When did I become a magazine? Please bookmark this, as there's too much good stuff in here to soak up all at once.
(And yet, no paintings – but that is because I'm working on an absolutely epic few, and they are coming soon! In the meantime, you can scope my Instagram for progress shots of those.)
Let's start with the biggest and most exciting news:
New Live Album from Australia Tour!
Stream/Download Pavo: Music For Mystery
(And yet, no paintings – but that is because I'm working on an absolutely epic few, and they are coming soon! In the meantime, you can scope my Instagram for progress shots of those.)
Let's start with the biggest and most exciting news:
New Live Album from Australia Tour!
Stream/Download Pavo: Music For Mystery
Hi Friends,
This 74 minutes of dreamy, intoxicating, lush, compelling instrumental music captures one of the most inspired evenings of my life. It was recorded n Valentine's Day 2017, a live set I donated to my friend Adam Scott Miller's immersive art class in Byron Bay, Australia (so it's only fitting that his gorgeous painting "Feathered Pearl" is the cover image for these tunes).
I've been exploring this guitar technique for over a decade and finally hit my stride with it two years ago...this single-take, no-studio-overdubs sound journey is the anticipatory score to countless evenings drenched in candlelight and contemplation, lovemaking under stars and arabesques of incense smoke.
Inspired by the deep mystery of the Australian coast and dreamtime, Pavo oozes with the atmosphere of wonder and transcendent weirdness of The Land Down Under – but it also opened up into a set of synchronistic correspondences I can't explain. This album has initiated something in me that has yet to run its course, an invitation into something numinous and terrifying in its splendor.
To attempt an exposition: I'm a Capricorn, born on 8 January under the fixed star Delta Pavonis in the contellation of the peacock. Only after this was all recorded and the track art chosen did I realize that the persecuted Yezidi people link their "peacock angel" Melek Taus with Enki, the Sumerian sea goat, and with St. George (the more human, earthly form of Michael the Archangel), and the Pleiades (a constellation that for some strange reason I have always felt a deep affinity).
Enki was responsible for the decay of the original one language into all the modern tongues – the god of entropy and babble – which is weird, because the peacock angel also plays a major role in one of my most cherished books – Darwin's Pharmacy: Sex, Plants, and the Evolution of the Noosphere by Richard Doyle – in which he makes the case that by an involution of attention on itself, the psychoactive plants created the diversity of human languages as well as our aesthetic sense. Doyle argues Melek Taus is an irruption into history of a transcendental telos, guiding evolution through trans-species intercourse and boundary-dissolving peak experiences. (Read this book, if you can handle it.)
Discovering this web of correspondences has shaken my reality. Why did I become obsessed with the evolution of language and consciousness in college? Why have I always identified with peacocks? Why do I emphasize the breakdown of a signal into noise in all my music? Who are we, and who is rigging this?
Downloads include a set of links you can pursue to dive much deeper into this exquisite set of strange coincidences. Feel free to write to me or comment with your thoughts and feelings upon listening, or if you have more insights into this extraordinary mystery...
I hope that you enjoy it. Thanks for listening. :)
I recently appeared on three great podcasts: Third Eye Drops with Michael Phillip, Chasing Bodhi with Doug Noble, and The Astral Hustle with Cory Allen. These conversations are about as different as can be, but if you're interested in the nexus where transcendent beauty meets existential terror – or how I make sense of love and art – or how to live a brighter, bolder, funnier, more mindful life – you can't go wrong by checking out all three. These gentlemen all put a lot of work into their shows and I'm delighted that I get to share these with you.
This week I sit down with Rak Razam and Niles Heckman – psychonauts, journalists, provocateurs, and the film-makers responsible for Shamans of the Global Village.
This 74 minutes of dreamy, intoxicating, lush, compelling instrumental music captures one of the most inspired evenings of my life. It was recorded n Valentine's Day 2017, a live set I donated to my friend Adam Scott Miller's immersive art class in Byron Bay, Australia (so it's only fitting that his gorgeous painting "Feathered Pearl" is the cover image for these tunes).
I've been exploring this guitar technique for over a decade and finally hit my stride with it two years ago...this single-take, no-studio-overdubs sound journey is the anticipatory score to countless evenings drenched in candlelight and contemplation, lovemaking under stars and arabesques of incense smoke.
Inspired by the deep mystery of the Australian coast and dreamtime, Pavo oozes with the atmosphere of wonder and transcendent weirdness of The Land Down Under – but it also opened up into a set of synchronistic correspondences I can't explain. This album has initiated something in me that has yet to run its course, an invitation into something numinous and terrifying in its splendor.
