“To exist is to change, to change is to mature, to mature is to go on creating oneself endlessly.”
– Henri Bergson
It's been a crazy summer! My apologies for going an unprecedented six weeks between updates, but that just means this blog post's packed with even more new art and writing than it usually is. And wow, this summer's given us so much to savor...
Let's begin with what I think might be the most intense and awesome talk I've ever given – on how we're all made of drugs, and how sobriety is not about abstaining from embodiment in all its messiness, but listening to intuition, learning to embrace life with full-bodied wisdom, and surrendering to that which knows what's really best for you.
I offer this to anyone who might enjoy or benefit from conversations on addiction and desire and mindfulness and new beginnings. In retrospect, it is a kind of ladder to the Moon that only makes it just beyond the chimney. But perhaps it points you in the right direction.
Presented at Arise Festival, Loveland, CO, 10 August 2014. Cover Art by David Titterington.
New Paintings!
This summer really satisfied my need for adventurous art – holding on for dear life to my easel in a windstorm, surfing weird waves of synchronicity, working in new media and venues. Each painting has a story and a field of meaning. I hope you'll take the time to click through and read more about whichever piece you find speaks to you strongest...
"Strength of Conviction"
Paint pens on canvas (18"x24")
About the white tiger as a totem, from Balanced Women's Blog: "Seeker of personal truth, having the power and strength of conviction, living simultaneously in the realms of both shadow and light..."
"Attention"
Paint pens on masonite (24"x32")
A portrait of the roadrunner ( Geococcyx californianus) that lives in the yard of my hypnotherapist friend in Albuquerque. I feel a kinship with these birds. They're fast, alert, decisive creatures, not excellent flyers but agile, charismatic, colorful, and radiate the strange enchantment of their desert home. They're sometimes called "Snake Eaters" because they're quick enough to eat rattlesnakes (and catch dragonflies and hummingbirds from the air) – that alone is amazing, and in fact while I was working on this painting at Sonic Bloom Festival, at the foot of the Spanish Peaks in southern Colorado, a friend of mine found a rattlesnake among the tents and killed it with a hatchet. He showed me the tail tip and the rattle that he kept, the tail still squirming on the hatchet blade...
"Moving On"
Paint pens on canvas (18"x24")
Original piece painted live at Sonic Bloom Festival 2015 to the music of Unlimited Aspect, Russ Liquid, VibeSquaD, Desert Dwellers, Kinetic Groove, Mustard Tiger, Talib Kweli, & STS9.
When visionary chaos theorist Ralph Abraham wrote in the MAPS Journal a few years ago about his original experiments with DMT in the 1960s, and how they inspired his explorations of fractal mathematics and computer visualizations, he mentioned that one of the notable characteristics of the tryptamine "realm" is how entities don't seem to be restricted to contiguous space. We mundane animals in meatspace need to be connected by nerves and blood vessels and skeletons, etc., but the seeming-beings of the DMT-verse are "wireless" unities of pattern, rhythm, and color. They exist more as musical themes than solid blocks of meat...
Untitled Diptych
Paint pens on canvas (16"x10")
Custom Texas State Flag Violin
Not much to say about this one, except that I love painting instruments and hope to do more soon! Some of you might remember this piece from last year, when I was asked to paint the front of the violin. The client asked for a matching back and white sides so that he could have it signed by famous fiddle players. Super fun!
Side Note: In case you ever need to make your stringed instrument playable again, my fiancée is an amazing luthier and does magical things to violins and guitars all day (I know because I visit her at work). Here's her FB page. She also plays viola in the Sienna Quartet, in case you're gettin' hitched.
New Articles for Globalish.com
These are, seriously, some of the best pieces I have ever written. I'm honored that I get to share them with you. And some of them are super controversial! So please have fun with that... :)
Comparing The Religion We Call Marriage to the Wilderness of Love
Marriage is a species of religion, insofar as both are ways in which romantic re-connection is pursued by those who do not feel complete already. Binding to the narrative of loss and rediscovery this way, we’re wearing double-image goggles: Heaven isn’t now, so we postpone our bliss in time; true love is out there somewhere, so we look for it in other people.
"Change Is Everything": Where Fossils, Digital Culture, & The Seeker's Journey Meet
Created or discovered? These are categories, just more reflex action of a mind uncomfortable with the bottomlessness of experience, another raft of thought afloat on oceanic mind without an explanation. Every tale we piece together of prehistory from the traces that remain is no more real, and no less guess-work, than the stories of our own identities – extrapolations, inferences drawn from recognizing patterns, vesicles of meaning we produce as effortlessly and unwittingly as burrows, nests, or trackways.
The Problem with An International Flag of EarthPerhaps a name tag like the Flag of Earth can be excused on our first day as universal citizens, but someday we’ll regard such seeming-noble notions as the acts of childhood, no longer needing banners under which to join our separate factions. We won’t be “international,” because our solidarity is grounded in our prior unity, within which tribes and nation-states precipitate like bubbles in the ocean.
Shoes with Human Teeth Provide an Opportunity to See Beyond Duality
Teeth are a kind of koan, if we let them be: reminding us that basic binary distinctions – inner/outer, nature/culture – aren’t sufficient to explain or to experience our lives as they appear in truth.
Teeth are a kind of koan, if we let them be: reminding us that basic binary distinctions – inner/outer, nature/culture – aren’t sufficient to explain or to experience our lives as they appear in truth.
And that is that. Thank you so much for reading!
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