New Prog Folk Single "Indecision" • Live Notes from #IPFest 2019 • Upcoming Shows • New Archaeopteryx Painting • Secret Future Fossils Episodes

Happy summer, everybody!  We're well into the hot months, and insofar as life is the spontaneous formation of order for the dissipation of excess energy, I've been an actively engaged in the metabolism of our cosmos – making more art and music, I fear, than you can actually absorb.

So be it.  May this love's labor find you on a good day, when you're looking for some fresh and interesting stuff.  We seem to have less time for taking in new art and music than we did when this blog started in 2009, but I'm convinced the work just keeps on getting better, and I'm honored that I get to share it with you.

In this newsletter:  new (and very different) music; new live art (both analog and digital); two Future Fossils Podcast episodes (on time loops and on driverless hotel rooms); and a secret stash of never-to-be-aired recordings.

Enjoy, and write back any time,

Michael

New Song: "Indecision"

"Mars Volta meets what Dave Matthews might hear after trying DMT? I love it."

- James Boswell (Ming Dynazty)

"Fantastic. Like a The Books track with extremely creative vocals."
- Anthony Thogmartin (Papadosio, Earthcry)

"It's like TOOL and Herbie Hancock had a baby."
- Matthew Foglia

"A great sonic achievement! Reminds me a lot of Peter Gabriel's best stuff."
- Norman "Dr. Blue" Katz

Free Download

In the moment before acting lies a void

where every future gleams, reflecting every other
every moment a uniquely blooming world.
In the space between two thoughts
where every other instant grows
expanding now into infinity
and every possibility unfurls...
How do you choose your next life?

I'm finally back in the saddle with the project I began way back in 1998: to join the Great Parade of visionary and alchemical songwriters, marrying acoustic and electric elements for tunes that gesture toward the singularity we live within in every moment.

Whatever else I do, the songs I've offered to this world in a handful of rare studio efforts (2006, 2008, 2014) are the sharpest and most polished work, the closest to my soul and sense of what is truly meaningful.

"Indecision," paintstakingly produced by my partner in crime Mitch Mignano, is the fruit of an epic co-creative pregnancy.  Read all about it on my Patreon account...

(Special thanks to Randal Roberts for the perfect cover art!)

Upcoming Concerts:

27 July – Santa Fe – Oxygen Bar Apothecary Restaurant

28 July – Albuquerque – House Concert in Albuquerque with Seth Hoffman

8 August – Santa Fe – Tumbleroot Distillery with Josh Glenn Experiment

New Painting: "Our Lady of the Late Jurassic"

Signed Canvas & Cardstock Prints

Here is my latest painting, "Our Lady of the Late Jurassic" - a tribute to the amazing Archaeopteryx, my spirit animal and one of history's most legendary fossil creatures – painted live at Meow Wolf for my first Santa Fe gallery show at Eye on The Mountain.  (Acrylic and oil pens on 20"x20" panel.)

Read the whole story at michaelgarfieldart.com.

Notes from InterPlanetary Festival 2019

Signed Canvas & Cardstock Prints

Last year, Santa Fe Institute's InterPlanetary Festival changed my life: this confluence of luminaries celebrating complex systems thinking and space exploration inspired me to move to Santa Fe. (Here's the free live album of my concert from last year's event.)

This year, on staff at SFI, I got to sit on stage and take live notes on a huge LED wall for some epic panels on synthetic biology, science fiction, and visionary architecture:

Check out this Google Photos album for all of the notes I took this year (both final images and time-lapse videos), plus the painting that I made on stage alongside Santa Fe's Tone Ranger:

Notes from #IPFest 2019

I highly recommend you watch the full-length videos of each discussion, with my notes unfolding in real-time behind the panelists, because those conversations rocked.  But if you aren't that curious, here's a fun 360º time-lapse of the UFO piece you can groove to in less than one minute:

Watch on YouTube

New Podcast Episodes

The latest episodes of Future Fossils cover both ends of the spectrum this show seems to span:  on one hand, Eric Wargo's brilliant take on how the future co-determines history; and on the other, Nathan Water's genius mashup of self-driving cars, technomadism, and the blockchain.

