2009 10 31 Hyatt Regency (Haunted Hotel Colorado) 18"x24" - opaque pens on masonite original available - 11"x17" signed prints for $15
In a dramatic change of scenery, I decided to bow out from my plans to paint for The Motet on Halloween and instead perform at a huge costume party hosted by Kevin Larson Presents. Larson does a lot of swank, high-budget mass-soirées around Denver...and indeed, this was reflected in the amazing costumery I saw that night (including a too-real Iron Man suit, the guy from Tron in full el-wire glory, Mr. & Ms. Pac Man, a seven-foot hookah, a stilted puppeteer with marionette, a stilted Thriller Michael Jackson, a female Colonel Sanders and male bucket of chicken, a score of fake cops, and about a half dozen neck-twisting examples of body painting). Metromix.com did a full write-up with 107 pictures, if you're curious, including me in my "I'm Going To Burning Man" costume (unfortunately, he didn't get the skirt in the shot):
Image courtesy of photographer Alex Jimenez, Metromix.com
If it wasn't the sexiest party I've ever attended, it was in the top three (temporary cities don't count). And I was having trouble concentrating on my work. So of course I did the only thing a compulsive balance-seeker can do: I drew a human skull. Because after all, we can only party THIS hard when we're trying to laugh in the face of the yawning abyss. Sex IS death, really. (If you don't believe me, read Annie Dillard's Pulitzer Prize-winning masterwork of modern nature-mysticism, Pilgrim At Tinker Creek.)
Quote Of The Night came from some guy who stopped to watch me paint for a second and then quipped, paraphrasing Shakespeare, "I KNEW him! ...I TOLD that sumbitch to stop doing acid."
And yes, that's a moustache. Maybe if I can stick with it, I can hit Halloween 2010 as Salvador Dalí.
In honor of live art's transparency of process, this time I'm not going to just throw a finished piece out there and call it a day. For my latest painting, I want to give some exposition and a before-and-after, because the photograph of the finished piece verges on not communicating what is actually going on. First, the after:
2009 08 07 & 10 28 Dancin In The Streets Festival & Studio (Darkstar Orchestra, Chicago Afrobeat Project, Billy Kreutzmann and Papa Mali, Nailhouse) 18"x24" - opaque pens, acrylic, & spraypaint on masonite original available for purchase - signed 11"x17" prints available for $15
Once upon a time, I started by brushing on a uniform background in black, then gold acrylic paint...then I took the board to Dancin' In The Streets Festival back in August and tried my hand at the kind of colorful plaques I see coming out of Indonesia and Tibet – you know, lots of gold, intricate central design, kind of a pointy floral thing going on:
And then this painting spent nearly three months in a stack while I made disappointed faces at it. What happened to my grand vision of layering? The gold isn't really integrated; it's just sitting in the background doing nothing. All the right angles really kill the flow, and in spite of the clutter of colors and angles, it didn't give me any feeling of depth. So I decided I'd wait until the painting was least suspecting it, then pounce with gold spraypaint and turn the whole thing into Layer One.
It worked out pretty well. Boulder got hit by 23 inches of snow the other day, giving me the perfect opportunity to hole up with my friend and wire-wrapper extraordinaire Dan Donohue and devote our day to the muses. First I applied a coat of noxious spraypaint. (For those unfamiliar with illegal street art or home renovation, there's a special touch that will get the spray paint canister to spit out fat drops instead of a fine mist, leaving semi-transparent galaxies instead of a uniform blanket.) Then I followed the original implied octagons with the good old Breath of the Compassionate, an Islamic tiling pattern that signifies the infinite expanse of divine creation and destruction. Throw a snowflake in there for good measure, ignore the inner nagging voice about how the six-fold and eight-fold geometries don't quite line up, and call it a day.
