Dispatch from A One-Man Singularity / Entirely Too Many Pretty Things

Hey friends!  Quick Note:  

I know most of you signed on for art, but chances are that means you're smart and curious and have one eye and ear turned toward the transcendental – and lately, it feels like my art is mostly here to get you to stay still for long enough so we can have a deeper exchange.

I know that we're all overwhelmed and it's impossible for us to catch up on it all, but hopefully the work I do beyond the easel can inspire you in the moments when you're driving, working, listening to podcasts, looking for new things to read...the new podcasts and live solo acoustic sets I published this month are better than anything I was making a few years ago and I hope that they creep into whatever part of your life is lame right now and improve it for you suddenly and radically. 

Last thing:  I'm writing science fiction now.  Here is a preview of the piece I'm working on: a dispatch from the world in which AI has made it hard to tell what's real, and what's a forgery.  I made this sample audio recording in part as the first of a series of micro-casts as this story writes itself, and in part as an audition to be an Audible audiobook reader.  (Maybe I'm trolling Audible by sending them sci-fi about the day in which we can't be sure of anything we hear...?)

And now, the new stuff!  Consider supporting me on Patreon if you appreciate these emails – I'll be putting out more special work exclusive to subscribers, soon.  I love you and I'm grateful for you always!

blessings

Michael

Music Video for "VALIS" with Dance Artist Donna Zakura

Watch on YouTube

Download Music

Donna's FB Page

Here's my first music video since dinosaurs, featuring amazing dancer Donna Zakura and her equally amazing videographer Anthony Dempsey.  They weren't the only great discoveries I made while in Australia last (Southern) summer – here for you are new recordings of my talks & singer-songwriter performances at Mycelium Studios in Melbourne and Backyard Network in Sydney.  The storyteller/fireside chat format was a delightful change of pace and drew new insights and stories out of me – plus, you get to hear some new songs.  :)

"My Dark Companion"

48"x30" – acrylic & oil paint pen on canvas

fine art reproductions

other printed merch

Labradorite peacock demiurge unfolding limbs in interstellar darkness, iridescent living music stirring from its slumber, wave on wave of scintillating eyeless self-awareness, blossoming serrated rainbows spooling out from glistening wet froth of possibility, potential into actual, a lucid dream that eats your waking life...

Original piece painted with oil and acrylic paint on canvas – begun at Llano Earth Arts Fest (Llano, Texas) on 11 March 2017, continued at Euphoria Fest (Austin, Texas) in April 2017, and completed over countless late nights in the studio through 18 July 2017.

My most successful instagram post ever and, perhaps for the same reason, maybe the most time-intensive painting I have ever made.  Dedicated to Ali McGhee.

"Beija Flor III"

18"x24" – oil and acrylic paint on canvas

fine art reproductions

other printed merch

Beija Flor (Portuguese for "flower kisser") visits some San Pedro cacti on a flight through the imagination. The hummingbird brings joy and love...but it's also a fiercely territorial relative of the Velociraptor!  Never Forget.

Australia Tour Live Recordings Now Online!

 

Melbourne, Australia at Mycelium Studios • Sydney, Australia at Backyard Network

Two of the better shows I've ever played, now yours for free or what you can afford to offer.  Each of these recordings captured a full hour-long talk and a full singer-songwriter performance in an intimate live setting with attentive audiences, and you definitely hear and feel the difference.  I am glad I finally had the time to mix these down and share them with you!  (If you're reading this on my blog instead of email, here are some preview tracks:)

New Future Fossils Podcast Episodes

  

0034: Tara Djokic, astrobiologist

0033:  Jon Lebkowsky, co-founder of EFF-Austin

0032: Mark Henson, visionary painter

Three episodes of Future Fossils with three awesome people, covering the bases of art, science, and spirituality with stories about the early days of the World Wide Web, the first life on Earth, and the future of art as a tool of political provocation.

More Writing at Steemit

Exhumed from the ruins of my old writing job and made available again for the first time in years:

Sex, Drugs, and Evolution: Are We Smart Enough to See Through Separation?