And lastly, I have finally made good on promises to drop a cornucopia of secret episodes on Patreon supporters with more than eight hours of never-to-be-aired recordings – including a totally bizarre panel discussion on the nature of time from my 2017 Australia tour, chats with a tantric instructor and a standup comic, and three other would-be episodes too weird to live, too rare to die:

Subscribe on Patreon for Secret Fossils

"If the truth is so important, then why am I in trouble for trying to find it?"
- Shane Mauss

Velociraptor Painting + New Tunes + Ten Amazing Conversations

Whew, okay!  This "biweekly" newsletter I've been keeping since 2009 went three whole months without an update...

but it's because I just became a dad!  I hope you'll understand and stay on board.  Thank you for tuning in!

Here are some of the new things I've created for you (and for the sheer fun of it):

Four new paintings, one new live album and a 360º video "single," and an entire treasure box of awesome conversations.  Enjoy, and drop me a line anytime if you're inspired!

gratefully yours,

Michael

"Our Lady of the Late Cretaceous"

24"x36"• acrylic and oil paint pens on canvas

available for sale

read the story + buy prints

view in context on instagram

 

"Xenoscaping III & IV"

2x 12"x24" • acrylic and oil paint pens on canvas

available for sale

view in context on instagram

"Fire Jelly Fronds"

12"x24" • acrylic and oil paint pens on canvas

sold • view in context on instagram

Live at the Apothecary

(Santa Fe, NM • 2019.05.11)

Bandcamp • Patreon • Spotify

iTunes • Apple Music • Amazon Music

My first concert as a father, and my first concert as a Santa Fean, this show was warm, intimate, and magical. Dear friends were in from out of town, and new friends were won over from the dinner crowd. My old friend Sydney Wright from Austin, Texas – one of the regulars at my two-year Austin residency, Loopers' Night – joined me while starting off her tour of the Western States, and captivated all of us. (Her songs were not recorded at this show, but I encourage all of you to check her out.)

Big thanks to Mya Kass & Cheryl Casden for inviting us to play this show at the Santa Fe Oxygen Bar Apothecary Restaurant – and even more for buying an entirely new PA system so Sydney and I could have the best possible sound for this. And thanks to Andee Jean Ostara for her concert photography – you can and should follow her new professional instagram account.

Here's one of my favorite moments from the show:

"Indecision" (Ukulele Arrangement) in 360º

Watch in 360 on YouTube

In the moment before acting lies a void 

where every future gleams, 

reflecting every other 

every moment a uniquely blooming world. 

In the space between two thoughts 

where every other instant grows 

expanding now into infinity 

and every possibility unfurls... 

How do you choose your next life? 

It may seem your heart has stopped between two beats. 

It's not the universe that's ended 
but that you're already dead,

remembering everything at once 
seeing past the limits of your head. 

In the seconds it would take to drain 

the oxygen from your exquisite brain 

a few mere seconds, all your life replays 

an intimate refrain. 

It isn't just the fireworks of dying neurons firing. 

You are slipping from the grip 

of that which kept you in the slow procession. 

Now your feathered eyelids open to behold the whole terrain...

 

I'm especially excited about the Future Fossils Book Club on Patreon and the amazing video calls we've been having about the most mind-blowing books I can find.  Our first call on the science fiction horror masterpiece Blindsight by Peter Watts was great, and our second call on Diana Slattery's psychedelic science and philosophy opus Xenolinguistics was (for me, anyway) even better.

We're doing a call for Cixin Liu's Hugo-winning The Three Body Problem sometime next month.  

I'd love to hear you chime in on our next group call!

