(FINALLY) Whole Earth Fest Timelapse Video + Burning Man Lecture + Ambient EP

"When we try to pick out anything by itself,

we find it hitched to everything else in the universe."

- John Muir

"Sometimes the questions are complicated

and the answers are simple."

- Dr. Seuss

• New Video, Lecture, & Ambient EP

Once, deep in the misty recesses of time (back in May), I promised everyone I'd have a timelapse video of this painting out "next week." Well, thankfully, I'm on Biblical time here (in which the world is made in six days and your average dude lives to be nine hundred – it's kind of like "dog years"), because that fabled movie is just now ready for your enjoyment.

I had to take care of a few things, first – like recording a new EP of "electronic improvisations on acoustic guitar" in Arcata, California (available here, for free) to use for the soundtrack, and spicing it up with excerpts from my lecture at Burning Man 2010 (available here, for free – and here's the event page, if you want to join the discussion about it, or share with your friends.).

Every once in a while, I like to bust my butt to put together something truly demonstrative of the hypertextual, synchronistic consciousness I'm trying to perform with the rest of my work. Something that challenges me to live even more transparently, even more consistently, to the organic divine mind I try so tirelessly to evoke through description.

So here it is. I suggest watching it full-size if you have the bandwidth...

(Bear in mind, I edited the audio and video separately and was as surprised as anyone to see how the timing came together.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3t80mM2858

Enjoy! Share. Discuss. And email me if you have any feedback, comments, questions, critiques...I wouldn't be putting this out there if I didn't hope it sparks something in you and gets you talking about these things with your friends. Here are links to the other faces of this media crystal:

• Interviewed by Guitar International Magazine

To rev you up for my (also prematurely promised) forthcoming double-disc live album, here are two heady articles from Guitar International Magazine, in which I help you learn to fold the entire universe into a steel-strung wooden box.

This republished mash-up of evolutionary biology and creativity coaching: http://bit.ly/aJEuVT

"Whether it evolved in this generation or the millionth generation before it, every single novelty is born again in every moment without ultimate reason or utility. Even if the feather appears to be used for the same thing in fledge after fledge of birds, each bird rediscovers what to do with its body uniquely, originally, for the first time. Every adapation is a hypothesis, the projection of meaning onto whatever we’re given. When I pick up my guitar and play, I’m agreeing that this is an instrument, that this is a guitar, that I play the guitar, and that I play the guitar in some specific way. That this is what it’s 'for.' But there are an infinite number of ways for the universe to express itself through the functional relationship between a human being and a guitar."

And this rambling, philosophical interview I gave on everything from songwriting to gift economies to my coyote-like relationship with the Boulder music scene: http://bit.ly/cO4dm5

"Human language raised several octaves sounds exactly like birdsong; there’s a fractal structure to communication from the electromagnetic emissions of DNA on up. So I like to write as if the words are music, but I also like playing guitar as if the guitar is actually saying something. As I give more attention to reproducing the cadences and rhythms of speech, a new dimension opens up in my playing. The guitar literally sings."

• Light & Shadow Tour: Exploring Personal & Cultural Transformation

My first-ever national tour, alongside author and director Charles Shaw, starts in Boulder this Friday. I hope you can make it out to at least one of our nearly thirty stops together as we engage audiences in conversation about social and spiritual transformation (and I shred love songs) across the US, Mexico, and Canada...

Next week: new live paintings and studio commissions, and a music video from my upcoming live album.

Until then – thank you, and keep shining, everyone.

Three New Paintings From The Desert & A Few Words About Music

"This is the first thing you learn about the festival: to get there, you must leave here. You must, in other words, cross over, out of the ordinary world. Maybe you haul your tent to a glade in the middle of nowhere, and maybe you just hand some guy your ticket. But either way, you must cross a threshold... Though the festival rarely marks its participants with the obvious cuts and tattoos of a puberty rite, it does hold out the potential for real change, and this potential lies in the liminal: the deeply felt sense that the normal rules are suspended or warped, that a possible world is emerging, and that a new self can rise to greet it."

- Erik Davis, from the introduction to Tribal Revival: West Coast Festival Culture

First, the art. Then, the articles. Thank you deeply for your time and attention...stay in touch and have a marvelous day!

• Images

Tunnel To The Sun

2010 08 21, 22 3SidedWhole

(Rev, Totem, Lunar Fire, Buddha Bomb, Lil Sum'n Sum'n)

24"x36" - paint markers on canvas

email me about $20 poster prints or the original painting

Every time I go back, 3SidedWhole is more and more amazing, more and more a home away from home. An incredible community brimming with love and talent...

