Merry Christmas! My Biggest Update Ever: 2 Large Collaboration Paintings • 1 Psychedelic Future Rant • 4 New Podcasts • 5 New Live Releases • And A Patreon For You And Me... (Oh, and I'm Going to Australia!)

“I can at best report only from my own wilderness.”

– Loren Eiseley

Greetings, friends.  I know this newsletter's insanely long.  It's just that I've so much to share!  To keep these updates more bite-sized, I will be shifting strategy toward sharing everything on Patreon instead of social media or email – also, ramping up the publication schedule of this blog a little.  I won't be offended if you'd rather not sift through a magazine of new work every month...

But I would be DELIGHTED if you joined my Patreon community and let me shower you with all of this enthusiastic creativity and thoughtful wonder!  I am taking on my biggest and most meaningful projects ever, right now – not just my first book, but my first (legitimate) studio album, a weekly podcast, and some truly epic gallery pieces for upcoming art shows.  

If you would like to be a part of all this as it comes together, join my awesome crew of patrons and enjoy the wealth of inspiration (and fun ephemera) that I have to share with you.  I'm only 17 subscribers from my goal for this year and I hope you're one of them!

New Paintings & Canvas Prints

Leviathan (or, Technocore in Love)

24"x48" - oil and acrylic paint on masonite
Read more / Buy prints

Wet Eschaton (Leviathan 2)

24"x48" - oil and acrylic paint on masonite

Read more / Buy prints

Two collaboration with Elliot Rogers: the top one was mostly my work, and the bottom one was mostly his, but we swapped back and forth a couple times and inflitrated one another's visions.

We finally have high-res SCANS of both of these and can produce museum quality canvas prints!

Click through on either image to read more about the piece and maybe even score yourself a print...

How to Live in the Future – Boom Festival 2016

Stream/Download • Talk Notes
"I’m hoping that by the end of this talk you all feel slightly more empowered to participate in this future, and to participate in the growing number of people worldwide that recognize that it falls upon us as we birth a new age, to love what we create. And to infuse it with love and creativity, and not to reject this baby, but to raise it right. We have this profound opportunity to invest as much beauty and love and creativity into this new space as we possibly can."

My talk from Boom Festival's Liminal Village – in which, while trying to make a case for how to sanely navigate the next few years, I somehow manage to discuss Jurassic Park, Terminator, Pokémon, cat videos, Radiolab, Google, DARPA, Charles Stross, the Singularity, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Martine Rothblatt, Genesis P Orridge, nondual philosophy, and angels.

How do you live in the future? By getting used to the new everyday reality in which transcendental mystery, rapid transformation, and networked selfhood is the norm. I caught most but not all of this talk in 360º video, so if "being there" is your thing then watch part 1 and part 2 on YouTube.

New Future Fossils Podcast Episodes

We're finally getting into a regular swing with this fantastic conversation series, in which very interesting people talk with me about the future.  Subscribe, rate, and review us on iTunes or Stitcher!

Episode 11 with Shaft Uddin (Tantric Unicorn)

Streaming/Download • Show Notes

This special double episode with "tantric unicorn" Shaft Uddin of SacredSexualAwakening.com (I kid you not) is the craziest, most stimulating and far reaching conversation we've had on the show so far.  This one goes everywhere from polyamory to political theory, shadow work to civil engineering, ecstatic sensuality to time travel, crystal meditations to the TPP, past life regression to permaculture, synesthesia to church, Universal Basic Income to the benefits of global festival community.  Hold on tight!

Episode 12 with Mark Lee (Somnio8)

Streaming/Download • Show Notes

In this week's conversation with visionary painter Mark Lee (aka Somnio8) at Boom Festival's Museum of Visionary Art, we get into scalar waves, free energy devices, getting back to nature with new paradigm technologies – and yes, of course, his awesome art.  Prepare to have your physics challenged...