And since it's been so long since my last update, here are NINE new episodes of Future Fossils.

There's something here for everyone: Nadja Oertelt teaches scientists to speak to non-scientists; Bruce Damer's team might have figured out the origins of life; Erick Godsey has the most inspiring stance on personal mythology; Android Jones and I discuss what being visionary artist dads is like; Mitsuaki Chi leads therapeutic mushroom groups in Amsterdam; Sean Esbjörn-Hargens is about to teach a course about the philosophy of science through the lens of UFOs; Bernie Taylor has a powerful new angle on some of the oldest cave art in the world; Eliot Peper offers his empowering and sober view of history and tech; and Kevin Wohlmut offers up the first guest episode with essays on the next ten billion years.  Enjoy!

        

“All that is becomes connected even in its difference, as being and becoming share the same confused territory of ‘feathery incandescence’; ontology itself becomes not only dynamic but synesthetic.” 

– Richard Doyle, Darwin's Pharmacy

Two New Paintings + 360 Video: Symbols of Transformation + Future Fossils Podcast with Aunia Kahn & Simon Yugler

“I think there’s something almost archetypal and profound about leaving your home, country of origin, about leaving your comfort zone and traveling OUT into the world…let’s just start there. Initiation 101.”

– Simon Yugler, Travel Alchemy

On the road to the MAPS Psychedelic Science Conference in Oakland this week! I'll be there to show art in the gallery, record live podcasts on the Psymposia Stage (free to the public), and play music on the Beckley Foundation Bay Cruise, Friday night. All of the recordings I make will be made available to everyone as soon as I can – there's still a ton of music, videos, and more to share from Australia!

And now, the new stuff.  Big projects on the way – enjoy, and stay in touch!

360º Video: What Inspires My Art?

YouTube Permalink

Here's a quickie (12 minute) talk I gave in Byron Bay, New South Wales back in February for Harmonic Temple, an Earth Frequency Festival pre-party.  It was the first time I've ever been asked to speak publicly about the thoughts behind my art – along with my friends, the talented artists Randal Roberts, Morgan Mandala, and Collin Elder, who are admittedly all better painters than I am, but a little less enthusiastic about jumping up there and letting fly with freestyle riffs on evolution, science, technology, the power of symbols, and so on.

This rant earned me the title "Terence McKenna 2.0" from Collin...decide for yourself.

"Submicroscopic Blacklight Party"

48"x36"– acrylic on canvas – studio

Reproductions available here:

https://michaelgarfieldart.com/products/submicroscopic-blacklight-party

A collaboration with two of my favorite artists in Austin, Greg Pettit & Elliot Rogers.  This painting evolved over a week of intense studio work in preparation for our trio show together at the ALTernate Reality Gallery​ in Austin, Texas. All three of us have what you could call "an obsession" with the microcosms of the body – immune cells attacking pathogens, molecular conveyor belts transporting nutrients within the cytoplasm, DNA's translation into RNA – it's truly alien and wonderful "down there," as psychedelic as it possibly could be.

(In fact, in his book The Cosmic Serpent, anthropologist Jeremy Narby argues that the content of the DMT experience, and consequently all the art of medicine traditions worldwide, is of molecular biology – that ayahuasca and its sister visionary plants are showing us what modern humans need a microscope to see. Who knows?)

"Xenoscaping II"

36"x24" – acrylic and oil on two canvases – studio

Reproductions available here:
https://michaelgarfieldart.com/products/xenoscaping-ii

This one is the second in a series dedicated to Randal Roberts, Kaliptus, and Jack Shure - three fantastic painters whose influence is clearly felt in this alien still life, second "xenoscape" in the series, inspired by the ineffable neither-alive-nor-dead extraterrestrial "Hypotheticals" from Robert Charles Wilson's Spin/Axis/Vortex science fiction trilogy. I spend a lot of time thinking about how people are also places are also things and around we go, each one of us a location, an ecosystem, a mostly vegetative bio-intelligence more ancient and bizarre than we let on...

