Every Day Is A New Year | MGxGRC Hat #2 | Ethereal Underground | Land Without Evil

"There is absolutely nothing to transcend...only all of Creation to unite with."

– Jeffery Wolf Green

"All things are possible once enough human beings realize that everything is at stake."

– Norman Cousins

Well, we all lived through the long-anticipated 2012 Winter Solstice and civilization's first encounter with the cosmic inflection point: on December 21st, our Sun aligned with black hole Sagittarius A* at the heart of our galaxy.  A lot of people thought something crazy was going to happen, myself included...but it seems increasingly clear that the ride is just getting started.

The embrace of this accelerating change is the subject of my latest painting, as well as new musical and theatrical projects that have swept me up into exciting creative collaborations.  Isn't that why we're here?  To trade surfing tricks and astonished eye contact as we try our new lives on for size...

And now, some of my finest work ever.  Thanks for reading and have a blessed holiday!

My New Collaboration With Grassroots California

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Preorder for $55 (including s/h)

The response to my first embroidered and silk-screened design collaboration with Grassroots California was overwhelming – I didn't make it to a single festival this year without seeing at least one person rocking that hat, and it was a huge honor and surprise to get so much positive feedback.

Like the first one, only 420 of these will be made.  Preorder through me and you not only get the satisfaction of supporting the artist directly (thank you!) but I'll be happy to sign or personalize it for you, too.  And every preorder comes with an exclusive live EP of electronic guitar music.

Preorder price is currently less than retail, but that's bound to change before I get the hats in early February.  Interested parties, hit me up soon!

Every Day Is A New Year

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Buy Signed 11"x17" Poster Prints – $20 plus s/h

"Once we abandon this obsessive fanaticism of absolute complete knowledge, we can continue on with our process of discovery without the headache of a deadline.”

– Henry Warwick

"Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd."

– Voltaire

painted live at

• Rootwire Music & Arts Festival, 2012 08 18

Papadosio (electric), Dopapod, Ott, Akara, Papadosio (acoustic)

• The Parish, 2012 09 15

Kaminanda, The Human Experience, Brede

• Art Outside Festival, 2012 10 20/21

Mother Falcon, Russ Liquid, Andreilien, Stephan Jacobs, Brede, ONE4ALL, Pharo, Metranohm, Thriftworks, Henry & The Invisibles, Pyramid, Dimitri's Ascent, Pumpkin

• Texas Music Theater, 2012 11 11

Papadosio, Octopus Nebula, Holding Space

• Cirque Lunaire at La Zona Rosa, 2012 12 01

Bluetech, Phutureprimitive, Ex Stus

• Whompadelic Wednesdays at Club, 606 2012 12 12

KiloWatts, Crazy Fingers, inertG, SoundShaman

Click to view the process:

iPhone Hard Case | iPhone Vibe Case | Laptop Decal | iPad Decal | iPad Sleeve

Ethereal Underground's New Studio Album

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Digital Album + 11"x17" Poster

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"You enter the forest at the darkest point, where there is no path."

– Joseph Campbell

Acoustic and digital, real and imaginary, freestyle and remix, far out and close up, awake and dreaming...  Ethereal Underground is the visionary collaboration between me and beat wizard Tristan Gulliford, aka Dreamcode.  

Between the original sessions and more than a year of Dreamcode's patient sculpting, over 100 hours of studio detail work went into Strangely Familiar – resulting in an ultra juicy 33:33 of...something...not quite witch house, not quite space hop, totally luxuriously weird.  Check us out on FB.

Land Without Evil

I just finished an eight-show run doing live music for this amazing production by Agent Red & Sky Candy, and filmed by PBS for their series, Arts in Context.  A story of colliding cultures in an age of transformation, adapted from the novel by Matthew Pallamary...we got to perform at the historic Stateside at the Paramount Theater in Austin and yes, it totally raised the bar.  Getting to work with such talented dancers, aerialists, video mapping projectionists, actors, live musicians, lighting engineers, and costume designers is just...wow.  This is why I love Austin.