This painting, started on a ceremonial all-nighter of legend, is dedicated to the entire 3SidedWhole community – Dr. Blue, Chance, Ron, Maurice, Ben, Issac, Issa, and everyone else who keeps that place humming year round and maintains the vortex of synchronistic potency out there in the New Mexico desert.

Painted as a counterpoint and complement to July's "Tunnel To The Moon," this one emphasizes brilliance over depth, capturing the desert's fiery, spiky radiance. I don't normally work on canvas, so it was cool to get on the other side of the easel from time to time and see the painting from behind, light shining through:

What you can just barely tell from these photos is that the entire piece shimmers with a translucent red, only visible at low angles...with all these shiny touches, this one has two distinctly different characters, depending on where you stand.

Heart/Space

2010 09 01 Entheon Village

(Audiafauna, Kai, Pyronauts Drum Troupe, Govinda, Heyoka, Vibesquad, Opiuo, Antennae)

24"x30" - paint markers on masonite

email me about $20 poster prints or the original painting

Last year, my painting from the Wednesday night dance party at Burning Man's Entheon Village got me on a thematic roll that lasted the better part of a year and still flares up with a vengeance from time to time...so one year later, when the sun rose after a gruelingly awesome evening of nonstop art and love and music, I took a step back and appreciated predictively what a wonderful year of exploration this painting is about to ignite.

This one feels very much like The Fountain's mycelial microscopy shots simulating the Orion Nebula. My dear friend Nicole Taylor – who accompanied me to and around the burn this year and to whom I dedicate this painting - pointed out how this one is reminiscent of those distant dusty stellar nurseries in the Hubble photographs...a place where hearts are born. (Does it sound like Burning Man is a nebula to anyone else?) Which is of course perfect, because the temporary structure in which all of this occurred is called the Heart Space. And those ("heart" and "space") are kind of synonyms, the longer I think about it...as within, so without.

Endlessness

2010 09 02 Portal Patch

(Lynx, Vibesquad, Future Simple Project)

18"x24" - paint markers on masonite

email me about $20 poster prints or the original painting

A variation on the original design I did for Entheon's Heart Space patch last year. After such an epic experience the night before, this one was also an attempt to downstep it a bit and lean into the comfortably familiar, returning to "old" octagonal themes and simple repeating patterns. I love this one for its simplicity, and even if it doesn't capture the same depth as some it has a cool "official currency of space" feel to it. This one is dedicated to Cameron Grace and all the other kids at Portal Patch for putting together such a killer soundcamp year after year.

For those of you who want a better idea of how insanely inspiring Burning Man is, or who are already getting homesick and want to wade around in sentiment for a little while, my photographs from Burning Man 2010 are now online and visible to friends of friends on Facebook. I wrestled with whether or not to hand these over to those rights-grabbing jerks (Facebook, not my friends' friends), but ultimately it was the easiest way to share. So enjoy


• Words

Guitar International Magazine just republished a few of my finer pieces of music writing. As much as I enjoy visual art, part of me is more deeply connected to the ways that language - messy, imprecise, and frustratingly linear – can so clearly and compellingly communicate an idea in ways that sound and symbol cannot. And however much people see me as a painter, I identify at least as much as a poet. So I'm delighted to share these articles with you – many of them are from a few years ago, but odds are that they're new to you:

"The 3-2-1 of Musical Performance" – Taking multiple perspectives on the artist-audience relationship (impersonal other, personal other, and self), and how that changes the dynamics of a concert. One of my friends just wrote to tell me what a difference it made to read this before playing his first solo show at Burning Man's Center Camp Café:

"It was my first time being the only person on stage [as] the connection point to the audience. And having that awareness of playing with the audience turned it into this beautiful experience of oneness, being connected on such a deep level that there was no me and them. That experience has opened me up to realizing that I'm ready to go out in the world and share that with all those who are open to it."

Best review I've ever had?

"You're the Musician; YOU Make Some Noise!" – Who is actually responsible for the creative act of the live music experience? Further explorations in breaking down that artist-audience barrier...except when it belongs there.

"An Ode to the Chapman Stick" - Waxing (very) poetic about one of my favorite instruments and its sacred significance.

"Best & Worst New Musical Instruments of the 2000s" - Part of a writer's poll for H+ Magazine, in which I stick it to Guitar Hero with one hand and exalt the Reactable with the other.

Lastly, I recently gave a brief interview about my music to Colorado's Mousike Magazine: "Esoteric and intricate, I found myself struggling to describe his sound and style..."

