No point in pretending otherwise: these are dark times. So I hope the treasures that I have to share with you help carve a bright, warm haven in the fear and loathing, and restore a sense of peace and beauty to this otherwise benighted Autumn.
NEW ACOUSTIC GUITAR EP
Let's start with some music: twelve minutes of guitar that an executive at my all-time favorite label told me was "a perfect soundtrack for an autumn morning."
Mudras, my new EP of solo fingerstyle guitar tunes, is now live on major streaming platforms. Reviews have been entirely positive; one of my friends, a fabulous guitarist, told me that it made him cry. Maybe 12-minutes of your attention doesn't make even free music exactly "free", but I hope it's the kind of listening that benefits you:
I'm also hard at work on The Age of Reunion, the insanely ambitious singer-songwriter album I've been teasing on this blog for over a decade. It's now halfway done (!) and the latest finished track, "You Don't Have To Move", is up on Patreon. Four other songs are up on Bandcamp, where you can listen to them all and pre-order the LP.
NEW LOOP LIBRARY
And for fellow musicians and sound artists, I just released a library of over 300 loops from some of my most inspired improvisations, recorded on tour across three years and three continents. This archive is organized into 65 tempo-matched scenes in a ready-to-jam Ableton Live set, but fans of other audio software can easily lift the WAV files as-is for use in Logic, ProTools, or whatever floats your boat:
NEW PODCAST EPISODES
I've been chipping away at a couple of paintings; you can follow their progress (as well as the drawings I've made in my daughter's first sketchbook and a colorful bouquet of other visual miscellany) on Instagram. But lately, much more of my time has been going into Future Fossils Podcast, which has become a totally reliable font of inspiring conversations with amazing people:
In episode 151 I talk with Jon Marro, one of the purest creative souls I’ve ever had the luck to encounter, about his relationship to time, identity, and purpose, his commitment to service and the creative life, and where he thinks we are in the Big Picture amidst all the chaos and possibility of 02020.
I speak with the ultra-talented, immediately relatable, and immensely likable Colin Frangicetto about what we’ve learned from our high-dose psychedelic experiences, from our extended and potentially crazy periods of constant synchronicity, and from traveling the world playing music and making art.
I talk with Burning Man’s resident philosopher Caveat Magister, anarchist community organizer Naomi Most, and playa trickster historian Mitch Mignano about the festival’s uneasy but remarkable transition into virtuality. We cover everything from complex systems and the evolution of the city, to the unquantifiable value of culture, to the strange ontologies emerging in our screen-bound era.
An excerpt of this conversation's transcript made it up on Lucid News, one of my favorite psychedelic culture mags, as "Can Burning Man Be Replicated Virtually?" Quick and illuminating read.
NEW WRITING & ANIMATION ON "SLEEPING BEAUTIES"
My first long-form article for Long Now, "Sleeping Beauties of Prehistory and the Present Day," explores five new discoveries, in the fossil record and in living organisms, that interrogate the boundary between the living and the dead...
...and, poetically, at the same time I was writing that I was assigned to produce a new animation for the Santa Fe Institute about what Sidney Redner learned from his survey of 110 years of physics papers — and why some scientific discoveries (what Redner calls "sleeping beauties") take so long to get noticed:
I'll part with the friendly reminder to help keep everybody safe with proper face masks. If somehow you've made it all the way to Autumn 02020 without one of these — or you just want to level up your style — check out the four designs I have up at Idea Fab Labs. You can select from head straps (which I like) or ear loops (if that's more your kind of thing) and each contains a pocket for a fancy filter, if you want to take your safety measures all the way:
“The way we discuss what needs to be done now will shape what it is possible to do. This is not a moment to fix a machine, this is a moment to compose new cultures.”
If you're feeling lonely, cooped up, or just in need of some smart conversations, I hope you'll join some of my friends and I for the weekly casual video hangouts we've been having every Sunday. We've been talking about all kinds of things in light of our unprecedented situation: philosophy, economics, personal creative process, family life... We're having two more of these open discussions on 19 & 26 April at 2 pm Mountain. If it'd help you, I hope you'll join us. Details here.
And now, here's all of the new creative work I've bled into lately, for the benefit of everyone.
My love to all of you. Stay safe and happy, and don't forget to ask for help.
My next album continues to ooze forth at approximately one song per four months. Songwriting and production is the one place in my life where I can create art selfishly, uncompromisingly, obsessed, and etch away at lovingly-crafted intricate and living works for months or years, feeling all the while as if I'm swept up in The Great Work.
The first two songs of this as-yet-unnamed, long overdue LP are here, along with their backstories.
Here's the latest tune, on time and mind, as well as lyrics and the story of its very psychedelic origins.
Walking, according to physiologists, is a controlled fall forwards.
Toddling to tottering, all of us are always one step from and one step toward. But life's just like that. Languages grow at the rhythm of walking pace, and every idea you inhabit is seconds behind your Original Face...
Four New Spring Paintings
Here are four smaller (12") paintings I've cooked up in the last couple cooped-up weeks. No names for any of these. Top two on stretched canvas, bottom two on cradled artboard. Check my Instagram for different angles/lighting/context. Each one is up for grabs; I won't make prints.