Check out show's teaser trailer:

Watch on Youtube

Custom Painted Hats

I almost hesitate to advertise these, as I'm currently sitting on a huge stack of orders.  Thanks to everyone for your patience!  But if you're in the market for some special way to grace your crown, take a look at my whole gallery for ideas and drop me a line.

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An Inspirational Interview With Ideamensch

Last news but maybe the most interesting:  I recently sat down with Mario Schulke of Ideamensch, a website to inspire your entrepreneurial spirit.  He asked me some big questions, and I answered...  Here's a taste:

What is one business idea that you’re willing to give away to our readers?
Do what only you can do. There are a thousand people in line behind you except for what critical node in the working body of our species? This is a place where “your deep gladness meets the world’s needs.” (Frederick Buechner)  Go for that.

What is the one thing you do over and over and recommend everyone else do?
I remind myself that my resources are of many kinds, that luck is one of them, that help comes from strange places, and that I’m doing this for love, not money. (Money is just the blood that keeps the body working. I don’t need a basement full of blood.)

Read the whole interview here.

Two New Live Paintings, More Body Art, & A New Electronic Trio!

“The greatest achievement was at first and for a time a dream. The oak sleeps in the acorn;

the bird waits in the egg; and in the highest vision of the soul a waking angel stirs.

Dreams are the seedlings of realities.”

- James Allen

"At that instant he saw, in one blaze of light, an image of unutterable conviction, the reason why the artist works and lives and has his being. It is to snare the spirits of mankind in nets of magic...to wreak the vision of his life, the rude and painful substance of his own experience, into the congruence of blazing and enchanted images that are themselves the core of life, the essential pattern whence all other things proceed, the kernel of eternity."

- Thomas Wolfe

In the past few weeks I was blessed to participate in some rare and truly amazing convergences of visionary artists and great minds – Boulder shows with Martina Hoffmann and Amanda Sage; the Sonic Bloom Festival Pre-Party with Alex & Allyson Grey; and The Manifestation Celebration in Dallas (an era-defining, boundary-smashing event at the Dallas Museum of Nature & Science). Explosively creative shows lead to a profusion of intense new live paintings, body art galleries, and sketchbook pages, as you'll see below.

Somewhere in there I had the time to spark a so-new-it's-nameless live electronic trio with fellow Papadosio family friends Jeremy McDonough on keyboards and Renee Uzzardi on tablas. We captured one of our instudio performances on video...I'm on electric guitar for the first time ever (I bought it long ago from a gypsy in an ice canyon), and it's a beautiful sound.

It'll be a little while before I can release the new cyber-guitar recordings from Dallas (or my speech about the relationship between Earth's magnetic fields and human consciousness), but there's already a huge art harvest to share. You can listen to the new sound while you check it out:

"Space Migration" by McDonough, Garfield, Uzzardi

download this track free / watch on Youtube

If you happen to be in or around Ohio this weekend, come enjoy our first show at the Nelson Ledges Quarry Park's Mayflower Springdance Festival!

And now for the art:

- (Click any image to enlarge it for detail.) -

Under Another Sky

2011 04 20 The Root (Sacred Plants Visionary Art Panel) & Studio

24"x24" – opaque pens on masonite

original painting for sale – make an offer

signed poster prints for sale – 1/$20 or 2/$30 + s/h

4/20, Boulder CO – quite possibly the cannabis capital of the world. In the midst of this storm of heedless intoxication (once a campus display of civil disobedience, now an epic rager celebrating marijuana's medical legalization) we assembled a crew of respected "visionary" artists – Martina, Amanda, Krystle Smith, Mackenzie Page, Jumbie, and myself – and we had a nice long panel discussion about sacred plants and their role in the creative process. Kind of an antidote or counterbalance. Thoughtful and provocative, the discussion was well-received...and I went home loaded with the other artists' visionary mojo to finish the painting I'd started. Maybe you can see a hint of their flavor in this piece, another in a series of vegetable landscapes on other planets.

