THE DEVIL MADE ME DO THIS DANCE
Elon Musk – Walter Isaacson
I finally caved and bought this book on *checks Amazon records* 6 January 2025.
The publicity surrounding the 2023 launch of this authorised biography from American publishing behemoth Simon & Schuster included the news that Elon Musk, world’s richest man, had been a childhood magician and hypnotist. Kev suggested I pause following the real-time threads of his seemingly unstoppable, and largely unchecked, influence upon our precious planet and beings, and await its appearance in a local charity shop window. Alas, we live in Cheltenham – home to GCHQ, and a UK tech hub – and so I prayed it was the sort of reference book the people of this lousy town would cling onto a wee bit longer than your average Christmas Z-list celebrity title.
So I bought it.
But then I shelved it.
Specifically, I wedged it between varying configurations of magical, mesmeric, miraculous books in my possession. Why risk my life and liberty ‘speaking truth to power’ – only, predictably and pertinently, to be dismissed and destroyed by Bloid Culture – when one can beam psychic SOSes into the Ghost-o-Sphere instead? I succeeded in stirring the echoes of several panicked members of the Victorian British Summerland – “dog heaven”, as it was known among American mesmerists, does not do it justice – who were none too pleased at Mr Musk unleashing a Nazi curse.
With or without my imaginary ghost pals, I still didn’t want to plough through this book. I flipped to the index, seeking “hypnosis” and “magic” entries for a quick skim of the corresponding pages to relieve myself of my fears about (then-)unfolding world events, the rise of popularism and fascism, and Musk’s unwieldy web of influence over us all, human or machine. But oddly – despite being authored by respected American journalist Walter Isaacson, who previously wrote a defining biography on Apple founder Steve Jobs – the ‘abracadabra’ is missing..? Hmm…
“Bring me the Elon Musk book!”
Skip forwards to March this year, and I found myself in a mental hospital. Truth be told, my latest Black Magick attempt to wholly outsource myself to dead Victorian ghosts had gone awry. Kev arrived with a handful of autistic acceptance books, and my Father’s copy of Hitchhikers (yeah). I’d smashed through them and was lobbying for a book by the director of a late-1800s European psychiatric institution. Autistic ‘savants’ of the past survived these hellholes, plus the rigours of fascist ‘euthanasia’ programmes, so I’d hoped to inform my fate with its aid. But autism remains just a rumour or opinion, and prescribing indefinite antipsychotics and lithium without discussion is apparently a credible British National Health Service treatment for perimenopause in 2026.
Anyway.
I languished in my room while Kev heroically rescued me from the planned lithium phase of their depressing catch-all misdiagnosis, finally reading Elon Musk for the magic and hypnosis mentions. It gave me a sense of purpose. Plus I needed a much bigger book to throw, proverbially only, at psychiatry’s antiquated head… So this book, at 670 pages, fit the bill perfectly. (Forel’s is only 370.)
What shocked me – and inspired this post as part of my ‘notes’ on contemporary ‘hypnotism’ – is how often Isaacson and Musk’s circle comment on him being “in a trance”. (Or in “demon mode”, or in his “trancelike darkest persona”.) An example: “Musk paused silently for almost a minute as he processed this possibility. During the trancelike periods, he says, he runs visual simulations about the ways that multiple factors might play out over the years.” Or: “Musk often repeats himself in meetings. Partly it’s for emphasis, partly it’s just a trancelike invocation of a mantra.” And: “Everyone had seen this trance before” (emphasis mine), comes yet another nightmarish meeting account. I lost count of the number of times “trance” appears.
‘Tis factually incorrect to describe an adult human of sound mind and physical health as being in a perpetual merry-go-round of hypnotic/magical ‘trances’, end of. These self-described, and/or outsider-observed, ‘trances’ are also so varied and explain-if-fied – sometimes he’s tired, sometimes he’s traumatised, sometimes he’s a tyrant, sometimes he’s… partying; love, drugs, (speculated) bipolar, etc, are factors, too. It demonstrates the uselessness of ‘trance’ as a word and concept. Keeping irregular hours and indulging in ‘demon mode/s’ (which seems parlance for accepted/acceptable, often legal, use of alcohol, weed, and other substances) isn’t ‘trance’.
“My psychic health goes in waves,” Musk says to Isaacson. Mmn. These constant mystifications, adulations, and justifications surrounding his mercurial leadership style permeate the book. They seem, to me, behaviours uncomfortably close to messiah-dictator types channeling their own mania, madness, insomnia, and lunacy. Heck though, if I had a trillion dollars in the bank and a bunch of amenable bozos doing my bidding, I can’t promise I wouldn’t be a mad wizard-king either. Item 1: Blow up the moon… *enters blah-blah-blah bullshit “trance-mode” of latest blah-blah things from phone and thus quickly escalates into “demon-mode” ranting-raving-pacing-punching* [Lawyer enters, stage left. An employee is fired. The NDA is waiting with Security.] Oh, um… Where was I, Tiffany? *pops an elephant-felling gummy* Yes! Item 142: Meddle in an election. 143: Demand an urgent party meeting with the Pope. 144: Goof around in standup comedy. 145: Consider psychotherapy maybe…
Item 146: Ah, 10am, team – time for me to sleep and you lot to get (back) to work! Carry on, see you on Yammer, yay team, etc. Byeeeeeeiiiiii!!!!!!
And that’s modern leadership – and the future of interplanetary existence – apparently.
The specific magical anecdotes from Elon’s boyhood in South Africa as part of a large, complex, wealthy family include him learning “magic tricks and how to hypnotize people, once convincing Tosca [his sister] that she was a dog and getting her to eat raw bacon”. I have a younger brother and, for what it’s worth on debunking this whole ‘hypnosis’ scam, I can confirm you don’t need hypnosis to get a Bonio and some tripe down a credulous younger sibling playing dogs. Words like ‘magic’, ‘spirituality’, and ‘witchcraft’ crop up; particularly the women in his life provide Musk with ‘magical’ meanings and rituals to support him and his endeavours. We learn that Musk preferred to stay in the backroom of the September 2021 Met Gala where he was “mesmerized by a magician performing tricks” – magic is an excellent way of avoiding meeting people, as noted by his mother! Kayne ‘Ye’ West gets a magical mention, too: manipulating human ‘energy’ and creating unusual tensions – eg, at big gala events or in immersive performance spaces – seems a common interest between the pair.
The main takeaway from this book is that Elon Musk is “wired for war”.
Perhaps we can – hypnotically-magically-miraculously-wing-n-a-prayeredly – re-wire him for peace..?
If you weren’t blessed to be born a HNW (High-Net-Worth) Individual, one can but only hope.
