One Final Dispatch From Last Decade: New Paintings, Music, Podcasts, & Reading Lists

"One's ideas must be as broad as Nature, if they are to interpret Nature. “

- Arthur Conan Doyle

"Einstein thought nature would protect us from the formation of black holes."

- Janna Levin

Happy New Year, everyone! This update is, I know, more than I can hope for you to actually digest — and that's okay. I'm glad you even took the time to check it out — and think you'll be rewarded with each step into it you take.

The reason for this tome is that I've been so busy making work of lasting value that I haven't had the time to share.  Exhibit A:

I've been working hard to figure out how I can balance old and new responsibilities (including sharing the extraordinary conversations I've been hosting for the Santa Fe Institute's Complexity Podcast, about evolution and ecology, economics and sociology). The art and music still comes, just slower, more deliberately than it used to. My hope is that you too value quality over quantity.

That said, here's the last dispatch from the 2010s, a few days late due to subspace anomalies:

A few new tees and tapestries featuring my artwork made it up on Acidmath's new website:

Because a lot of people have asked me for reading lists, I've started a new shop at Amazon where I list my favorite non-fiction, fiction, and graphic novels, and if you buy them I get some small percentage of the sale:

I also got a lot of airtime in the last few months — getting interviewed by The New Modality as an advisor to their amazing new magazine, and appearing on podcasts with Cory Allen and Hardy Haberland. I left Chris Ryan a voicemail he played on Tangentially Speaking, and got name-dropped in my friend David Titterington's awesome essay on "black goo" and/in the films of David Lynch. And my public talks were quoted extensively in Marzia Braggion's lovely experimental art film, "The Great Unknown" — as well as for one of the weirdest and funniest hip hop videos I've ever seen, Jonah Mociun's "Still Life (The Ensouling)".

Two new live recordings found their way online last week: the highlights from my concert for the Psychedelic Society of Minneapolis, and the ambient set I played in Arizona for Stargate Reunion. (The former's free and public; the latter an exclusive for Bandcamp & Patreon supporters.)

 

Note: I got to play the best gig ever in December, opening for Papadosio at Meow Wolf, and I'll have that for you in the next update — along with the live painting that I made with them that weekend, and the special episode of Future Fossils I recorded with their lead guitarist and my dear old friend Anthony Thogmartin.  It seemed a bad idea to bury that in this massive update, so hold tight!

As for the painting life, I've been waiting for a while to get my hands on the scan of this deliciously disturbing pens-and-airbrush collaboration I did last year with brother-in-arms Byron Aldridge. We are not making prints of this but the original is up for purchase, if you're interested. (24"x36" on gallery-wrapped canvas.)

And if you aren't subscribed to Future Fossils Podcast yet, the four latest episodes are easily four of the best to date:

 

 

Recent Patreon-supporter-exclusives include another four solid conversations (including a personal favorite with comedian Ramin Nazer), as well as our final book club call of 2019:

 

In parting, probably the proudest non-baby art I've made in the last several months were these two studio recordings, "Transparent" and "Signal." Listeners have likened them to everything from "the kind of music Bon Iver wishes he could make" to "like listening to The Flaming Lips for the first time."

You can dig them both on Spotify, Soundcloud, Bandcamp, or anywhere you like to go for music. Or stream them while you read their lyrics and their backstories, on Medium:

Thank you for your attention!  Love and warm wishes,

Michael