The end result is one of my subtlest and deepest pieces – really hard to get a feel for from just the above photo. Here are some details that demonstrate how the spraypaint alternately hides and reveals the red underlayer, depending on the light:
2009 10 07 & 23 The B-Side Lounge (Kelli Rudick, Gloam & Jungle Bums) 18"x24" - opaque pens on canvas panel 11"x17" signed prints - $15
Certain events are major obstacles to my intended painting. Kelli Rudick is a badass neoclassical-experimental live looper who plays percussive guitar and several unique instruments like the array mbira and nail violin. Gloam put on a surprisingly epic show – one of Boulder's sweetest prog rock ensembles, solid beyond their years. And the Jungle Bums are a hard-hitting drum & bass collective with some pretty impressive rappers. Which meant that at both of these shows, I didn't get a lot of work done...I was too busy watching, dancing, or just hanging out. So I took this out to the Boulder Farmer's Market last weekend and set my easel in the grass next to other rogue vendors with lovely feather earrings and a massage chair. It was a beautiful and strangely warm fall day, and everyone was in a good mood. You can't tell too well from this picture, but the yellow orbs in the background have a lot of gold in them and they gleam like medallions in the sunshine.
2009 10 22 Cervantes (Bonobo, Mike Slot, Juno What, Jantsen)
20"x30" - opaque pens on masonite 11"x17" signed prints - $15
I spent the first hour+ on this one with a fat-tipped green marker just making the trees, one sweeping feathery stroke after another in a state of hypnotic flow. My friend, fellow painter Tye-Dye Paul, who falls far more on the "energy painting" side of the spectrum than I do, was very supportive of this expressive and gestural work, and came over to shoot me significant looks and cast spells of blessing on the painting while I was at work. It was really intense, but he is a considerate guy and always asks before getting all up in my space. Apparently not every painter is into his extreme acts of professional friendliness. At any rate, expect more trees like these. It was a liberating new approach, and took me deep into memories of old trips out at Clinton Lake in Lawrence, Kansas, glowing kaleidoscopic jewelry breathing out of the bare winter woods...
> Music Anyone who has ever talked to me about music knows that my favorite guitarist – far and away – is Andreas Kapsalis. So it was an honor – and a humbling experience – to open for him for the third time last Sunday night at Denver's finest small venue, The Walnut Room. He played in a wonderful duo with nylon string Balkan guitar virtuoso Goran Ivanovic, and Jonah Smith headlined with some soulful-but-upbeat Brooklyn pop. I only got half an hour to turn on the dozen or so people who showed up early enough to see me play, but it was worth it. Not only did The Walnut Room give me an excellent seventeen-inch walnut and pesto pizza and a pitcher of beer, but I managed to record two decent videos from my show. I hope you enjoy them...and, of course, please share them with your friends if you do! You can also subscribe to my video channel at Youtube if you're geeking hard enough. :)
Underground River (Live Remix) - The Walnut Room, 2009 10 18
2009 10 17 City Hall (KiloWatts, Big Gigantic, Emancipator, Heyoka) 20"x30" - opaque pens on masonite 11"x17" signed prints - $15; full-size signed & numbered (x/30) prints - $50
I recently had the honor of painting alongside Alex & Allyson Grey, Mars-1, and J Garcia at one of the most epic parties I've ever attended, thrown by my friends at Boogie Down Productions in Denver last weekend. It took place at City Hall – not the actual civic building, but Denver's most promising new venue, three floors and a majestic outdoor balcony/lounge area that, all together, make for a ridiculously awesome event space. Plenty of corners and corridors, four stages, a fashion show, two floors of live painting, a hefty and delicious array of vendors, and some of the most lovely electronic music I've ever heard. Alex started the evening off with a sweeping survey of his work since the age of five, showing how his psychological development was reflected in a growing capacity for perspective-taking. I don't think anyone there, myself included, had ever seen such a glorious presentation initiate what ten years ago would have been called a "rave"...the otherwise insane, crowded, sweaty, intoxicated evening was still somehow activated, lucid, and open-hearted. And no doubt Alex's excellent primer on visionary art was largely responsible.
That was just one reason that this evening was one of the highlights of my entire artistic existence. Ten minutes after I started, I damn near had a panic attack about my sloppy first layer, the evidence of that day's anxiousness and confusion. But I stuck with it, and the painting ultimately took on an edgy, urban quality I've never managed to capture...and a ghostly inner glow that half captivates me and half gives me the creeps. The crowd was thick, and since I wasn't granted my own riser that night, I was getting bumped and jammed all evening. But momentum is conserved, and all of that energy traveled up my spine, down my arm, and into the piece. You're looking at the vector space of some 2,500 exultant partiers.