Moon Well

2011 05 06 The Kessler (Language Love, DVS*, Archnemesis)

2011 05 07 Dallas Museum (Bluetech)

2011 05 08 Ruta Maya (Polymyth, Dimitri's Ascent, Jamie Janover)

24"x24" – opaque pens on masonite

original painting for sale – make an offer

signed poster prints for sale – 1/$20 or 2/$30 + s/h

Still not getting tired of drawing golden spirals and moon portraits. What can I say? I have also been obsessed for years with creating gradients of complexity, leaving unelaborated sections, showing the weaving-into-being caught in action. Seems only appropriate for The Manifestation Celebration, which turned Dallas – if but for a moment – into one of the coolest places on the planet. Thanks to the hard work of the big-hearted people at Re:Evolution Media. Post script: I finished it up in Austin, during a few days of satiated lounging. Grounding that love, Texas...grounding that love.

Temporary flashback to April. While listening to Martina and Amanda give presentations on their artwork at Boulder's Shining Mountain Waldorf school last month, I regressed to "classroom doodling" mode and went to town on the paper plates they gave us for cheese and crackers:

The Love You Withhold Is The Pain That You Carry

I'm Too Wrapped Up In Not Being Wrapped Up

My extreme thanks to everyone who invited me to paint on them for Denver & Dallas's Alex & Allyson Grey shows. I take body painting seriously – a precious opportunity to see someone's soul and unfold it on them – and I got to work on some beautiful human beings. Here are links to body art galleries for both two-night events...as you browse, see if you can't absorb the ambience of each party:

Body Art at Unified Field - Denver

Body Art at The Manifestation Celebration - Dallas

Festival season is upon me (curious people: summer calendar on the blog), which means a lot more art and music, and less time to publish it. I already have a lot of work in store I'm honored-eager to share with you...in the meantime, take care and thanks for reading!

Announcing "The Body Electric" & My Most Ambitious Painting Yet

"If you're really listening, if you're awake to the poignant beauty of the world, your heart breaks regularly. In fact, your heart is made to break; its purpose is to burst open again and again so that it can hold evermore wonders."

- Andrew Harvey

"The essence of all beautiful art, all great art, is gratitude."

- Friedrich Nietzsche

I'm immensely grateful for the nearly 3,900 people that have signed up for this newsletter over the last three years – for your time and attention, for your encouragement – but most of all, for being blessed with the chance to enrich your lives with my work, to give you something in which you can find meaning and inspiration.

But look, guys. I'm having a hard time balancing "listen" and "express." I don't know how to fill this void, this speakerbox, this opportunity to say – but only what you need to hear. So what do you need to hear? Tell me this and I will do my best.

I'm ready to put the days of unfocused explosive creativity behind me and start channeling this energy into something that will truly serve the needs of the people with whom I have connected. To find the sweet spot that will illuminate and exalt us all the most. To do what only I can do in a way that sets your life on fire like only you can burn.

Because it's time for that. From here on out, this newsletter isn't just my rant box; it's my platform for putting my understanding and ability to work for you in the most ambitious, crazy, brave-hearted way we can conspire to achieve.

And with that, I have some things to share with you that I hope will turn you on and get this started.

..:: Visual Art ::..

The first is the most ambitious live painting I have ever attempted...you'll want to click on this one for a full view so you can appreciate all of the detail:

Going Somewhere (Tree of Flowing Jewels)

2011 01 23 Quixote's (Praang)
2011 02 03 Hodi's Half Note (Invisible Allies, Bluetech, KiloWatts)
2011 02 15 The Aquarium (O Fo Sho, Heavy Is The Head)
2011 02 17 The Whole (William Within, Luke Redfield, Noah Earle)
2011 02 26 Cervantes (Papadosio, Heyoka, Larva Ink)
24"x48" – opaque pens, acrylic, & spray paint on masonite
original painting for sale – email me to inquire
11"x17" poster prints $25 each (two for $35) – order by email
full-size stretched canvas giclée poster prints (series of ten):

