Pareidolia: Seeing Patterns, Making Meaning
Pareidolia is when you see familiar shapes or patterns, like faces, in random things.
You know how Steve Jobs said it’s easier to look back on life and connect the dots rather than trying to connect them looking forward? It’s true—but I learned that the hard way. I was certain I’d have the life I wanted. I had it all mapped out: where I’d live, my career as a composer, my accolades from having my music performed in concert halls and cinemas. Nothing could stop me—not even a random event like a pandemic.
And then the pandemic happened. It pulled me from LA back to my hometown in New Jersey.
The plan was simple: move back to LA and continue growing my career in film music. But life had other ideas. I won a music fellowship in San Francisco that seemed too good to pass up. So I quit my job and moved—San Francisco, by the way, has to be in the top five most random U.S. cities to relocate to for a music fellowship. Still, I told myself it was temporary—six months in SF, then back to LA to pick up where I left off.
What I didn’t realize at the time was that the dots were already connecting—not just for me to be a composer, but also a founder. And certain skills I had honed as a musician would end up accelerating my path into entrepreneurship.
Here’s how the dots actually connected:
Before every performance of my music, I had to speak on stage about my work. I had to be clear and concise—people came to hear music, not a TED Talk. That skill became invaluable.
Composing a mockup track for filmmakers is like building an MVP. It’s not perfect, but it works well enough to get the idea across. I began to see how recruiting, building, testing an MVP, and iterating based on feedback all functioned as a single process.
The protests after George Floyd’s killing pushed many organizations to strengthen their DEI efforts. (The killing itself wasn’t random, but the level of attention it received—when so many similar tragedies had gone unnoticed—was.) Those DEI initiatives created the foundation for the very fellowship that brought me to SF.
While living in SF, I befriended a startup founder and briefly worked at his company. He brought me to events and introduced me to the world of entrepreneurship—a world where people didn’t just complain about problems; they built solutions.
That changed how I saw the music industry. I realized it was too complex, with most musicians having no control over whether their music ended up on streaming platforms—let alone how much they were paid per stream. The world’s biggest problems, I learned, are also its biggest business opportunities. And the biggest business opportunities? They’re often the best way to make the world better for everyone. My solution is Adaelo—a music licensing marketplace connecting artists with filmmakers, advertisers, and creators.
In cognitive science, the tendency to recognize patterns in unrelated events is called apophenia—not just seeing patterns but assigning meaning to them. That idea fascinated me so much that I wrote a string quartet called Pareidolia (the visual counterpart to apophenia—like seeing shapes in the clouds). The formation of constellations that led to the zodiac, the first time we meet someone who becomes important to us, the moments of joy and suffering that shape us—none of these make sense until we give them meaning.
Looking back, the dots were always there. I just didn’t know what picture they were forming yet.