To attempt an exposition: I'm a Capricorn, born on 8 January under the fixed star Delta Pavonis in the contellation of the peacock. Only after this was all recorded and the track art chosen did I realize that the persecuted Yezidi people link their "peacock angel" Melek Taus with Enki, the Sumerian sea goat, and with St. George (the more human, earthly form of Michael the Archangel), and the Pleiades (a constellation that for some strange reason I have always felt a deep affinity).
Enki was responsible for the decay of the original one language into all the modern tongues – the god of entropy and babble – which is weird, because the peacock angel also plays a major role in one of my most cherished books – Darwin's Pharmacy: Sex, Plants, and the Evolution of the Noosphere by Richard Doyle – in which he makes the case that by an involution of attention on itself, the psychoactive plants created the diversity of human languages as well as our aesthetic sense. Doyle argues Melek Taus is an irruption into history of a transcendental telos, guiding evolution through trans-species intercourse and boundary-dissolving peak experiences. (Read this book, if you can handle it.)
Discovering this web of correspondences has shaken my reality. Why did I become obsessed with the evolution of language and consciousness in college? Why have I always identified with peacocks? Why do I emphasize the breakdown of a signal into noise in all my music? Who are we, and who is rigging this?
Downloads include a set of links you can pursue to dive much deeper into this exquisite set of strange coincidences. Feel free to write to me or comment with your thoughts and feelings upon listening, or if you have more insights into this extraordinary mystery...
I hope that you enjoy it. Thanks for listening. :)
This Month in "Awesome Conversations Galore" News...
I recently appeared on three great podcasts: Third Eye Drops with Michael Phillip, Chasing Bodhi with Doug Noble, and The Astral Hustle with Cory Allen. These conversations are about as different as can be, but if you're interested in the nexus where transcendent beauty meets existential terror – or how I make sense of love and art – or how to live a brighter, bolder, funnier, more mindful life – you can't go wrong by checking out all three. These gentlemen all put a lot of work into their shows and I'm delighted that I get to share these with you.
#0027 with Rak Razam & Niles Heckman
(5-MeO DMT & Consciousness)
(5-MeO DMT & Consciousness)
In a conversation too full of awesome neologisms, delightful turns of phrase, one-liners, and weird genius for me to convey it all, we talk about the role of creative media in helping usher in new modes of human consciousness – and what we’re learning those new modes might be. We finally get into WHAT those unborn archeologists listening to Future Fossils might be like…and our conjecture’s going to surprise you. Listen to it here.
#0026 with Jessa Gamble
(Circadian Rhythms & The Science of Sleep)
This week we chat with science journalist Jessa Gamble, author of The Siesta and The Midnight Sun: How Our Bodies Experience Time, about time in the body, circadian rhythms, lunar cycles, and the science of sleep. Listen to it here.
#0025 with DADARA
(Art, Virtual Realities, & Flow States)
(Art, Virtual Realities, & Flow States)
The creator of Exchangibition Bank, Like4Real, and the upcoming Solipmission installation at Burning Man, as well as countless concert posters and album covers, DADARA has been one of my favorite artists for a while - in no small part because of how his works combine deep, challenging investigations with light-hearted play. Listen to it here.
Future Fossils Live at Psychedelic Science 2017
with Matt Xian, Rak Razam, & Terra Celeste
with Matt Xian, Rak Razam, & Terra Celeste
A spontaneous, wide-ranging, fairly bonkers conversation that roams everywhere in service to the vast emerging third-wave psychedelic culture and its destination: inevitable, structural, and permanent transformation of the human being and our understanding of the living world. With three of my favorite psychedelic weirdos, Rak Razam of Shamans of the Global Village, Matt Xian of TIMEWHEEL, and Terra Celeste (whose affiliations are myriad).
Necromancing The Philosopher's Stone:
Interviewing "The Ungoogleable Michaelangelo"
Interviewing "The Ungoogleable Michaelangelo"
Michaelangelo is a Los Angeles based transmedia artist whose latest work as Scottish Necromancer-Rapper “Void Denizen” pushes almost every boundary imaginable in the service of both depth and humor. This conversation surfs the violet psychofluid across space, time, and identity. Read it here.
Love and Other Pranks:
Interviewing Author Tony Vigorito
Interviewing Author Tony Vigorito
How is love a form of piracy? Find out in this delightful interview I just held with Tony Vigorito on his new book, which Tom Robbins called "the single wildest novel I have ever read." We discuss the archetypal feathered serpent, Tony's awesome real-life pranks, and why so many villains have a skin disorder, among other things. Read it here.
“I’ve seen enough around the corner to know what I need to do next. And it’s a deep transformation of my habits, my rituals, my relationship with life, with myself, my family, my loved ones, my community…and I think it’s the deepening of the spiritual path. And it makes it very tangible, whether I like it or not. I can hide from it, it doesn’t go away. The awareness of awareness of that thing is with me every day. That’s what it [5 Meo-DMT] has done for me.”