$400 – order by email

This painting came with me from Denver to Fort Collins, out to Fargo and Minneapolis, and then back to Denver over the course of a month in which I worked on nothing else (artwise). It's the largest piece I've ever done, and because my markers have three-millimeter tips that set a boundary on detail, it's the first live painting in which I've managed to actually accomplish the multiple levels of fractal self-similarity that I allude to in the rest of my work. There's a quality to it that I've only experienced in states when even solid objects seem fluid and selfhood streams like tattering clouds through the gusty sky of the Great Imagination. I can almost hear this painting. It whines and whirs, whispering insect secrets into auroral night. Everything else, every zipping thought and mammalian contraction, shuts off when I look at it, and there is nothing left but the ancient and infinite truth of life, mind, and time...an open secret in which all of our human splendor and dignity, story and drama recedes into unnoticeability, empty as I stare at a foreign sky in silence.

(click to enlarge)

On a slightly less epic note, I've added several new images to my online sketchbook archive on Facebook. If you're not already a friend of my art page there, you might want to be – you'll get updated about my new work a lot faster that way.

..:: Music ::..

As I've gotten more well-connected in the dance music scene through my live art, I've co-evolved to make my music more suitable for the venues and audiences that ordinarily support music made on laptops and synthesizers. Those of you who've been following me for a while have watched as it has mutated, branching off into both intricate percussive fretboard magic built for festival stages and elaborate acoustic-electronic soundscapes at home in chill-out tents and other dusky liminal spaces.

Now, I'm pleased to announce that the transformation is complete. My newest album drops this Sunday – the Spring Equinox, March 20th – morning after the closest Full Moon in years, and a perfect time for the advent of a new age in which the carbon-based past of rosewood and human flesh meets the silicon-based future of blinking lights and loving machines. The Body Electric is my ode to the marriage of the animal and mineral, tradition and novelty.

Recorded live over two weeks at shows in Colorado and North Dakota (while I was working on the painting above...what an epic month!), it's my latest and greatest effort to redefine the guitar so thoroughly that the music shines through unimpeded by instrument. This is acoustic music liberated into an entirely new sonic landscape and philosophical vista. And it comes complete with a lush, poster-sized hi-res file of the hybrid ink-and-digital cover art I designed as a visual counterpart to the music, for your psychedelic eyeball pleasure:

The Body Electric (2011)

The link goes live on March 20th and then it's a free download for you and everyone else...but anyone who donates more will receive a download code for the unreleased recording of my concert in Sinai, Costa Rica at the Geoparadise Festival on New Year's Day 2011. It's a performance I'm proud of, including my best-to-date live take of fan favorite "You Don't Have To Move" as well as a collaborative loopscape with shamanistic throat-singer Matthew Kocel and some of the more unguardedly silly between-song interludes that have ever flowed through me.

In the meantime, you can listen to and download two tracks from The Body Electric – "Tunnel Run" and "Touring The Body Electric (SHORT)" – on my Soundcloud page. And you can watch the video for "Tunnel Run" – stitched together from a year's worth of going over bridges – right here, right now:

(If you can't see it here, you can watch it on Vimeo, Youtube, or my Facebook music page.)

Again, thank you from the bottom of your heart for following me down these corridors of the imagination and into the ornamented chambers I find there. If I've managed to open you up even a little bit to the vast wild isness of our lives, mission fucking accomplished. Goodnight, you guys.

Bounteous Harvest From STS9's NYE Run (Plus, The Future of Live Music, EOTO Album Review, & More)

> Imagery

STS9 NYE Twenty Ten Concert Poster
2009 12 28 & 29 Studio & Newman Opera Hall
(STS9 Acoustic Show "Axe The Cables")
18"x24" – paint pens and spraypaint on masonite
*some* signed & numbered 11"x17" prints (series of 75) available ($20)
original painting also available

It's a dirty little secret that I was never that big of a STS9 fan. I like my music adventurous, and their tightly coordinated sets, stemming from a tribe philosophy that refuses any one member their moment in the spotlight, never quite took the leap of faith I wanted. And as much as I admire their forays into electronica, I didn't much care for the gangster flavor that turn brought to the music and the scene. But I was definitely curious when I heard that they'd be playing their first-ever acoustic show in Denver...and positively psyched when a friend of mine offered me a ticket to the sold-out show. And I have to say, it was a classy, tasteful, well-orchestrated affair: University of Denver's opera house, dress-to-impress, ushers and everything, an understated light show, grand piano/vibes/harmonium...I mean, wow. I felt swept up in something wonderful.

