Michael Garfield's Love Without End Tour Newsletter: December 2014

30 December 2014

Gaian Radio Podcast | My Set from Art Outside Festival | New Painting & Custom Hats | More Articles for Globalish | Attending Gem & Jam

"Don’t hanker for the other world. Live this world, and live it with intensity, with passion. Live it with totality, with your whole being. And out of that whole trust, out of that life of passion, love and joy, you will become able to go beyond."
– Osho

Happy New Year, everyone!  2014 was intense.  Maybe it's just the chronic optimism that seems to infect me at this time of year, but I think 2015 will be less about hard lessons and more about putting those lessons into practice.  I look forward to practicing with all of you.

Since we're on the cusp of what Back To The Future II officially recognized as "the future," here is a great conversation I had with the hosts of Gaian Radio Podcast about artificial intelligence, life extension, the end of privacy, and more awesome future things.  It's guaranteed to be more complicated than pro-future armchair philosophers let on, but it doesn't have to be scary.  We walk a razor's edge in this fun hour-long chat between ?? and !! – it's free to listen/download here.

And then there's this:

Live at Art Outside 2014

Acoustic-electronic inventions performed at the Tenth Annual Art Outside Festival on a gorgeous and mystical laser-cut stage hidden in a grove of old pecans.

There amidst the branches and the hanging lanterns, people sprawled in blankets, chairs, and hammocks, some bizarre new breed of soaring anti-folk infused with jazz took shape – atmospheric improv raw and wild, heartfelt, numinous.

Accompanied by visual performances from the legendary florist Anthony Ward and live painter Chris Morphis, featuring guest instrumentalists Andrew Stocker (triple harmonic flute) and Jared Buchsbaum (clarinet), this music overflowed its banks and sprouted something beautiful – often dipping into darker territories, veering into strange terrains, but always moving, always full of life and curiosity.

Many thanks to everyone at Art Outside for holding such a wondrous space for work like this to grow!  (And thanks to David Titterington for the lovely cover art...)

New Studio Painting
"Ediacarans I" (2014)

Studio – oil & acrylic pens on canvas
16"x20" (four 8"x10" panels)

An ode to one of the great mysteries of paleontology.  From Wikipedia:

The Ediacara biota consisted of enigmatic tubular and frond-shaped, mostly sessile organisms that lived during the Ediacaran Period (ca. 635–542 Ma). Trace fossils of these organisms have been found worldwide, and represent the earliest known complex multicellular organisms.

Determining where Ediacaran organisms fit in the tree of life has proven challenging; it is not even established that they were animals, with suggestions that they were lichens (fungus-alga symbionts), algae, protists known as foraminifera, fungi or microbial colonies, to hypothetical intermediates between plants and animals.

Most macroscopic fossils are morphologically distinct from later life-forms: they resemble discs, tubes, mud-filled bags or quilted mattresses. Due to the difficulty of deducing evolutionary relationships among these organisms some paleontologists have suggested that these represent completely extinct lineages that do not resemble any living organism. One paleontologist proposed a separate kingdom level category Vendozoa (now renamed Vendobionta) in the Linnaean hierarchy for the Ediacaran biota. If these enigmatic organisms left no descendants their strange forms might be seen as a "failed experiment" in multicellular life, with later multicellular life evolving independently from unrelated single-celled organisms.

Custom Hats

I'm so busy writing for Globalish.com these days I haven't dedicated that much time to hat work, but with new fluorescent pens a new horizon's opened up for UV-reactive lids, so I'm excited by the prospect of a new round of commissions.  Feel free to contact me if interested!




More Articles For Globalish

I love my job.  If you're attracted to the seeker's path and wonder how it looks in our accelerating age, my friends and I at Globalish.com are writing for you:

Channel 1: Revolution

Channel 2: Travel

Channel 3: Art

Channel 4: Life

Gem & Jam Will Be My First Festival of 2015

This year, I'm focusing on fewer, more deliberate bookings.  I'm looking forward to this one and what's shaping up to be the finest live art lineup I have ever seen...it's been since 2010 and I can't wait to reconnect with all my homies in AZ.  Perhaps I'll see you there!


Stay Warm In Style This Winter

Just a reminder that my friends help me provide a wide array of wearable designs (including those for phones and such, since, yes, devices are a part of us, these days):


And that is all for now.  Thank you so much for reading!

14 December 2014

New Paintings: Giger's Alien, Spinosaurus, Crystal Egg | Year-End Print Sale | Another Killer Time-Lapse | More Articles From Globalish

"If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you.
If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you."
– Gospel of Thomas

I ordinarily try to space these out and keep things focused, but it just happened that I recently completed THREE new paintings I'd been working on for quite a while, PLUS a time-lapse video, PLUS a bunch of writing for the awesome Globalish.com – so this newsletter's kind of overfull.  