I should also mention that this painting was fueled by the excellent cuisine of my dear friend Araminta David, whose pre-show catering for the artists and production team was definitely on par with the quality of all other art that evening. I can't believe she got a "Guest" lanyard instead of an "Artist" lanyard. If you ever have a chance to eat her food, you had better take it. Just might change your life.
2009 10 14 Studio - Owl & Ice
In more modest news, I finally got to do my first custom hat! This was a surprise birthday present for one of my friend's boyfriend. He likes owls, and she suggested cubes...minor constraints like that really helped "narrow the search space" and focus the vision, and the hat she sent me to work on had just enough texture that it opened up new expressive possibilities with my pens. The "feather" of ice cubes on the left side was just silly enough to work, and I love being asked to do characters, which I normally don't have the nerve to attempt in a large format live context. Not to mention, someone is wearing my art ON HIS HEAD, now! Point being, I LOVED working on this hat. If anyone else wants some custom headwear, email me about it. I'd be honored and delighted.
This essay, republished from my old Visionary Music Blog, is probably one of my finest moments. In it, I explain how my study of evolutionary biology has influenced the way I play guitar, and how I understand the creative process in general. It was originally posted in two parts, but for linking purposes I've decided to put it all in one place.
Share it with anyone interested in guitar, or evolution...it might be too much to hope that you know someone else who has a passion for both, but if you do, would you please introduce us?
Exaptation Of The Guitar
Pablo Picasso - The Guitar Player
In all the years I studied evolutionary biology in school, there was one word I can hardly believe I didn't learn. It figures so prominently into my understanding of the evolutionary process and creativity in general that I am amazed it isn't in the lexicon of every biology studen (much less the whole human race, for we all are students - if not outright disciples - of biology, in one way or another). It so neatly rebuts some of the flawed interpretations of evolution that so fetter our culture's full appreciation of its beauty. And it also has a growing personal significance for me and the way I understand the whole kosmic creative affair - not just as it operates on the unfurling and ever-editing of genetic material.
I understand my own role as a musician and songwriter as it appears within the context of a unified and harmonic universe, as a gesture of the same omnipotent principles that express everything. As a spark of the bonfire of the Big Bang, I burn as the same flame that sings at every scale. So whenever I can get my head around a new biological concept, it shivers my entire grasp of what it means to be and do life and art. The word I wish I'd learned in college continues to yield to my contemplation, rewarding me with an ever-subtler appreciation of living as a human artist.
And like all really good words, it's the quickest way short of telepathy to communicate something truly tremendous, something that fought through the haze of the barely imaginable for years before it landed in our world with a faerie footstep. To me, a word is the faint reduction, the tiniest tip of a flaming angelic archetype, the tendrilous extension of its infinite body reaching into the limit of our low-resolution physical world. I love words for this reason: because each is one voice in the hill of voices on which we live our lives. Each word is the toeprint of something much larger and more foliate than we can even know from the perspective of a human brain.
For this reason, and because I do insist on my brain's perspective (most of the time), I am bemused and indignant for not having been given this word sooner; and so part of my motivation for writing about all of this is my desire to set things straight and spread the utility of an excellent construct. But it is also a concession to my idealism, to indulge for a moment in scandalous idolatry of this one facet of the divine. I am giving my proper respects, kissing the toes of whatever hermaphroditic gleaming angel squid, whatever slumber-stirred postmodern ishtadeva explodes fully-formed from the forehead of the word "exaptation."
In ths world, anyway, we owe the legendary paleontologists Stephen Jay Gould and Elizabeth Vrba for "exaptation," which premiered in their 1982 paper, "Exaptation - A Missing Term In The Science of Form." Before I can explore the impact of this beautiful and lucid term on my music, I have to savor its Latin etymology (or "the truth of the word"): "ex" as in "out of;" "apt" as in "fitted" (past participle of "apere," "to fasten"); and "ation" as an action or its consequences.