It'll probably be a while still before I actually get to paint onstage for these guys, but in the meantime I was able to sneak this half-finished painting in with me to the show and the ushers didn't seem to mind that I finished it from my seat, using my necklace LED for light in the dark theater. Major props to Kevin Odenedo for inspiring me to paint "guerrilla style" with no concern for how official I'd be...and equal props to Jordan Burghardt for pulling through with the ticket and the opportunity.

I've been getting more into typography of late, trying to find a way to use the elements of my previous paintings to design cool new word art. For this piece I wanted it all to be perfectly symmetrical and read "STS9 NYE Twenty Ten" the same back and forward, but couldn't get the second "S" to not look like an "F." So it's an ambigram from the waist down. Eye in the middle, the still watching center; hourglass above, the anticipation and fatedness; wings below, holding the whole thing up.

This is the first limited edition concert poster print I've ever made, and I still have a few left if you're looking for a way to commemorate that excellent event.

Pluralism
2009 12 29 Gothic Theatre
(Bluetech Live Band, Emancipator, Flying Lotus, Martyn)
20"x30" – paint pens and spraypaint on masonite
signed 11"x17" prints available ($20) – original also available

Nuisances often yield new creative depths. In the case of this painting, running out of the gold spraypaint I used for the background was seriously annoying – I was standing in my friend's freezing driveway trying to cover this board in an even layer of gold and the empty can was sputtering as my hands and faze turned to ice. But the end result was a glorious patina that this photo doesn't really do justice, a lively surface that vaulted my painting out of the realm of psychedelic kitsch and into the "Restoration Hardware" market. Suddenly I had a painting someone like my dad might buy for his house, even though I'm sure there are still plenty of undergraduate trippers who'd hang it in their "Zen Room." (I say this with the greatest affection for both types...)

And holy macaroni, was this ever an epic event. Without any question, Euphonic Conceptions' Denver STS9 afterparties were the best shows they've ever put on (at least, among those that I've attended). There were about a dozen live painters there, ultrasexy dancers, a flippin' RAINBOW LASER...and I had a cozy little spot up in the balcony of the Gothic Theatre, IN the visionary art gallery, where I had not only a great view of the show, but a chill escape for everyone who was temporarily bushed from the raging dance floor.

I'm sure that you've noticed by now how most of my work has some lofty spiritual concept behind it. Transcending and including earlier work like "Order Under Chaos," this painting alludes not only to the deeper symmetry (here, a crystal field of breathing octagons) behind the flowing energy of manifestation (those paisleys), but also how one person's view of the transcendental is "colored" differently than the next's. Adherents to the so-called "Perennial Philosophy" beneath all of the world's religions argue that everyone worships the save God; but the fact remains that every wisdom tradition offers something unique to the banquet of faith, a valuable and distinct perspective on that-which-transcends-all-perspectives. And, intuiting this, we bare ourselves and reach for one another, a cosmic game of show-and-tell that some people have taken to calling "integral spirituality." This is that.

Roaring In The New Year
2009 12 31 & 2010 01 01 Gothic Theatre & Zach's House
(The Glitch Mob, Tipper, Mimosa, David Seied)
18"x24" - paint pens and spraypaint on masonite
signed 11"x17" prints available ($20) - original also available

Kind of a self-portrait. I was working the raffle booth for Collective Conscious at the December 30 STS9 show and got to the afterparty late, so I had to come up with something I could whip out quick, and there isn't anything quicker for me than a good old Tyrannosaurus.