The Overflowing Void: On Shabazz Palaces & Burrough's Naked Lunch

Upcoming Events

28 July – Austin, TX – Cherrywood Studios
Decentralized Art Shows – Cryptocurrency Art Opening

30 July – San Marcos, TX – KIVA Bar & Lounge
Cyberguitar set with Hello Crescendo, Bull Moose & Bonnie, laissez faire cassette

1 August – Austin, TX – Sidewinder Bar
Cyberguitar set with HoneySon, AlexAlco, Mode Dodeca

17 - 23 August – Big Summit Prairie, OR – Oregon Eclipse Festival
Speaking & Playing live music for yoga (with Emelie Rose)

27 August - 4 September – Black Rock City, NV – Burning Man Festival
Speaking & Playing Cyberguitar at Palenque Norte & Burners Without Borders
Details TBA

7 September – Austin, TX – Crux Climbing Gym
Cyberguitar (Floating Islands) set with Funkotron, The Mismatch, Gasoline Boots, Skymomma, DJ Lefty

22 - 24 September – Utopia, TX – UtopiaFest
The festival's first-ever sunrise set!

Martian Arts EP on Spotify // The Evolution of Surveillance // Authentic Self Expression // New Painting: Colibrí // Becca Tarnas & Mitch Altman on FF

“We could say that love is a tenacious adventure. The adventurous side is necessary, but equally so is the need for tenacity. Real love is one that triumphs lastingly, sometimes painfully, over the hurdles erected by time, space and the world.”

- Alain Badiou

Greetings, friends!  A lot of gifts to share in this one – hope it finds you well!  

Enjoy and stay in touch...

– NEW PAINTING –

Colibrí (Beija Flor II)

acrylic on canvas // 18"x24"

paper/canvas fine art reproductions

t-shirts, tapestries, phone cases, totes, pillows, mugs, and more

comment/share on Facebook

Original piece painted at home, a commissioned remix of 2014's "Beija Flor," one of my favorite pieces. The first hummingbird painting flew to Bangkok to join the collection of Greenpeace's Director of East Asian Operations the same day international news announced that vandals had written the Greenpeace logo over the hummingbird Nazca lines in Peru, those famous ancient petroglyphs visible only from the air. 

That weird coincidence – like some globe-spanning karmic shuffle – was just one of many "winks" returning my investment in these lovely birds. I'm glad to revisit this creature with three more years of experience as a painter. To spend some time with it and learn from it.

– NEW MUSIC –

Martian Arts EP is now on Spotify and Bandcamp!

It's also the new titles music for John Lentz's The Invisible Room Podcast.  He offered up the EP's first review:

"My vibration burst into the great beyond listening to this album. I didn’t want to come back. I felt myself riding waves of the infinite, supported by the unbounded ocean of being. The rhythms, the ongoingness, departing, returning, expanding, contracting, and the many sudden very strange moments—all of this gave way to the mystery itself...This music brings me home."

Martian Arts EP is free to Patreon subscribers.  Or you can grab a print of the album cover art – a collab between myself and Tourmaline Todd – and download the tunes for free.

– NEW WRITING –

The Evolution of Surveillance, Part 3: Living in the Belly of the Beast

What do cameras, Pokémon, and the atomic bomb all have in common? They are reflections of the automatic and emergent evolutionary process of the universe becoming self-aware... This is the climax of my three-part memoir as a Google Glass Explorer, exploring natural history to understand how we got here and what we can expect of our bizarro Brave New World.  (Here are Parts 1 & 2.)

Authentic Self-Expression: Impossible or Unavoidable?

How can we live authentically when:

1) The systems we’ve created are opposed to human nature; and
2) We made it this way?

We’re out of touch with who we are. We grew thinking that somebody has The Answers, and those answers can be bought.

They can’t. Here’s why.

(Here also is my archive of exhumed short writing – from 2015, when I was editor of nonduality zine Globalish – on Steemit.)

– NEW PODCAST EPISODES –

Episode & Show Notes Here

Episode & Show Notes Here

– UPCOMING GIGS –

8 July – Austin, TX – Square Rüt Kava Bar
Apocalyptic Folk Singer-Songwriter Set. 8 - 10pm

Free All Ages Show

10 July – Austin, TX – Capital Factory
"The Pre- & Post-History of Surveillance, Virtual Reality, and Swarm Intelligence"

A Special Live Taping of Future Fossils Podcast at EFF-Austin with Panelists: 

Heather Barfield, Maggie Duval, Paul Toprac, & Kevin Welch

Keynote Speaker on Time, Evolution, Consciousness, & Cosmos

Playing the festival's first-ever Sunrise Set!