Suggestion: open in a separate tab and read at leisure.  There's a lot to dig, here.  Be well and enjoy!

$10 Year-End Print Sale

Every print older than this newsletter is only $10 until 2015 – these above and dozens more, which you can browse on Bandcamp.  If you want to do all of your shopping in one place, I'm trying to make it as easy as possible for you.  Happy Holidays!

New Time-Lapse Video:
The Common Core of Science, Art, & Spirituality
Free Downloads: Music | Narration

A look into my process and philosophy, inspiration and commitment as an artist.  Recorded through Google Glass; soundtrack from my New Year's Day 2014 sunrise cyberacoustic guitar set; narration from my talk at Firefly Gathering 2014.  You can get a better look at the final piece below...

Rainbow Warrior (Giger Tribute)

20”x20” – oil & acrylic pens on canvas
Original painting available – email with inquiries
Painted at
• 2014.11.15 – Empire Control Room & Garage (Austin, TX)
for Govinda, Living Light, Cactus Bath
•  2014.11.14 - 18 – Studio (Austin, TX) 

H.R. Giger's alien has haunted me since childhood.  I swear their hives must occupy the bulk of my imagination's dark side.  And now my friends at Synergetic Press have just released a new book, H.R. Giger and the Zeitgeist of the Twentieth Century, by pioneering LSD psychotherapist Stanislav Grof.
It's amazing – both Grof's essay and the Giger art inside, a lot of which I've never seen – and if you would like a copy, enter "Garfield" for $10 off at checkout.

Godzilla Was Real! (Spinosaurus aegypticus)

24"x36" – oil & acrylic paint pens on canvas
Original painting available – email with inquiries
Painted at
• 2014.09.28 – Zelicks (San Marcos, TX) – Fractālà
• 2014.10.18 – Empire Control Room & Garage (Austin, TX) 
for Pretty Lights Music Showcase: Paul Basic, SuperVision, Michal Menert, Eliot Lipp
• 2014.11.18 – Holy Mountain (Austin, TX)
for DJ QBert, Jeremy Ellis, Table Manners Crew

Spinosaurus aegypticus was first discovered a century ago, but its type specimen was destroyed when the US bombed Berlin in WWII. We had no idea what this creature looked like, or how it lived, until another expedition recently discovered even more complete specimens. And the truth is weirder than anyone expected: Spinosaurus had a body specialized for living and hunting in a shallow freshwater environment: short, probably webbed hind legs, high nostrils, heavy bones to help it stay submerged...

We are talking about a fifty foot predator with a five foot head and claws longer than your foot. IT ATE SHARKS AND CROCODILES. AND while I MAY have taken artistic license with this painting, it might also have glowed with radiation...

Crystal Moon Egg Bathes in Silver Light
Buy 11"x17" Prints | Share on FB

2014 – oil & acrylic pens on canvas
Original painting available – email with inquiries
Painted at
2014.11.05 – LANAI Rooftop Lounge (Austin, TX) for Create Culture
for Shanti Planti, BogTroTTeR, EazyT, Shuniya, Fractālà
• 
2014.11.19 – Empire Control Room & Garage (Austin, TX)
 Art Seen Alliance, Fool's Gold Records, & Brainfeeder present Azizi Gibson, Kamandi, & Barnes 
• Studio (Austin, Texas) 2014.09.30, 10.08, 11.04, 11.22-25, 12.01, 12.04

"They proceed to sing objects into existence. Amazing objects. Objects that are Fabergé Eggs, things made of pearl, and metal, and glass, and gel, and when you're shown one of these things, you look at it and you know, without a shadow of a doubt, that if it were right here, right now, this world would go mad. It's like something from another dimension. It's like an artifact from a flying saucer. It's like something falling out of the mind of God – such objects do not exist in this universe, and yet, you're looking at it."
– Terence McKenna

More Thought-Provoking Articles at Globalish

I can't think of any other site that keeps its finger on the pulse while staying deep like Globalish.  If you're the kind that wants both gorgeous videos and excellent companion text, we work for you:

Revolution

Travel

Art

Life

Tis The Season For Ridiculous Trippy Clothing!

Because if it doesn't cause permanent brain damage for innocent bystanders, it's not worth wearing.

On a slightly less hyperbolic note, you are in fact guaranteeing that you will become a walking conversation piece if you leave the house with this stuff on.  With great power comes great responsibility.