Exaptation is function following form, making do with the tools at hand, loving the one you're with. On one end of the spectrum, exaptation is defending yourself with that rock just within reach. On the other end, it is taking the infinite abundance of every superimposed possibility at the root of manifestation, and using it to forget yourself in a world of frustration and constraint. In both cases, the creative medium (the rock, or the pleroma) contains no set of instructions, no essential purpose. It is "good for" whatever it happens to be good for, determined by the tumbling lock of relationship we call natural selection.
Gould took serious issue (in a paper with Richard Lewontin, available here, and in the follow up here) with the rampant fondness of some other biologists for assigning purpose to the various characteristics of organisms. Even today, decades after Gould wrote so eloquently against it, we read textbooks making dubious claims that a giraffe's long neck is "for" reaching the high branches of trees and the enormous eye of a giant squid is "for" seeing in the ocean's darkest depths.
We do this in anthropology, too: any mysterious artifact is immediately declared a religious icon. (It's become kind of a joke among scholars.) And we can see this at work in our daily lives: we succeed or fail to "make the most" of our convoluted existences, according to what interpretations we inject into them after the fact. It's little wonder that we immediately assume the religious import of archeological anomalies, when we ourselves are total slaves to the religious impulse, filling every unexplored nook and cranny with the mortar of some stable answer.
Not that I condemn this. In fact, quite the opposite. I cherish this half of the dialectic, the post facto deciding of things, the naming and the poetry, the revelation of how to feed ourselves with our own hands and that moment of "Yes! This is what they do!" But I, like Gould, don't lightly suffer the persistent mistake of confusing this construction of meaning with the discovery of some fundamental, intrinsic, and specific use. A rock might make a great weapon, but if we were to be good statisticians, we would admit that on average it is mostly "for" just sitting there. That's what it does best. Same with the multiverse: how presumptuous is it of us to assume that making universes is the quantum vacuum's métier? Maybe it's only moonlighting.
Although I'm relieved to see that Berkeley's Integrative Biology Department is includes exaptation in their introductory tutorials, their website's definition still paints what seems to me to be a contorted distinction (apparently hailing all the way back to Gould and Vrba's coinage) between exaptation and adaptation. According to its (hardly) common use, an adaptation was "produced by natural selection for its current function," whereas an exaptation was "produced by natural selection for a function other than the one it currently performs and was then co-opted for its current function."
But, uh, doesn't this fall into the same pit trap the authors were trying to avoid? Beyond merely differentiating between the first and subsequent uses of a single form, this kind of wording still suggests that natural selection produced the trait (when in fact natural selection only operates on the creative input of variation), and that there are adaptations that are not exaptations.
Why does it seem so easy for us to understand exaptation in one context, but so difficult in another? If traits persist due to their successful functioning, and function is determined by the form's fit to its environment, then every adaptation is the marriage of two moments of creativity: making it, and then figuring out what to do with it.
Just because we have displaced the whole "x exists for f(x)" thinking back a step doesn't mean we have gotten rid of it. To say that the feather first evolved "for" insulation, only later to be exapted "for" flight, is just as much nonsense as claiming that we apply our brains and thumbs to ends that "God did not intend." Right...like He had any more idea what He was doing the first time! Whether it evolved in this generation or the millionth generation before it, every single novelty is born again in every moment without ultimate reason or utility. Even if the feather appears to be used for the same thing in fledge after fledge of birds, each bird rediscovers what to do with its body uniquely, originally, for the first time. Every adapation is a hypothesis, the projection of meaning onto whatever we're given. And so, mathematically speaking, exaptation and adaptation are sets that contain each other.
So how do I exapt exaptation to inform my creative process? What does this boon from biology mean for music?
Pat Metheny playing the "Pikasso Guitar"
It means that every creative act includes a moment of decision, a deliberate projection of function and meaning onto the artist's environment. And this is what blows my mind the most about exaptation: When I pick up my guitar and play, I'm agreeing that this is an instrument, that this is a guitar, that I play the guitar, and that I play the guitar in some specific way. That this is what it's "for."