Next newsletter: The musical highlights of this summer's Love Without End Tour; audio from my lecture, "Self as City, City as Self" at Entheon Village 2010; and probably, yeah, some new artwork.

Gem & Jam, Entheon Videos, and a Valentine's Day Exclusive Track

> Imagery

Crystal Eggs

2010 02 04 Plush

(Ana Sia, BLVD)

20"x30" - paint markers on masonite

- check availability -

(signed 11"x17" prints available, $20)

I can't seem to shake the bad habit of hauling ass on zero sleep from Colorado to Arizona only to leap out of the car and immediately begin painting...which is exactly how it went down at last year's Gem & Jam, and exactly how it went down this year, as well. My friend, globetrotting photographer Megan Illgner, and I made it there with literally five minutes to spare before Ana Sia went on, after burning a fierce downhill highway from Durango to Tucson in one lightning stretch. It was pretty epic to begin with, considering our two-day drive together rang in her first real foray into vagabonding (and snowy mountain driving...ask me to tell you about our near-death experience on an icy road over Durango, one of these days). And no, I'm not just trying to terrify my mother. We were perfectly safe the entire time.

This painting is inspired by the oil pattern on the lenses of a pair of sunglasses I bought that morning (they were so cool I had to buy them, but they bore an MTV logo I had to scratch off with a pair of scissors so as not to infect my vibe), and it is dedicated to Amy Otto the masseuse, who took good care of my hands that night and is a luminous woman. After such a strenuous trip down, painting this in the company of friends I rarely see was a real treat. And I think it shows.

Whomporaptors vs. The Sunrise, or Dubstep Dinos Defeat The Dawn

2010 02 05 Rialto Theatre

(Telepath, Random Rab, EOTO)

20"x30" - paint markers on masonite

- check availability -

(signed 11"x17" prints available, $20)

After my recent critical review of EOTO's ongoing dubstep obsession, I figured I'd make a point to tell keyboardist/guitarist/looper Michael Travis that whatever they played that night would not be dark enough. Because I'd be painting dinosaurs. Half kidding, but I really was in an unusually grindy mood, and after all my railing on their overwrought fixation I was smitten by irony: their set was, indeed, not dark enough for my tastes. However, Megan and I talked on the way down to Arizona about how we wanted Travis to include bongos in their dubstep, and we had a high five moment when it actually happened at the show...pioneering a new genre she and I have lovingly dubbed "bongstep."

So this painting is dedicated to Megan, and indirectly, to bongstep. Here's to having the first Google hit for something (like I did for the statement, "Imagination is our greatest natural resource"). It's a direct response to my friends who insisted on more dinosaurs, and it was a challenge to myself, since the Maniraptorans were covered in feathers and I knew it'd be a growth opportunity to attempt them. Also, it's difficult to tell from this photograph but the background of this painting has a lot of really intricate dripwork and subtle color layering going on. I had a lot of fun prepping it.

As for the dinosaurs...well, I meant for them to be Velociraptors, originally, but I hadn't looked at any in a while. So we ended up with one likely Velociraptor in the middle, there; one anonymous sickle-clawed beast above; and something that looks like a primitive Tyrannosaurid (perhaps Dilong) in the lower right. I had no choice but to invent a taxon for this bizarre menagerie...genus Whomporaptor. So much for scientific precision. :)

Serpent DNA Love Regeneration

2010 02 06 Rialto Theatre

(Pnuma Trio, Vibesquad, Boombox)

20"x30" - paint markers on masonite

- check availability -

(signed 11"x17" prints available, $20)

Another painting named courtesy of the lovely Leesah Noble. I need to draw more snakes...after all, they're one of the few subjects with which I have significant professional experience from my time at KUNHM's Department of Herpetology, and it'd be a shame to squander what little official training I have in these things. So I got all Jeremy Narby on the green-and-yellow-and-silver background and delighted in scales for a few hours.

This painting is dedicated to Taylor Lupardo, with whom I stayed (along with about a dozen other people) during Gem & Jam, and whose Facebook profile picture I took at sunset from the roof of the parking complex across the street from his place...one of the most magical moments I had out there, maybe the closest any of us got to soaking up "real" Arizona during the festival. Thanks for the crash space, man.

