Jason Silva, the Venezuelan-American futurist, filmmaker and creator of Shots of Awe, has a way of speaking that makes you feel like he is channeling a lightning bolt. He takes big ideas, wraps them in poetry, and fires them at you in rapid bursts. Now, he is turning that energy toward cannabis.
In his new video, Cannabis and the Mind of the Artist, Silva and his collaborator Brad Necyk pair surreal AI imagery with a spoken journey into the way cannabis changes how we see. For them, it is not about escape. It is about a reconfiguration of attention. A tilt of the mind toward beauty. A glimpse of how an artist moves through the world.
“To be high on cannabis,” Silva says, “is to go through a reconfiguration of attention… a shift in which aesthetic experience supersedes practical cognition, providing a taste of the perceptual experience of the artist.”
Bicycles, Birds and Blooming Colors
Silva builds the scene. Two poets. Jason and his friend Edgar. They ride bicycles across the Dutch countryside. High on cannabis, they move through fairy-tale villages. A woman pedals by with her children. A dog runs wild through a green field. A flock of birds takes flight right at the peak of a song. It feels like the universe is timing every detail just for them.
Philosopher Martha Nussbaum once called it “extreme qualitative intensity,” and Silva makes it feel alive. The everyday world sheds its muted skin. Surfaces shine. Contours deepen. Colors bloom. The visual field becomes magnetic, as if you are seeing it for the first time.
The Artist’s Gaze
In this state, time stretches. Every arrangement of objects feels like it belongs in a frame. The air hums with possibility. It is a way of seeing that filmmakers, photographers and poets know well. Cannabis opens that door for anyone willing to walk through.
For Silva and Edgar, this is not a passing mood. It is a way of life. A commitment to immediacy. To being awake to the raw texture of existence.
He closes with the words of David Foster Wallace, a reminder of what is at stake. The alternative, Wallace wrote, is “unconsciousness… the constant, gnawing sense of having had and lost some infinite thing.”
The Call
Silva’s voice, his images, his philosophy… they are an invitation. Stay awake. Seek beauty. Use cannabis, art or whatever tools help you dissolve the filters. Step into the world like it is brand new and let yourself be flooded.
Watch Cannabis and the Mind of the Artist here.
