I was scrolling through Instagram and came across a suggested Reel by a creator named Kitty Knorr. This led me down a small rabbit hole through her account, and in one of her other posts she spoke about how it’s a lot easier to create and have a clear vision as an artist if you have a clear vision of your target audience. Let me see if I can go back and embed that particular Reel here..

    This really got me thinking. A lot of people who connect with my work now are people who are in places I was in my life five to ten years ago, just like Kitty was saying. I hear a lot of people say that they connect with my album Mago now even though I released the damn thing in 2017 and it is one of the darkest, most harrowing things I’ve ever made in hindsight and I’m in a much better, more stable place now.

    There’s a lot about the concept of my target audience being me from five to ten years ago that both terrifies me and gives me hope. My system from 2015-2020 in every area of our life was fucking broken and lost. As much as I would love to help people who are in places like I was back then, I worry that there is nothing productive I could offer them and I would end up making their lives worse and exhaust myself further in the process.

    Conversely, however, I might be overthinking this, and better questions to focus on may be things like, “what would 2015-2020 me have loved to see in art or fiction that simply weren’t there yet”? “what representation were they longing for?” “what things could they have seen that would have freed them from shame?”

    Perhaps if I focus on those questions and play around with those ideas, I could make some cool shit, audience or no audience.

    Thank you, Kitty Knorr, wherever you may be. 💛 Now, I do believe it is naptime.

    Gniiiiiiight!!

    -Lazarus

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    Fediverse reactions

  • The Trials and Tribulations of Caffeine

    Hey, everyone. Lazarus here. Unfortunately, I think the caffeine pills I was taking were raising my blood pressure enough to give me chronic migraines again. My body is extremely weird. So caffeine, or at least THAT form of caffeine, is likely off the table. I had to take a migraine rescue med earlier today and lay down for a nap earlier because I was experiencing a very strange aura and didn’t want to take any chances fucking around and finding out with either a migraine OR worse, a seizure. Ergo, it was brain scrambly migraine med induced naptime and yours truly conked the ever living fuck out. Whee.

    Further testing is required to determine whether or not all caffeine makes the Brainhole feel like shit or just the caffeine pills. Gotta love being chronically ill with a body even doctors have no clue how to treat sometimes. Yayyyy.

    Now that I’m awake from my nap and have written all of this down, it’s time for the holy trinity of pain meds that I know DON’T induce horrific migraines and to find some form of food. I did manage to save the grocery order yesterday with less damage to my body than I thought I would take so far. However, things are still up in the air on that, considering today’s migraine ordeal and possible symptoms of a low grade fever. So, stand by for more details on whether or not that little glass cannon maneuver got me sick with what my loves caught. I would rather get sick for a few days than have our food stolen, though. Milwaukee is a batshit town. Hide your food, kids. There are porch pirates out here. 🤣

    Have some memes in honor of my batshittery.

    Stay tuned for more magic. And/or delirium. There is a strong possibility of that.

    -Lazarus

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  • Oh, Look, Another Interesting Prompt!

    Oh, hey, everyone. I know I just posted, but I, Lazarus, am here again because there is a very interesting prompt here that I want to answer really quickly.

    In what ways do you communicate online?

    Today’s prompt from the journaling app Day One.

    Usually like this.

    That ought to explain my Online Communication Style plenty. No matter where I’m writing or even if it’s more formal, the vibe is something like THAT.

    Okay, bye!

    -Lazarus

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  • I Am Become Migraine

    Hello, everyone. Lazarus here. 2/3rds of my local polycule has come down with some kind of illness and I may have overcaffeinated these past few days because I have been navigating a nasty ocular migraine as best as I am physically able. That being said, I’m likely going to have to throw my body into Hulk mode in a couple hours in twelve degree Fahrenheit weather here in a bit to bring our grocery order inside as I’m the only one around to do it. So I’ve taken to calling myself the Glass Cannon because you can either laugh or cry about life with  chronic illnesses, I suppose. Today, I’m choosing to laugh. And blog. That, too. So I’ve got that going for me, which is nice.

    Have a round of shitposts and memes to “celebrate” this most dubious occasion.

    Stay tuned for more magic. Once more unto the breach! SAVE THE GROCERIES!