But there are an infinite number of ways for the universe to express itself through the functional relationship between a human being and a guitar. It was a definite act of creation when my friend dipped his hand into the soundhole of my friend Kate's guitar and rolled his eyes back in his head to communicate his attraction to her. Jimi Hendrix - with the help of LSD, that unparalleled sire of iconoclasts - communicated something by burning his guitar that could never have been said by strumming it. And that's just with the same old guitar that you and I know - luthiers have done some incredible things with the design of the instrument itself, like Manzer's "as many strings as possible" Pikasso Guitar, commissioned for Pat Metheny (pictured above).
And so it is for this feisty young man, privileged or burdened as I am with unceasing progressive inclinations, that many of my favorite musicians prefer to consider themselves as practitioners of music in general rather than the tradition of their specific instruments. As I love to remind people, the great bassist Victor Wooten insists that his medium just happens to be the bass, and that he is not a "bassist," any more than a self-consistent practitioner of the Buddha's teachings would actually declare himself to worship "Buddhism" ("or," in the words of Ferris Bueller, "any other ism for that matter.") Likewise, Kaki King grew up on the drums before translating those sensibilities to the acoustic guitar. In her early interviews made it plain that her whole agenda was to "fuck with" people's ideas of what the acoustic guitar even is. Never mind that she wasn't the first to play it like a percussion ensemble; there's no such thing as being completely original, anyway, unless you're willing to grant all phenomena the same courtesy. On even the most newly-poured volcanic island of thought, there are as many exaptations as there are participants. There is something utterly unique in even the most mundane copycat playing. There is something wild and new about every instant's spontaneous perspective on the fact of the previous moment.
If I can stay wide open enough to hold every creative moment in the light of an ever-present and ever-renewing genesis, each instant is an equally wild idea. It is absolutely creative because it happened at all. If we take the past as a given and define it according to the standard of the present, we deny it as a moment creative in itself, and rig the game in favor of our current interpretation. "My, how we've grown." "What were we thinking?" "Behold primitive man, living as a savage...the poor heathen."
And so to cherish the unique exaptation of every moment in this way is not half-blind futurist zealotry, disrespectful of tradition - it's more like telling a girl that you like her eyes, when you know that everyone else compliments her on her breasts. It's an attempt to appreciate the whole package, past, present, and future, inside and out.
But that's a hell of a lot to appreciate, and I can rarely do it for long. Like everyone else with limited energy and attention, I deserve to be convicted by a jury of myself for identifying with a particular set of preferences and positions, relative to a single observation platform floating one way across time. I still often make the mistake of declaring the so-called "progressive" art forms to be more creative and therefore more interesting than their predecessors - perpetuating the false distinction between exaptation and adaptation, as if to play the guitar fretboard like a piano is a more fabulous idea than playing it like a normal freaking human being. (Kaki King: "Are we to have another century of guitar when the best instrument in the world is still the piano?")
Consequently, maybe nine out of my ten favorite guitarists are doing things on the guitar that were unimaginable fifty years ago. These people have carved out their homesteads on the freshly exposed terrain of that new island. They have my respect for being its first inhabitants, collectively discerning (and deciding) the rules of this new land that is just now peeking over the splashy boundary of unconsciousness.
As a male mammal, I will always have a special place in my heart for the journeyers, the rogues and rovers, the wanderers and frontier families. My love for the music coopted from its original context is just one incidence of a broader pattern in my being: a love of reclamation, the same reconstructive postmodern desire that fuels the creation of urban gardens and beautiful graffiti murals, all manner of tattoos and piercings, circuit-bent instruments, remixes, redefinitions, and reimaginations of literature (such as Julie Taymor's film production of Shakespeare's Titus and stage production of The Lion King, and chamber ensemble Alarm Will Sound's performances of Aphex Twin's often-aggressive electronic music). I can hardly call this "ownership," because we have inherited all of it and we will all sooner or later pass it on to someone else. But it is beautiful and affirmative, restorative and inspiring to know that we are capable of exapting our world to the meaning and purpose we see for it now.
In this spirit, I encourage you to look upon the world with fresh eyes, to see it and feel it, not as some rigid predestined machine, but as a gift of creative jubilance inviting us to assist in the unfurlng form and function of everything we know and are. Don't assume that you know what that guitar is when you pick it up, or that pen, or that hand. Don't assume you know what you've got riding in your chromosomes, or that their full potential has been explored.