Early on I decided that my New Year's Resolution for 2010 would be to dedicate every creative act to someone or something – to recognize my life as a sacrifice to the world (where "sacrifice" is taken literally to mean "the work of making sacred," just as "artifice" means "a creation of intentional design"); to connect my energies and intentions to something greater than my own satisfaction-in-self-expression; to give an additional layer of depth to everything I do, and to keep myself in a spirit of joyful service.

2009 was a difficult year. I spent most of it sleeping on people's couches and floors, broke, jobless, watching my family struggle with health problems and legal bullshit, and struggling myself to maintain a dear but seemingly star-crossed relationship. At the same time, 2009 was a year of profound growth and positive change. I rediscovered my purpose, inspired thousands of people, and learned the difference between false security and real stability, how to navigate the tides of life with a little more grace and equanimity.

So when it came time to dedicate this last painting of 2009/first painting of 2010, I chose to send it out to that rebellious, rambunctious, primal force that T. rex symbolizes for me and so many other people. Like a coyote howling at the Moon, half sorrow and half exultation, the letting go of what was and the celebration of what is coming, a pure and unselfconscious emotional release directed skyward into the shining heavens (and the heavens were shining, a blue moon and partial lunar eclipse on the 31st). Some of each: the lizard and the angel, the red of destruction and the green of growth. Thank you, 2009. Let's get it on, 2010!

My dear friend Marieam Shohadaee took some great pictures of me at work on this painting, which you can find on my Facebook art page.

(full gallery at tinyurl.com/mgpaintings)

> Writing

"Best Seat In The House: You're Virtually There" (H+ Magazine) – What are concerts going to look like in five years? I follow the last few years' of development in music technology to where the lines converge: on a radically different experience for live music fans. What did I get right, or wrong? You won't know for a while, but in the meantime you can leave your own vision of the future of live music in the comments section.

"Album Review: EOTO's Fire The Lazers!!!" (Colorado Music Board) – EOTO's latest studio album is deliciously dark and sexy, but I miss the radiance that suffused some of their earlier work.

"Stuart Davis Sings The B Side's Swan Song" (Colorado Music Board) – Boulder "punk monk" Stuart Davis, one of my major inspirations, just played his final show at Boulder's finest small venue (now-extinct). The show in review.

"The Mile High Sound Movement Throws Down" (Colorado Music Board) – I recently had the luxury of painting and playing as a member of a positively awesome music and art collective emerging out of Denver's hybrid electronic/hip hop/jam scene. The show in review.

New Live Art From Re:Convergence

> Imagery
Euphonic Conceptions just put on Re:Convergence, a two-night rager at Cervantes in Denver. It was not only a program of some of the sweetest electronic music producers in the US (including Bluetech, Mimosa, and two nights of Ana Sia); it was also yet another in an accelerating stream of massive Denver live art throwdowns. Inspired by the half-dozen or so other painters that surrounded me at any given moment, as well as some delicious muffins and cookies, here are the two pieces I churned out of the kosmic art mill (when I wasn't taking a medicinal nap in the back of the theater or gorging on brie and fruit in the unusually well-stocked green room):

2009 11 13 Cervantes (Boombox, Two Fresh, Grown Folks)
18"x24" - opaque pens on masonite
original and signed 11"x17" available

Unlike the typical DNA polymers and ideal orbs, I think this one looks like someone threw a sabotage-sausage into the poinsettia factory. Or an eel discovering wormhole travel. Gaming geeks can rejoice at my not-so-disguised icosahedrons in the background (aka, twenty-sided dice)...

2009 11 14 Cervantes (Jason Sterling, Evol Intent, Mimosa, Bluetech, Octopus Nebula)
18"x24" - opaque pens on masonite
original and signed 11"x17" available

I haven't been doing enough work with windows and gateways, so this was an attempt to correct that. One thing I really try to communicate in my work is the duality of what quantum physicist David Bohm called the "explicate" and "implicate" orders – the apparent world, and the secret, deeper world behind it. The silence under the noise. The pattern under the chaos. Every painting is the universe in a nutshell. In this one, the endless fabric of creation and destruction underlies the clustered crystals of material form, which in turn underlies the dynamics of life. A reminder to look past the surfaces of things...