"For a relationship to stay alive, love alone is not enough. Without imagination, love stales into sentiment, duty, boredom. Relationships fail not because we have stopped loving but because we first stopped imagining."
- James Hillman, archetypal psychologist
"Imagine it's 30 years from now. You're looking back at the history of your relationship with desire. There was a certain watershed moment when you clearly saw that some of your desires were mediocre, inferior, and wasteful, while others were pure, righteous, and invigorating. Beginning then, you made it a life goal to purge the former and cultivate the latter. Thereafter, you occasionally wandered down dead ends trying to gratify yearnings that weren't worthy of you, but usually you wielded your passions with discrimination, dedicating them to serve the highest and most interesting good."
- Rob Brezsny, pronoid astrologer
(Before we begin, let me suggest you view this on my website, the way it was intended...)
..:: MUSIC ::..
- James Hillman, archetypal psychologist
"Imagine it's 30 years from now. You're looking back at the history of your relationship with desire. There was a certain watershed moment when you clearly saw that some of your desires were mediocre, inferior, and wasteful, while others were pure, righteous, and invigorating. Beginning then, you made it a life goal to purge the former and cultivate the latter. Thereafter, you occasionally wandered down dead ends trying to gratify yearnings that weren't worthy of you, but usually you wielded your passions with discrimination, dedicating them to serve the highest and most interesting good."
- Rob Brezsny, pronoid astrologer
(Before we begin, let me suggest you view this on my website, the way it was intended...)
..:: MUSIC ::..
Back in March, I played at the Shumei International Institute, a spiritual center built on the holy mountain outside Crestone, Colorado. Not only did the magical energy of the land and venue infuse my playing and singing with a special clarity, but I had the rare blessing of guest musician Andy Skellenger adding cajon and tablas to half the set. And he kicked ass. From now on, whenever I play those tunes alone, there will be pieces missing!
Plus, I got some best-yet recordings of other tunes, like the slow-burning acoustic-electronic love song "Underground River." And I finally caught the lightning bug in the bottle: my three-minute rant on the co-evolution of LSD, DNA, the atomb bomb, and the internet is there for you all to agree or disagree with, as you see fit...
As usual, the whole album is free if you want it (although you have the option to pay me too, if you see fit); but unlike usual, I scored four lovely videos of Andy and I rocking out together and linked to them on the download page.
Check out the two of us tearing it up with the rowdy "Offering Hands" – an ode to the ego-obliterating intensity of revelation, if you're into that kind of thing:
Like that? Go watch the other three, and help yourself to the whole album, at MichaelGarfield.net.
..:: VISUAL ART ::..
(Click on each image for a closer look.)
In Between Seasons
2011 04 08 Quixote's (Math Games, Absynth Quintet)
2011 04 13 Hodi's (That 1 Guy, Better Than Bacon)
24"x24" - paint markers on 1/4" masonite
- signed 11"x17" poster prints - $20 or two for $30 (plus $5 s/h) -
original painting for sale - make me an offer
24"x24" - paint markers on 1/4" masonite
- signed 11"x17" poster prints - $20 or two for $30 (plus $5 s/h) -
original painting for sale - make me an offer
This painting is as confused as Boulder's recent hailing-while-sunny "spring" weather. There are no such things as five-pointed snow flakes...so what are these? Cherry blossoms have five petals, not three...so what is going on here?
Well, as within, so without. Admittedly, I made this while Mercury was full flush Retrograde – confusing communication, technology, and insight, and driving us inward for integration. I don't feel quite as much like an ice-captured blooming than I did a few weeks ago, Thank God.
Endlessness
2011 04 15 The Other Side (That 1 Guy)
2010 09 02 Portal Patch (Lynx, Vibesquad, Future Simple Project)
18"x24" - paint marker on 1/8" masonite
- signed 11"x17" poster prints - $20 or two for $30 (plus $5 s/h) -
original painting for sale - make me an offer
Started at Burning Man 2010, but it was missing the really juicy detail that convinces me a painting is actually complete...so I got back in there with the fine-tipped markers and ripped it up with some tryptamine jewels. You might say this is an overhead map of one person "getting it" in a crowd of the oblivious...but you'll notice that we're all woven together and already that insight is starting to bleed over into everyone else.
..:: WRITING ::..
• Part Two of Ode To A Paradigm Shift, my rant on the evolving philosophy of science, is now up on Solpurpose.com. Here's a clip to whet your appetite:
We are at the end of one science and the beginning of a new science – one that dismisses the ancient but futile quest for total knowledge (and, not so implicitly, total control) and the narrow-minded insistence on the linear progression of cause and effect, for a celebration of the newer and more confounding questions introduced by each answer, for a playful exploration of co-causation’s latticework, which unifies all perspectives in a mutual creation and returns us each to center even as the dream of measuring our world’s boundaries recedes into nonsense.
And it is in nonsense that we rediscover ourselves – in the ceaseless irruption of the incompletely understood into our tidy matrices, a reminder (a co-conspiratorial one, if we are lucky) that the universe is bigger than our laws (even if we call them “universal”) and as its fruit, our lives are themselves a thin tiling of the familiar like verdigris/filigree/gold leaf over the faceless mind of tireless, revelatory, orgasmic creation.
• Taste-making music blog LostInSound.org just reviewed my cyber-acoustic guitar album The Body Electric and had some very cool things to say about it. Coming from another musician and trusted voice in the live electronic music scene – LiS's Pietro Bondi – these words are high praise:
Experimental and unique...this latest work shows great skill and potential as a guitarist and composer. Patient in their construction and determined to stay in melodic but unpredictable territory, [Garfield's] tracks glide through seamless changes, sometimes climaxing, sometimes spiraling off into quiet grooves or gurgling swamp sounds. The spacey, modern edge brings the simple pluckings and cleverly produced sounds into an envelope in which anything seems possible...
Right on! I hope you enjoy the reads...this weekend I'm off to paint at two more gigs in Denver with the esteemed visionary artists Alex & Allyson Grey, so expect some really inspired work from me in the next newsletter.
Thanks for your time, and have a beautiful day!
