“We live on the leash of our senses. Although they enlarge us, they also limit and restrain us, but how beautifully. Love is a beautiful bondage, too.”
– Diane Ackerman, A Natural History of the Senses
Hello, my amazing invisible extended self existing in the gauzy web of long-term friendships and connections made since this blog started in the misty dawn age of 2008! I'm finally back from my first experience of Europe and I have so many great treasures ready for you to enjoy.
It's been a totally transformative summer for me, both good and bad. The hardest part is always coming home and trying to make sense of all the lessons...so while I sort that out, here is the first round of my offerings to you, beginning with the photosphere travelogue of my experience in Portugal.
360º Photos from Portugal & Boom Festival
I spent my three weeks in Portugal taking as many beautiful 360º shots as possible. Boom was supremely beautiful (both for its quieter and louder moments), but I also managed to great plenty of great shots while hanging out in Lisbon (and the world's best hostel); Cerro de Janeiro (an awesome workaway in Odemira); Sintra (a landscape of awesome ancient castles and a UNESCO world heritage site); and Cabo da Roca (the westernmost point of continental Europe).
Here they are:
Every one of these can be explored by clicking on the image, then scrolling with your mouse or touchscreen to explore the whole environment. It was a trip to work with this new photographic medium that captures everything around the camera – you can't escape the "selfie" but it renders the photographer as part of an entire scene, more accurate than both the selfie and the old tradition of remaining hidden from behind the camera.
Feel free to leave your comments and questions! I'll be happy to respond to every one of them.
For everyone who loves a deep dive into the weird, wild, and wonderful, my podcast with cohost Evan "Skytree" Snyder, Future Fossils, is finally live on the major podcast syndication platforms and ready to water your brains with delicious crystals of expanding contemplation.
We've put SO much work into this podcast and there are already some amazing conversations up there, with folks like comedian Shane Mauss, origins of life researcher Bruce Damer, author Tony Vigorito, director Mitch Schultz (DMT: The Spirit Molecule), and cyborg anthropologist Maraya Karena – plus some very
Coming soon, episodes with author Kingsley L. Dennis, sociologist Ashley Dawson, musicians Anthony Thogmartin (Papadosio & EarthCry) and David Krantz (Futexture) – as well as a few amazing field interviews from Boom Festival with tantric unicorn Shaft Uddin, visionary artist Mark Lee, and Rupert Till, aka "Dr. Chill" (the first person to ever receive a PhD in electronic music, who has 3D printed reconstructions of the earliest known instruments and used them in his set!).
(We also have a Facebook Group, if you would like to join the conversation.)
Music Video: "Lambent" w/ 320 fps Bubble Glory
1/8th speed bubble awesomeness I shot on site at Highberry Music Festival to the music I improvised last fall for Aubrey Marcus' fundraiser for the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies.
Performed and recorded live in one take on guitar, voice, and effects. Slow motion video shot on a Samsung Galaxy S5 at Highberry Festival (Mulberry Mountain, Arkansas), June 2016.
If you're like me, you will appreciate how well the music syncs up with the iridescent shimmering mystique of evanescent membranes, rippling as they float through summer air...
Performed and recorded live in one take on guitar, voice, and effects. Slow motion video shot on a Samsung Galaxy S5 at Highberry Festival (Mulberry Mountain, Arkansas), June 2016.
If you're like me, you will appreciate how well the music syncs up with the iridescent shimmering mystique of evanescent membranes, rippling as they float through summer air...
"How To Live in the Future" at Metapsychosis Journal
My first piece for an awesome new web magazine, Metapsychosis. Their roster of contributors is out of this world – definitely worth some exploration if you like reading that expands your consciousness.
"When I attempt to visualize 'the future' as I learned to think of it in childhood, I see the image of a silvery, metallic, shifting sphere – presumably, the boundary of some 4D portal casting shadows into the mere three dimensions that my pitiable primate eyes can see. Whether this is my enculturated mind presenting something physics experts tell me is the probable appearance of a window into other times; or whether it’s a genuine prophetic third-eye vision of the portal through which we can gaze at all of our innumerable futures; or it’s allegory and the image represents the Noöspheric nanotech that wraps our planet in a skin of thinking mercury; or I am actually observing my own body from the point of view of someone living in the future, someone who has cybernetic eyes and sees the spherical magnetic field projected by my heart, I do not know. Perhaps it’s all of these."
New Third Eye Drops Podcast with Erik Davis
Another superb conversation with Third Eye Drops Podcast and Erik Davis – probably my favorite so far – in which we somehow connected augmented reality and Pokémon GO, the evolutionary benefits (and lurking evil) of cuteness, whether we should resist the torrent of technological innovation (and whether we even can), the promise and peril of inventing our own realities, and some exciting evidence that we can create quantum entangled brain states between gamers – technologically facilitated telepathy!
If you don't know Erik Davis' amazing work, or haven't heard my handful of appearances on his own awesome podcast Expanding Mind (here and here), this is a great place to start.
Unreleased Album as Perk for Ayahuasca Reader Campaign
My friends at Synergetic Press have done it again; they've put together a world-class compilation of essays and articles on a Very Important Topic. Here's the link to buy this book and score a free copy of Duende, my unreleased electric guitar live set from Sonic Bloom's SolPurpose Visionary Art Academy. (These were the tunes I played for Martina Hoffmann, Randal Roberts, and Morgan Mandala's visionary art class during the live painting session – very different music than what I'm used to coming out of me.) A few words on this book:
The high-technology media ecosystems of our future, and the people we will become to live in them, have more in common with the spirit-infused Amazon than the abstract conceptual realities we inhabited as moderns. It is no surprise, but poetry, that ayahuasca shows up now to take the world stage and help us navigate these nascent, tangled and mysterious collective spaces: a perfect teacher for an age in which we have to learn that we (and our artifacts) are something Earth is doing – and "intelligence" (be it animal, or vegetable, or mineral) is everywhere around us.
Anyone committed to inhabiting a future of AI, mesh networks, bioengineering, solar power, neuromarketing, and other tech-assisted wizardry should sink their roots into this awesome book and draw as much of its deep wisdom as they can – because the curanderos, daring scientists, and visionary artists represented here are voices in the vanguard helping us to understand what it will really mean to be an Earthling in the years to come.
Buy Ayahuasca Reader & get Duende for free, because I want to see this book succeed.
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