Guest Appearances on Other Podcasts

Streaming/Download • Show Notes

In this week’s episode of FuturePrimitive, host Joanna Harcourt-Smith invites me into an exquisite conversation about paradox, intensity, casuality and the art of fun. For those of you who don't already know, Joanna once snuck LSD into prison for her lover Tim Leary and is the most dedicated podcaster I've ever met – her archives stretch back over 500 episodes, and are well worth your exploration.

Streaming/Download • Show Notes

A great chat with Third Eye Drops host Michael Phillip and Shamans of the Global Village director Niles Heckman, in which we discuss the war of art, the endless retelling of the hero's journey and Hollywood's amazing lack of imagination, occult teachings in blockbuster films and the lost ayahuasca scene from Avatar, why what you do for a living isn't who you are, and the future of virtual reality immersive storytelling.

(FIVE!) New Live Albums

Two new instrumental improv sets and three singer-songwriter performances – all of which are available for free download to my Bandcamp and Patreon subscribers, and can be streamed for free by anyone (with small but possibly annoying buffer gaps between tracks).

For fans of my instrumental psychedelic ambient work, two new recordings offer novel sonic saunters through the convoluted tunnels of imagination-space:

• Duende was recorded at the SolPurpose Visionary Arts Academy at Sonic Bloom Festival 2016, live music for a painting session hosted by Martina Hoffmann, Randal Roberts, and Morgan Mandala. Rare electric guitar only set. 

• Campfire was a super dark, cold, wet, and smokey backyard party at my friends' in Nashville – and it definitely carries all that autumn spooky splendor.

Three singer-songwriter performances that weave together storytelling, avant-garde guitar technique, and jewel-like songcraft – plus a hefty dose of spontaneity:

• Concert Window was a set I streamed from home, and features first performances of some new songs as well as one completely tasty improv. 

• Whip In was a strong, eclectic set I played for my fiancée's 30th birthday (so there's lots of heart, and silly banter).

• Synergia Ranch was played in an original Buckminster Fuller dome, so this short set (with special guest Andrew Stocker on a trancey throat-singing looper jam) has awesome natural reverb.

Upcoming Festivals

Oh, and I'm going to Australia for a month-long tour in February!  NBD.  (I'm freaking out.)

~ love ~

Sneak Peek at my new Dinosaur Painting • Coming Down from CoSM • Live Looping Pedalboard Teardown • New Live Album • Read the First Few Sections of my Book • My Talk from Sonic Bloom 2016 • And I Love You

It's been a crazy autumn, friends. I pray that it's been relatively smooth for you, and that you recognize your challenges as collective opportunities for learning, growth, and evolution. May we live in interesting times! It may be hard to keep up the enthusiasm for a transformation that could stretch out past our lifespans, to contribute all we have to building something we won't live to see completed. But that is the human project. Keep with it and I will do the same.

If there's anything that I can do to help you find your peace or purpose through the madness, let me know.

Meanwhile, I'll continue working on what gives my struggles in this life a sense of meaning. Right now that means a book, a studio album, and a podcast, each of them focused on the complicated blessing of a human life in this specific time.

My Patreon subscribers have an inside track with all of this, including early access and exclusive content – plus, the benefits of knowing that you're helping me give everything to spreading messages of inspiration:

Now for all the new work.  As always, thanks for reading – and may you discover all of your forgotten blessings, like a twenty in your jeans...

Sneak Peek: New Dinosaur Painting

Here are some sneak peeks of an epic dinosaur piece that I'm working on right now, another window into that revisionist prehistory, The Psychedelic Age of Dinosaurs, I started with these pieces of Tyrannosaurus, Carnotaurus, Spinosaurus, Nanotyrannus, and Triceratops.

Subscribe to me on Instagram for "stories," videos, and other fun ephemera as this piece comes together.  It's already shaping up to be one of my most intensely detailed, luminous, and weird live paintings yet...

Hummingbird Blankets Available to Order!

It's time again!  I only have a few of these lovely woven cotton blankets on hand that I can ship in time for Christmas – once they're gone, the wait time goes back up to 6-8 weeks, so if you would like to order one of these for someone now's the time!  Grab one here (or share this link on wishlists).