New Future Fossils Podcast Episodes 
with Aunia Kahn & Simon Yugler

This week’s guest is the artist, gallery owner, podcaster, web designer, and musician Aunia Kahn! Among her many notable achievements, she curates Alexi Era Gallery in Oregon, hosted the Create & Inspire Podcast, and survived eleven years housebound with disability to emerge more creative, passionate, and powerful than before.  Listen here.

This week’s guest is travel guide Simon Yugler – named one of Open World Magazine’s “Top 30 Adventurers Under 30,” Simon facilitates initiatory experiences as the leader of experiential education journeys for young adults. We talk the alchemy of travel and how to practice right relationship as a stranger in a strange land.  Listen here.

Available Original Paintings • Music Archive • Print Shop

The Oddest Chicken + Psychedelic Yoga + Tech Ethics + The Future is Exapted/Remixed + Future Fossils with Susan Molnar & Joanna Harcourt-Smith

“Instead of choosing your work, I would highly recommend that you choose your play...The play, at the end of the day, is a lot more important than the work.”

– Joanna Harcourt-Smith

Thanks for checking out this update!  Lots of new work in the cooker for you (you can see some of my many new paintings in progress on Instagram) – but a lot of the work lately has been in reorganizing and reimagining my life from the top down and inside out.  Every moment is an opportunity for our renewal, for a fresh start, and in spring especially.  My hope is that by getting straight at home and in my heart, that change will ripple out and grow and help us all move lovingly into a more coherent, generous, and optimistic future.

Hopefully my reinvigorated dedication to a life of love and play inspires the same in you:  release from all the fear-based narratives of both the mainstream and the "counterculture" media; enthusiasm and appreciation for the minor victories and humble private graces; the time and space to notice that which doesn't serve you, and the calm to walk away from it and into something beautiful and good and true without resentment or regret, but simple joy and gratitude for second chances.

Change is in the air.  Let's make the most of it, friends.

Here's my latest work.  More soon – 

love

Michael

"The Oddest Chicken"

48"x36" – acrylic on canvas

Click here to buy poster prints – 11"x17" for $20

Original painting available (email me)

I present to you "The Oddest Chicken" (Australian for "The Artist Check-In.") Painted live at Rainbow Serpent Festival (Victoria, Australia) during and after the Chinese New Year's celebrations. I had an amazing time in Australia and a big part of it was finding the confidence to stride boldly into this bold year.  I hope this piece does something similar for you.

Here's a 360 time-lapse video of this painting in progress (as well as fuzzy cameos by Randal Roberts, Morgan Mandala, and Luke Brown) with an excerpt from my talk at the Chapel of Sacred Mirrors on how psychedelics prepare us for an age of accelerating technology:

You can also check out my gallery of 360 photos from the making of this painting, and the rest of the tour, here. Enjoy...

...and while we're on the subject of Australia, psychedelics, and technology – here's a video of the talk I gave at The Commonwealth Bank of Australia's Innovation Lab (where they've had people like Richard Dawkins and Guy Kawasaki come to speak):

Click here for the slideshow that accompanies this presentation.

Click here to stream the audio of the full talk plus the spicy 90-minute discussion that it led to – these bank employees CHOSE to stay at work until 6 pm on a Friday to keep this conversation going...

And if that's not enough evolution talk for you, here's the latest chapter of my book, How to Live in the Future.  In this section I explain how everything's a remix, including you, and how "exaptation" (a little-known concept from evolutionary science) can improve your creativity:

How to Live in the Future Part 4:
The Future is Exapted/Remixed

An excerpt:

"Long before the first amphibian crawled out to lay our modern mythological foundation, our ancestor – some lobe-finned fish – had stubby little feet it used to cling to rocks in shallow water. The good idea of what we now call “hands” lay there unnoticed, latent, till the moment that the pool dried up and (we are told) fate benefited fish with feet, fish that could waddle back into their brackish lakes (which as a site for Epic Moments in Life History are far more likely than the sea, since estuaries offer such a trove of coves as evolutionary testbeds). All the pieces were already there, just waiting for sufficiently large waves to roll up and away, remixing them."

