"When we try to pick out anything by itself,
we find it hitched to everything else in the universe."
- John Muir
"Sometimes the questions are complicated
and the answers are simple."
- Dr. Seuss
• New Video, Lecture, & Ambient EP
Once, deep in the misty recesses of time (back in May), I promised everyone I'd have a timelapse video of this painting out "next week." Well, thankfully, I'm on Biblical time here (in which the world is made in six days and your average dude lives to be nine hundred – it's kind of like "dog years"), because that fabled movie is just now ready for your enjoyment.I had to take care of a few things, first – like recording a new EP of "electronic improvisations on acoustic guitar" in Arcata, California (available here, for free) to use for the soundtrack, and spicing it up with excerpts from my lecture at Burning Man 2010 (available here, for free – and here's the event page, if you want to join the discussion about it, or share with your friends.).
So here it is. I suggest watching it full-size if you have the bandwidth...
(Bear in mind, I edited the audio and video separately and was as surprised as anyone to see how the timing came together.)
• Interviewed by Guitar International Magazine
To rev you up for my (also prematurely promised) forthcoming double-disc live album, here are two heady articles from Guitar International Magazine, in which I help you learn to fold the entire universe into a steel-strung wooden box.
This republished mash-up of evolutionary biology and creativity coaching: http://bit.ly/aJEuVT
"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. 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."
And this rambling, philosophical interview I gave on everything from songwriting to gift economies to my coyote-like relationship with the Boulder music scene: http://bit.ly/cO4dm5
"Human language raised several octaves sounds exactly like birdsong; there’s a fractal structure to communication from the electromagnetic emissions of DNA on up. So I like to write as if the words are music, but I also like playing guitar as if the guitar is actually saying something. As I give more attention to reproducing the cadences and rhythms of speech, a new dimension opens up in my playing. The guitar literally sings."
• Light & Shadow Tour: Exploring Personal & Cultural Transformation
My first-ever national tour, alongside author and director Charles Shaw, starts in Boulder this Friday. I hope you can make it out to at least one of our nearly thirty stops together as we engage audiences in conversation about social and spiritual transformation (and I shred love songs) across the US, Mexico, and Canada...
Next week: new live paintings and studio commissions, and a music video from my upcoming live album.