> Writing & Speech

At Burning Man's Entheon Village in 2009, I participated in a series of lectures and panel discussions on evolution, consciousness, 2012, and the future of our species. And they were videotaped! I am SO excited to share with you the fruits of that project:

In this first (two-part) video, I'm on a panel with authors Daniel Pinchbeck, Tony Vigorito, and Mark Heley, as well as the mysterious Mark Martinez. It was incredibly fun to share the stage and assume the guise of expertise for this conversation about the evolution of consciousness and our current global transition, and except for a few rough spots the discussion was truly inspired and inspiring. It was an honor to participate, and it's an honor now to finally get to share it with you.

http://entheonvillage.blip.tv/file/3194601/

Right after the panel, I gave what is doubtlessly the most important speech of my life so far: a half-hour presentation on the emerging science of biogeomagnetics, a discipline that studies the relationship between living creatures and the electromagnetic fiels of our planet and star. By describing how magnetic fields trigger the release of various human biochemicals, and by grounding the presentation in the understanding that mind and matter are two perspectives of the same phenomenon, I suggest that the 2012 prophesies may actually have a legitimate, modern, naturalistic explanation – and that biogeomagnetics may offer us a prescription for how to stay afloat through the tumultuous years to come.

http://entheonvillage.blip.tv/file/3183885/

Those are my good friends, visionary artist Adam Scott Miller, activist and hero Taylor Steelman, beacon of joy Tessa Ruttan, and synchromystical faerie goddess Jacqueline North listening rapt in the audience (both pics are courtesy of the magnificent Sergio Lub, founder of favors.org, who moderated many of the panels that week with wisdom and grace). These talks are dedicated to anyone who might benefit from them, but I'll give a special nod to my friends who were actually in attendance that amazing day.

> Music

For my last gig at Quixote's in Denver, my friend M Vincent Miller, virtuoso pianist, sat in on about half of my set. It was messy, unrehearsed, and utterly ridiculous...it was also a dream come true. I've wanted to gig with Vince since we met in the fall of 2007, and I am so, so glad that at least some of the recordings came out well enough to share them with you. As a blog exclusive (except, of course, for the people who were there), here is one of my more intense love ballads – a gift to you all for Valentine's Day.

This unusual recording of "Underground River" captures my first-ever duet performance with Vince, who turned this ordinarily brief-but-trancey number into a sprawling, edgy jazz-scape. Truly strange and beautiful...enjoy!

"Underground River" feat. M Vincent Miller

(2010 01 28 Quixote's True Blue)

http://michaelgarfield.bandcamp.com/track/bonus-underground-river-feat-m-vincent

Evolutionary Biology Symposium At Entheon 2009

> Writing
Over the years, I've cultivated an identity as kind of a trickster-academic, lurking on the fringes of half a dozen disciplines and diligently synthesizing them in ways that wouldn't be options for me if I'd stayed in the tenure-track system. And it's starting to pay off. So I started a new page, evolution.bandcamp.com, for audio downloads of the various lectures, interviews, and discussions in which I've participated.

First item on the menu is an amazing discussion about evolutionary biology I had with three other, somewhat less rebellious biologists at Burning Man's Entheon Village this year – a freewheeling symposium that veered from one topic to the next (including the emergence of order from chaos, whether evolutionary theory can actually improve society, when going backward is actually going forward, and – somehow – the ethical demands that beauty makes on a person) with delightful caprice and strangely rigorous whimsy. One of the attendees came back the next day and told me that sitting in on it had been like "going to Awesome College." Here it is, folks – my first swing at being a professional public presenter of mind-blowing ideas, with help from fellow cool geeks Cory Bishop, Jason Hodin, and Ruben Valas:

Entheon Biology Symposium 2009

If you like it, please share it with your friends! (Bandcamp has made it very easy to post worthy audio to Facebook, Twitter, and several others via a menu right next to the download button.) This talk really confirmed for me the value of conversations like this for the greater social good, as inspirational learning that reminds us of the incredibly awesome vastness in which we live and of which we are made...

New Album: Live From Entheon Village

> Music
Here it is - my latest free live album, straight into your Eustachian tubes via the dusty wastes of Black Rock City and the electron-irrigated delta of the dreaming embryonic internet mind:

Live From Entheon Village (2009)

It's 1:11:11 of intense acoustic guitar anthems, ballads, etudes, and banter charged with the electric intensity of Burning Man and the holy playfulness of Entheon Village, one of the Burn's most progressive and conscious theme camps. It's also the best set of live recordings I've released so far. And in honor of Burning Man's gift economy ethos, I'm offering the entire album in high quality .wav format for free. Enjoy!

If you have any questions or feedback about the album, send it my way. Feel free to share it with your friends by inviting them to the cyber-listening party on Facebook. And have a beautiful day...