"To increase awareness of one's scientific universe is to face unpredictable increases in one's awareness of the self."
– Gregory Bateson
“I don’t believe in anything that doesn’t choose everybody.”
– Sara Bates
I believe that the definitive image of the early 21st Century will be of a sphere – of the Earth from space – of the cosmic plenitude and wholeness of a full belly and breast and basket, and a recognition of the archetypal as-above-so-below-ness that we are embedded in, that we can take a perspective on by zooming out into orbit and recognizing the common unity of all live on Earth.
By going back four billion years and examining the Last Universal Common Ancestor of all of the major kingdoms of life, we see a foreshadowing, a precursor, of contemporary impetus to build this internet, to destroy national boundaries. The earliest life on Earth was a globe-encircling bioplasm of individual cells that were exchanging, freely, their genetic code -- their selfhood -- and there's an obvious parallel between that and the contemporary obsessive sharing of blogs and video and personal narratives.
There's something going on that we are feeding, this greater self, this inevitability, this project that is continuing to fractally diversify within the ionospheric envelope of our planet, inside of the dreaming noosphere that has been present since the beginning of life on this planet. We're not building this thing, we are participating in it, we are the idea that it is having, we are a fashionable new trend in the creative, ongoing, purposive unfolding of the Gaian mind.
Teilhard de Chardin recognized that collectivization leads to hyperpersonalization and somehow, by recognizing our embeddedness in and our precipitation through and from, as an expression of, this planetary archetype, that each of us is able to align ourselves with the higher purpose of evolution -- not as a mechanism of control, not as a way of escaping our mortality, but as a way of exemplifying and exalting this process that is living through us, that we are just a transitional stage in. And to the degree that we are able to do this -- to the degree that we are able to recognize our own egoic purpose as the fulfillment of the life on this planet -- then we can heal ourselves of the alienation of the separate self of the modern world.
There's always been this one creature. Everything we're doing is something the Earth is doing.
More in this format soon. In other news...
News & Discussions
I love starting conversations, which turned out to be one of my favorite things about live painting – the ability to capture people, to draw them into a discourse that could change both of our lives.
Here are a few highlights from my Facebook wall of recent news items that triggered fantastic conversations – feel free to join in!
...And then there's THIS silly thing, which I dug up from the misty recesses of 2009:
My 28th Birthday Concert
If you can make it, awesome! If you can't, let's talk about getting me out to your city to play this summer. If you know of any conscious festivals that would enjoy having me around to paint, play music, and speak about the marriage of creativity, science, and spirituality...please let me know, or better, let them know. Personal recommendations go a lot further. Thank you!
• 8 - 10pm: cyberballadry & guitar tapping BIRTHDAY CONCERT! Michael turns 28 and rocks out with special guests Kristin Astourian & Heidi Nadine
• 9 - 9:45pm: instrumental cyberacoustic guitar
• 10pm - 2am: live painting for El John (Thievery Corporation), Matthew Ian Blagg, Applied Pressure, & more (w/ Karina Thome, Chance Roberts, & Molly Gardner)
• 9 - 10pm: cyberballadry & guitar tapping supporting Sam Hammerman & Shawn Madden
~ Full concert calendar at MichaelGarfield.blogspot.com ~
Where's The Art??
It's coming, I promise. I've been working on some epic, super time-intensive live paintings, a score of new hats, and even a couple of graffiti pieces – Austin offers up a lot of places where public art contributions are actually appreciated, so I'm going to start taking advantage of that. I'll have more to show in the next newsletter!
In the meantime, there is still plenty of original artwork to browse (and purchase, if you're interested) on my Facebook Visual Art Page. Enjoy, and thank you from the top of my heart – where love spills over and the birds drink from its open petals.