Read the whole thing (and leave in-line comments!) at Medium.

And we have two new episodes of Future Fossils Podcast!  Click the images for download links to awesome chats with coder and tech educator Susan Molnar and podcasting psychedelic socialite Joanna Harcourt-Smith:

  

Available Original Paintings • Music Archive • Print Shop

What is the Opposite of Fear? + The Evolution of Beauty + Talk & Music from COSM + JF Martel on Future Fossils

“Ultimately, art does have a function: it’s to help us better navigate the infinite chaos that is reality.”
– JF Martel

Yay, it's spring!  Time to navigate the chaos of 2017 with grace, open-mindedness, exuberance, and playfulness.  Here are some things that, hopefully, will help you with that – starting with a few quick videos and one extremely deep and magical discussion...

New Videos

On my recent tour of Oz, I stopped by Uplift Connect to chat with them about what I've learned from studying the fossil record and what it can teach us about the extraordinary times we're living in.

Here's a quick two-minute takeaway insight I hope serves you as well as it serves me.

I think this is the coolest video I've ever made – in which I lay it plain how sex, art, and consciousness all intersect and led to the creation of the world we know.  Bookmark this for when you have seven minutes to appreciate it.

It's a 360º time-lapse live painting video of my first collaboration with my friends Randal Roberts and Morgan Mandala, two of the coolest people I know.  But the real magic sauce is in how the music and narration combine with this video to create a synesthetic, synergetic and emergent something-greater-than-its-parts.

I literally spooked myself with the synchronicities of the end result.  Enjoy!

New Podcast

My latest inspiring conversation about the cosmos is with JF Martel, film-maker and author of Reclaiming Art in the Age of Artifice – as well as the three-part essay "Reality is Analog," about the philosophical themes lurking behind Netflix's series Stranger Things.

You can download it here or subscribe to the show on iTunes or Stitcher Radio.

New Music & Talk from COSM

Stream or Download it here.  

Recorded live on 12 November 2016 at COSM, Alex & Allyson Grey's Chapel of Sacred Mirrors, in Wappingers Falls, New York.  Performed on acoustic guitar, voice, and hardware effects pedals (no computers, no prerecorded samples, entirely live and improvised).

This music is an invocation of creative spirit for the benefit of all beings. Recommended listening environments: painting parties, cuddle puddles, chillout sessions, game night, long daylight drives, and making love...

33% of sales go to supporting the Chapel of Sacred Mirrors and their project to build Entheon, a museum of visionary art.

Stream or Download here.

Delivered at the Chapel of Sacred Mirrors (Wappingers Falls, New York) on 12 November 2016, this talk – my first at COSM – was truly epic (three hours, minus the half-hour of pauses and throat-clearing I edited out for your benefit). Based on the work of Penn State professor Richard Doyle – especially his book, Darwin's Pharmacy: Sex, Plants, and the Evolution of the Noösphere – this is a talk about art as magic, and awareness as the medium of all creative work.

It's about how we got here and what we're doing and how the cosmic table's tilted in favor of evermore creative and intelligent ideas and organisms. It's about your purpose in the world and where this ride is taking us and how you can embrace the change and chaos for a more creative and rewarding life...

New Merch

I've been slacking on my society6 merchandise shop for a while, so I just fixed that with dozens of new items featuring some of my favorite recent pieces.  If you have a new device or space, consider fancying it up with some of these new decals, cases, pillows, notebooks, tapestries, etc.  ...

That's all for now.  Thank you for reading and have a magnificent week!

love

Michael