Michael Garfield's Love Without End Tour Newsletter: September 2017

21 September 2017

Breaking The Narrative Barrier // Applied Technoshamanism // Keyhistoric Life // Apocalyptic Art Sale

“Human culture has broken the narrative barrier as change driven by technological transformation creates conditions that change faster than our ability to narrate them. There is an essential mismatch between our stories about the world and the world, the ideas we have of ourselves and ourselves – this mismatch is now unavoidable. Good News: This evolutionary shift will be easy to survive and flourish through. Quite simply, we must cease depending upon something that isn’t there: a coherent narrative that stitches together our social world.”

Hi friends.  :)  It's been a crazy summer, full of revelations and initiations, difficult as hell, and dotted with surprise reprieves and glorious fulfillments.  Hopefully it's been as powerfully good for you as it has been for me...I think...shit's still in motion.  Hard to say for sure.  Uncertainty's the lesson, maybe.

Anyway, I'm sure about SOME things – foremost among them that I am "supposed to" help relieve our species of narrative and share techniques I've learned to play more fully in the magical rotating gem of all perspectives.  To navigate time-as-a-landscape with attention poured into the outcomes we agree we want.  To ease the pain of everybody growing up too fast at once.

And urgency abounds: we're in the process of transforming evolution, from a thing we didn't even know we do, to a technology we'll use to totally reshape the planet.  Kind of a big deal.  It's time for all of us to level up as wizards, witches, or whatever so we're IN IT and engaged with, not resistant to, a world in which ideas become shared (virtual) realities more rapidly than ever.  We must rise to the occasion so that we don't accidentally create more monsters than we absolutely must.  We must raise whatever comes next right.

AND SO!  

I'm writing a collection of short pieces (some of which are here on Medium) that ties science fiction and creative non-fiction together, then sets them on fire with mystic poetry.  I'm selling all the paintings that I've kept around to fund the writing of this book.  It's time.  It's going to TAKE time – time that I will take away from travel and commissions, limiting what little "flow" I've surfed on for the last few years.

If you would like a 50% discount on my art, it's yours.  Here is the link to all of my available originals.  Here is the event page with more info.

   

(And since of course we're mostly skating by, perhaps the sacred economics of our mutualist gifting might appeal to you more, anyway.  That's why I use Patreon: for people who GET what I'm trying to say on everyone's behalf, and want to help me weave more people into it, ground and expand it, make it relevant and real.)

So anyway.  I love you.  Thank you.  Here are things.



This masterclass I taught at Moogfest 2016 covers my occult philosophy of loop-based music and drills into my tech specifics for performance. Drawing from twelve years of looping at festivals and concerts worldwide, there's plenty here to fascinate you – whether you're a looping artist or just interested in the intersection between the esoteric and technology.

FREE to my silver-level Patreon supporters or available for a one-time donation of $5 (which also grants you access to extensive archives of my music).

Also included in the download is a transcript of my full pedalboard teardown and looping process.  As Reggie Watts said, "Don't 'tech-no' from a shaman for an answer..."

Topics covered include:
• How to be your own whole "Citadel of Ricks"
• Recursion, reiteration, and live looping as the Crucifixion of what is and what could be
• The emergence of order from chaos – inviting randomness into the matrix
• An alchemy of elemental energies in improvised live composition
• Technical considerations and gear suggestions
• Hacking the audience’s attention
• Multichannel live production as the blending of different sonic spaces
• Pedalboard vs. Ableton Live for Looping - opinions

For more direct and personal instruction, I’m available for private lessons over Skype – just write me if you’re interested!

New Future Fossils Episodes!


Hunter Maats – host of the Mixed Mental Arts Podcast and co-author of The Straight-A Conspiracy. We talk about the future of education and human collaboration – moving past a world of routine factory-worker indoctrination and the “insane cargo cult” of the academic system, and into a new model for the transmission of knowledge that suits a truly planetary culture.


Andrew J. O’Keefe II – documentarian, archivist for Singularity University, devoted recordist of the emergent planetary culture, and a dear old friend I met back in the Dawn of Time when he was working as the personal assistant to Android Jones. We talk about the motivations for preserving and reliving the significant (AND insignificant) moments of our lives.


Hannah Yata – visionary painter whose riotous, ecstatic work explores and celebrates natural biodiversity, and exalts the repressed feminine – the beautiful and the grotesque, death and life in vivid color all at once.

Sketchbook:  "Keyhistoric Life"

Just for fun.  This is how my brain works.  Get a better look on Instagram.



Coming Up: UTOPiAfest!


I'm playing the festival's first-ever sunrise set (and last ever at Four Sisters Ranch, where it has been held for the last nine years).  Come if you're in Texas – I hear that it's the best-in-class!



Just a reminder that I have a ton of work on Spotify for all your playlist pleasures – and also on Bandcamp for free download (or paid, if you are feeling frisky).  Go listen to it now and reap the sweetness!


"Yes, this planet is a terrible mess. But it has always been a mess. 
 There have never been any 'Good Old Days,' there have just been days."
– Kurt Vonnegut