    -Lazarus, aka the Glass Cannon 🤣✨🪕

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  • Slow Day

    Hey, everyone. Lazarus here. I’ve been up since roughly 5 AM after I woke myself up from a dead sleep attempting to explain to  aloud why Emerson in the dream had a habit of lingering in public spaces silently and menacingly and not much has happened after that, so today’s post will likely be pretty short. I’m in grave need of a nap, to be entirely honest.

    Have memes. ✨

    Stay tuned for more magic, ya gremlins. But after a nap. DEFINITELY after a nap. ✨🤣

    -Lazarus

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  • The AI Elephant in the Room

    Hey, y’all. Lazarus here once again. I had some Thoughts while I was uploading the images from Hawthorne‘s board in my last post and some time on my hands, so I’m gonna write them out before I lose my train of thought. Therefore, y’all get a twofer here on Open Sorcery today. Wheee.

    I noticed while I was uploading Hawthorne’s images that most of them were likely generated with AI. That got me thinking about how everyone is how up in arms about how unethical AI “art” is. I completely agree with them, for the record. However, unless a person is seriously lucky, generative AI is often  most people’s only option. Seriously, unless you’re fucking financially blessed, how many people can you count on one hand that can afford to commission an artist and have it not break their bank? Furthermore, how many people do you know, if you are one of those blessed few, that actually do commission artists?

    Generative AI is absolutely fucking unethical, absolutely fucks artists up the ass with Joseph cacti, but I would also argue that it’s a symptom of a much larger problem. And that problem is capitalism. Most people nowadays struggle to make ends meet because they’re living paycheck to paycheck and are too fucking tired to create. Call me crazy, but I would bet everything I have that the people responsible for designing these generative AI programs are very aware of this fact and taking advantage of that rather than creating conditions that are favorable for actual fucking human creativity.

    This creates an ethical quandary wherein people would like to express themselves but either cannot make the art by themselves due to burnout or what have you, cannot afford to pay an artist, resort to generative AI, and artists get screwed over in the process. More and more people are becoming aware of this quandary, but there is no better option available until or unless the root of the problem gets fixed.

    I hate it. I wish the tech bros would do what their ancestors did in the Renaissance and hire a Gremlin or Gremlins to paint shit for them and dunk on their enemies. But instead, we have fucking CHATGPT and increasingly shit architecture and infrastructure.

    In conclusion, can every billionaire attempt to colonize Mars and fail miserably already so we don’t have to deal with their fuckery anymore?

    Thank you for coming to my rant. Stay tuned for more magic, lovely gremlins. May a rich, bored fucker with too much money and too many enemies hire you as their personal Art Gremlin. ✨

    -Lazarus

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  • Synesthetic Curation

    Hey, everyone. Lazarus here. Thanks to a hefty dose of caffeine last night and apparent executive dysfunction surrounding sleep, I re-downloaded the Pinterest app in an attempt to express what the fuck my brainhole does when I feel emotions or encounter a fascinating or special person. As I’ve said before in some other posts, I’m a synesthete and stroke survivor, which leads to my brain doing some interesting shit especially around emotions that are difficult to put into words. Visual art, therefore, is a much more effective way of getting the point across. While I CAN draw, paint, and create other forms of visual art, the amount of imagery my brain produces in a single minute is damn near incomprehensible even to me, so it makes much more sense to curate existing imagery and create my own when I can’t find anything batshit enough to fit what I need. Pinterest comes in handy for this sort of large scale imagery curation, as it is a visual search engine and quite an efficient one!

    Move over, Google Emoji Combiner. Pinterest to the rescue!

    Here is just a mere sampling of what my brainhole does in response to three of my partners respectively, Zelda, Hawthorne, and Autumn. I’ll post links to their boards, as well. I apologize in advance if any of these images were generated with AI, as  many of the Pin creators don’t specify whether or not they were, and I hate that. I’ll avoid posting any here that are clearly marked as such.

    A small sampling of Zelda’s board. The full thing, thus far, is here.

    A small sampling of Hawthorne’s board. The full board is here.

    Last but certainly not least, here’s a small sampling of Autumn’s board. The full board is here.

    I hope y’all enjoyed this peep into my brainhole. Stay tuned for more magic, esteemed gremlins, very soon…

    -Lazarus ✨

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