Coming Down from CoSM

I just played (and spoke) at Alex & Allyson Grey's Chapel of Sacred Mirrors in upstate New York!  CoSM is an amazing place, a worldwide hub for visionary art.  My offerings felt very overdue.  It's one thing to feel part of a "noetic polity," a community of mind, and quite another to ground that connection face-to-face, together in a place and time.  I finally saw and felt what the Greys are building firsthand and it was a truly humbling weekend.

Both my three-hour presentation and my instrumental live set will be made available for free to Patreon supporters soon (and to everyone else sometime in the New Year).

Meanwhile, here's a selfie that my painter hero asked to take with me.  :)

Live Looping Guitar Pedalboard Teardown

I would like to make more of an effort to put my skills to work by training other people (in guitar, live looping, paint pens, live art, and whatever else you think that you could learn from me).  Skype lessons are one way so let me know if you are into that – another is this walkthrough of my rig:

"Guitar Moderne reader Michael Garfield has a natural science-based perspective on looping and live sampling that is mind expanding. He also offers some straight, nuts-and-bolts info about his gear and how he uses it."

Read all about how I turn one guitar into a symphony of glitched-out cybernetic awesomeness at Guitar Moderne (my favorite blog for experimental guitar).

New Live Release: Austin, Texas 2015-11-11

While I continue grinding away at my book, podcast, and first album of actual SONGS in many years, here's a peek at some of those songs in their earliest public appearance, stripped down solo acoustic, still finding their legs but obviously chomping at the bit and rearing at the gate.

New songs here range the gamut of geek, from a piece about Jurassic Park coming true ("Life Finds A Way") to a piece of gonzo journalism from the space between birth and death ("Indecision") to a weirdly tropical number about the neurophysiology of awakening ("Always Catching Up").

You'll also hear some time-tested versions of old fan favorites like "You Don't Have To Move" and "Let It All Get Out" sprawling into lengthy and weird looping explorations, and – this is a storyteller format set – listen to a lot of weirdo ragged banter between me and everyone who was there for my girlfriend's birthday...  Stream or download it on Bandcamp.  (This one is free to my subscribers.)

Read the First Few Sections of my Coming Book

Here's the preface and first two short chapters of the book I'm writing, How To Live in the Future.  It's an evolutionary tour of hyperspace that hopefully helps people find their way through all the change of our extraordinary century.  It begins with an homage to Archeopteryx, my spirit animals, and possibly the most important fossil ever found.

We humans are creatures of becoming, works-in-process – just like the legendary Archeopteryx, the so-called "First Bird" whose discovery in 1861 was the first fossil evidence of evolution by natural selection. Half bird, half reptile, Archeopteryx has much to teach us as we navigate this turbulent transition from apes to angels.  This piece I originally wrote for Projections Magazine may well become the preface to my book.  Read it here.

My Talk from Sonic Bloom 2016

In this talk I conjured up an even more ambitious bouquet of ideas than usual, constellated around the work of Penn State information scientist Richard Doyle and the argument that art and language grew from psychoactive interspecies intercourse.

What does the evolution of the Mind-At-Large teach us about the role of creativity in culture? How do artists function as the organs of erotic signaling within the selves-enjoying superorganism of the Biosphere? What is the highest purpose art can serve?

All these questions – and more – will be danced around, linked, juggled, entertained, and possibly even answered in this mind-expanding thoughtstream as it makes its way to spill out in the Ocean of Primordial Awareness...  Stream or download it here for free.

And, Lastly:

Gift yourself the glowing warmth and satisfaction that you get with patronage this season, and get your front-row seat to my creativity in every medium.  It is 1000 times more awesome than just getting emails from me – I host ask-me-anythings, you can connect with other patrons and meet new friends, and you get your name in the acknowledgments when I release the book and album:

Thanks again for reading and may all your days and nights be full of sweet embodied ease!  Now:

"Find what you love and follow it to glory.”

- Abraham Simpson