Every instant is a new world, with new opportunities. It falls upon us to learn how to avoid the hamster wheel of endless adaptation to external fortune by exapting the world and playing with the flux instead. This is a profound change of perspective. If you have found your purpose, don't refuse opportunities for amendment. If you still haven't found your voice or calling, relish in the flexibility of an undetermined existence.
Find a new meaning for your guitar, and maybe - just maybe - you'll find a new meaning for your self.
... For more info on exaptation, you can find numerous related papers here and here.
> Writing Over the years, I've cultivated an identity as kind of a trickster-academic, lurking on the fringes of half a dozen disciplines and diligently synthesizing them in ways that wouldn't be options for me if I'd stayed in the tenure-track system. And it's starting to pay off. So I started a new page, evolution.bandcamp.com, for audio downloads of the various lectures, interviews, and discussions in which I've participated.
First item on the menu is an amazing discussion about evolutionary biology I had with three other, somewhat less rebellious biologists at Burning Man's Entheon Village this year – a freewheeling symposium that veered from one topic to the next (including the emergence of order from chaos, whether evolutionary theory can actually improve society, when going backward is actually going forward, and – somehow – the ethical demands that beauty makes on a person) with delightful caprice and strangely rigorous whimsy. One of the attendees came back the next day and told me that sitting in on it had been like "going to Awesome College." Here it is, folks – my first swing at being a professional public presenter of mind-blowing ideas, with help from fellow cool geeks Cory Bishop, Jason Hodin, and Ruben Valas:
If you like it, please share it with your friends! (Bandcamp has made it very easy to post worthy audio to Facebook, Twitter, and several others via a menu right next to the download button.) This talk really confirmed for me the value of conversations like this for the greater social good, as inspirational learning that reminds us of the incredibly awesome vastness in which we live and of which we are made...
2009 09 13 & 22 - Trinumeral Festival & Crosstown Station (RJD2, Pretty Lights & Toubab Krewe) 16"x24" - available
I started this one on Trinumeral Festival's last night, but midway through got severely distracted by Signal Path's set and Emancipator's cute photographer, and lost all motivation. So getting the opportunity to pick it up the next week in Kansas City was pretty great. It's kind of a visual paradox, the way the ribbon interacts with what appear to be cubes. The first time I ever painted straight over another piece that wasn't going the way I'd hoped.
2008 12 xx - Studio 01 8"x12" - available
This one and the next were pieces I started and finished at my friend Rick's place in Kansas City last winter and promptly forgot about until my recent move back to Colorado. I was playing with new markers and new methods – neither of which feel very new anymore, but I'm pretty happy with these tiny studies nonetheless. They've weathered well.
> Music Here it is - my latest free live album, straight into your Eustachian tubes via the dusty wastes of Black Rock City and the electron-irrigated delta of the dreaming embryonic internet mind:
It's 1:11:11 of intense acoustic guitar anthems, ballads, etudes, and banter charged with the electric intensity of Burning Man and the holy playfulness of Entheon Village, one of the Burn's most progressive and conscious theme camps. It's also the best set of live recordings I've released so far. And in honor of Burning Man's gift economy ethos, I'm offering the entire album in high quality .wav format for free. Enjoy!
If you have any questions or feedback about the album, send it my way. Feel free to share it with your friends by inviting them to the cyber-listening party on Facebook. And have a beautiful day...
Scientific illustrator and essayist by day, performance painter and avant garde guitarist by night, Michael Garfield is intent on demonstrating that everything is equally art, science, and spiritual practice. He currently writes for coloradomusicboard.com, hplusmagazine.com, and realitysandwich.com, edits Christiana Wyly's blog at huffingtonpost.com, and moderates the Visionary Music Group at evolver.net. Links to his painting gallery, live and studio recordings, and visionary music blog can be found at myspace.com/michaelgarfield.
2009 10 31 Hyatt Regency (Haunted Hotel Colorado)
Image courtesy of photographer Alex Jimenez, Metromix.com
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