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

An Overflowing Cornucopia of Cool Stuff for Autumn

Hey friends! It's been six weeks since I last sent you anything, which means this latest blog is bursting at the seams. You're probably as busy as I am, which makes it totally amazing that you're reading this. So thank you!

If you're not though, here's a ton of cool stuff for you that will help you fill your time with something nourishing, instead of mindless scrolling:

NEW ART

Signed Prints

Painted live on Procreate for iPad through a visual projector behind and during the music of Minneapolis-based DJs Simon Alaya, Jacob Hoffman, and Neil David Fox at The Hook & Ladder Lounge on Sunday, 6 October 2019.

For digital remixes and time-lapse video of this piece, visit my instagram account.

Feel free to email me if you'd like this printed or remixed for something specific!

NEW MUSIC

Name-Your-Price (Free) Download

When I recently released the Joining Forces EP, featuring my old musical partner in crime Andrew Noble on violin, I made an out-loud wish we'd have another opportunity to play together soon. He lives in Austin, still, you see, and here I am in Santa Fe...

...and then the wish came true! Andrew just so happened to be here to join me for my monthly residency at the Santa Fe Oxygen Bar. Brave soul that he is, he sat in on both improv duets and some originals he'd never heard before.

No rehearsal, additional takes, or post-production. The drums are nylon brushes on my acoustic guitar. The bass synth is an Ebow run through pedals. Everything you hear is either a guitar, a violin, or my own voice.

These tunes are spacious, atmospheric, deep, warm, and organic – dreamy, and then groovy, and then both at once. (My favorites are two improvisations – "Dream River" & "Jigsaw" – which I liked so much I think I will commit them both to memory, and keep on playing them.)

If you'd like to share this with your friends, please feel free! I'd love their feedback.

NEW & OLD WRITING

I've moved a lot of my old articles from Reality Sandwich to Medium after RS, long the bastion of psychedelic culture, has been taken over by some folks who do not seem to care about the site's community of contributors. It's sad news to find out RS is now some weird and hollow imitation of itself, but hopefully they'll find a way to steer it in a good direction.   

Meanwhile, you can find some of my favorite pieces from The Good Old Days below. It's interesting to see how they've aged, and how they haven't:

• Coevolution and the Technology of Desire
• Global Brains & Singularities: Cadell Last & Michael Garfield Debate the Technopocalypse
• Painting is Dangerous
• Transcending Possessiveness in Love & Music
• Love and Other Pranks: An Interview with Tony Vigorito
• Let A Hundred Futures Bloom: A Both/And Survey of Transhumanism
• Self As City, City As Self (a transcript from my talk at Burning Man's Entheon Village, 2010)

I also found a never-published piece to add to the bonfire, and it seems timely:

• Don’t Optimize Your Life

NEW PODCASTS

First of all, I had an intense (albeit amazingly friendly, open, and curious) debate about emergent order, creativity, and the nature of time and the imagination with philosopher Tim Freke on his show.  I recommend watching this for a model of how to politely disagree with someone very smart about a viscerally divisive issue – a skill we all could benefit from cultivating in these crazy times:

Next, some of the most epic guests that Future Fossils has ever had have graced the show in the last few weeks.  (Yes, I know this looks outrageously white and male.  I have a ton of great female guests in the queue – hold tight!)

 

 

And the Future Fossils Book Club had our fourth call, about the awesome work of Cixin Liu.  Our next call, for his novel Death's End, will be on October 20th.  Even if you haven't read the book, you're welcome to join our calls and listen, or absorb the recordings at your leisure, by supporting me on Patreon at any level:

That's "all" for now! Thank you so much for taking the time to absorb this.  Reach out anytime.

"The growth of languages into their present shape and form—their syntax and grammar—has a universality that suggests a common rule. The rule is that languages have followed their own requirements. The rule is that they are charged with describing the world. There is nothing else to describe."

- Cormac McCarthy