Making it epic!

Brett A McCall
Nov 1 · 4 min read

I’m in awe of this story on the new Masters of Scale episode about will.i.am and his genius innovation in 2011, before, and after. What is most amazing to me is how he did it right in plain sight, have a listen… you will thank me:

Hearing the story shook me with inspiration to Be True To My Weird Self. So, I had to do exactly what was most natural… go watch the epic performance and witness the magic of his work in full production.

This was such a massive strategy put into place by a true master, but this wasn’t the first time will.i.am nailed innovation on its head… listen to the lyrics from 11 years before Super Bowl XLV from the title track Bridging The Gaps,

LA to Kingston to London Bridge
New York to Germany to Brooklyn Bridge
Also my people in the Golden Gate Bridge
Innovators creatin’ new rich
Got them skate kids sayin’ (let’s rock)
Got them brothas sayin’ (yo let’s get fly)
Got the whole south sayin’ (ya feel me?)
Got them chulos sayin’ (ya feel me?)
Every type of people be feelin’ my section
’Cause we be expandin’ to a wider selection
Now this goes out to everything that exists
Yo how we doin’ it?
We do it like this
C’mon

But not everyone loved or appreciated the genius of the concept because as a music production it was kind of a train wreck: https://www.dallasobserver.com/music/a-look-back-to-the-black-eyed-peas-infamous-dallas-halftime-show-11654424

[WAIT! I am coming back from the future… down there where you haven’t read yet but where I realized I made this total non-sequitur into my own innovative practice. I’m warning you here and I am also celebrating paper computing, imagine injecting this with a typewriter?! Sheesh I feel for you grandma.]


As a futurist, I have placed my attention on the potentials. I ask more questions than tell answers and I like being in the inquiry. Its chaotic and unsettled and bursting with infinite possibility. Call William Scoresby and send me up to the crows nest. My vision is 20/20 at 18 months into the future.

I remember kicking off my imagination when my teachers of the Texas public school system told me my attention was a disorder. They tried to put me on the heaviest of recent experiments from pharma and it took me less than a week of exploring this octopus on face before I said, “This is not a disorder. Give me my super powers back!” I was 13 then and I turned to art but that wasn’t welcome as a young man, in a football state, with a military father.

Computers became my escape, the medium where I could be absolutely as weird as I felt. Plus, my attention was demanded to be filled more and more with the present truth in the game or the desire that leads to greater invention.

When I turned 19, I was living in Budapest, Hungary. I could dream in the language and had moshed with an entire population of people who demanded my attention and stimulated my curiosity.

And when I returned to Texas, I found my people in Jeffery Stone Evans where we joined the Mental Fitness Company and started to put all this attention to powerful work. It was subtle and artistic in the way we were crafting our way of being to full consciousness. It is with him that I learned about accepting myself at full tilt. It was never his acceptance that counted, in fact I know I pissed him off at times.. it was the way I accepted myself when I was around him that counts the most.

What gets me up in the morning? People ask me this question and it always seems so obvious to me.. I get up because I have learned optimism as a habit and I use my imagination to consciously attract the world I see possible. I have learned to do this by gathering the facts of the present and then casting my attention into the future where I combine and splice and explore the infinite. From there I can tell a story and we can make it happen or find the desire that fits. I believe I am the sole and uncontested author of my life… and I don’t need to be right about it because what matters is that I believe it.

Its this belief, my practice of optimism, and the perspective of agency that makes me think today will be better than yesterday. And tomorrow could be profoundly beyond who I ever thought I could become.

I have been to the edge and back… time is not linear its more circular, though I wouldn’t call it a sphere, and if you go in one direction far enough you will find yourself standing right behind where you just were. I am calling on the day when I get to plan my trifecta debut to a sold-out crowd. And baby, I hope you are there to call me a sell-out because I don’t need your acceptance… never did!

Brett A McCall

Written by

futurist | game designer | technologist | consultant

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