Commercial break: now is a great time to buy art, because the artists need support and deals abound. If you have ever wanted to own a piece of mine, drop me a line. I will be glad to show you what I've got and give you a post-apocalyptic (half or more off) discount...
And now, two awesome conversations that I hope will help you make good sense of life right now:
We’re extra lucky to have not one but three amazing guests this week: culture critic and religious scholar Erik Davis, philosopher and author Tony Blake, and trickster historian Mitch Mignano. A deep dive into the mythic and mystical dimensions of our moment — including nonhuman agency, the virus as teacher, Pan and panic and pandemics, solutionism isn’t the solution, the danger of efficiency logic, and a media diet for meditation on the darkness of nature.
This week’s guest is Nora Bateson, Director of the International Bateson Institute, author, film-maker, and founder of the Warm Data Lab. Nora is a magician when it comes to getting people to live the relational and dynamic, the embodied and incompressible. I’m honored that we got to sit down for a US-Sweden Zoom call and talk about how current world events touch down in the messy and beautiful everyday.
A transcript of Episode 139 in which I rant about our situation from the POV of an armchair systems thinker and weird artist, invoking everyone from Alan Moore to Charles Eisenstein:
"The best possible outcome I can imagine from this is to witness all of the creative and intelligent people who have been shackled to pointless, stupid, undignified work for our entire lives rise up and create something new and beautiful together. Emergencies often elicit the best of our humanity, a concern for the true priorities of our existence. These are moments when we are called to act on what really matters, and to contribute to our communities and to the legacy that we pass on, at a time when good ideas are unusually quick to spread."
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.
"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
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!)
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.)
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:
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:
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:
"When the evolutionary process shifts from biology to software technology the body becomes the old hardware environment. The human body is now a probe, a laboratory for experiments."
How is 2014 treating you guys? Me: superconducting creativity like graphene, transparent to my own motives and desires like glass, but under a lot of pressure like diamond. The Year of the Horse is already off to a gallop, with some amazing new gigs – including tonight's show at The Scottish Rite Theater in Austin, doing a special A/V performance with Topher Sipes after the screening of my friend Rak Razam's ayahuasca documentary. Here are a few more to look forward to in the next month:
I will of course record as much as possible to share with all of you who can't make it there in person. And now on to all of the goodies I have for you this week! Enjoy, and stay in touch...
One of the most awesome conversations I've ever had! My friend Bill Ottman at Minds.cominvited me to help him curate an all-star panel discussion with stem cell researcher and complexity theorist Neil Theis, information scientist and sci-fi professor Richard Doyle, religious scholar and culture critic Erik Davis, and historian and all-around badass Mitch Mignano.
Our 110-minute conversation ranged from whether the universe is alive to the implications of open-source software in government, the consciousness of subatomic particles to the the spiritual consequences of Fukushima. If you want to blow your mind, make some time to watch this.
I was honored to participate in this amazing benefit compilation. From my friends at LostinSound:
LostinSound.org is happy to announce our V/A Winter Compilation of 2014. This collection features an eclectic track list from 21 of today's most talented and relevant producers. Our winter edition brings something completely new and different to the table, so wash your hands, and get ready to feast on a royal banquet of unreleased material.
We’d like to thank each and everyone of these artists for their tremendous contribution towards this compilation, and their continued support of Lost in Sound as a collective. A special mention goes out to Jacob Unmess for designing the unbelievable cover art for this season’s compilation. 25 limited edition 11x17 prints are available in the "Merch" section of this page.
For the first time ever, we are encouraging but not requiring donations. 100% of these donations will be given to an incredible organization entitled “Transform Relief.” After the most severe typhoon in recorded history hit the Philippines last November, hundreds of thousands of people have been displaced from their homes and lack access to food or fresh water. Transform Relief is not only bringing radical aid but empowering people to grow their own food using sustainable practices, and non-GMO, fast growth seeds. We will publish a full feature tomorrow when the compilation is released.
We feel obligated to use our skills and our large networks of activated youth to help our brothers and sisters who are in great need. We’ve been given a chance as a collective to unify and aid in a way that transcends what any one individual could accomplish alone. So, if you feel moved, please donate when you download the compilation, be sure to get to know our ally's at Transform Relief.
Excerpts from the epic three-hour-plus, still-going-from-an-all-nighter rant I gave at Gratifly Festival in Avalon, South Carolina, 27 July 2013.
This talk is a map of the problematique - the tragedy and blessing of the human condition as it specifically manifests in an age of metamorphosis. Old worlds are dying and new worlds are being born. How do we navigate the change? By taking a cosmic perspective.
I wish I had the whole three hours for you...but due to the fact that this was recorded on my pocket digital camera, I was limited by the lifespan of my lithium batteries. Consequently the audio is also substandard, but I am nonetheless happy to share it. There's something magical about what came through in that place and time – exhausted and in love...
New Mind Folds
"Author & Inventor" (as it says euphemistically on the packaging) Alex Grey invented these modified blindfolds to let people experience total darkness with their eyes open. Perfect for simulating blindness or going on mental journeys in the daytime, Mind Folds are also a fun surface for me to practice my oil painting technique. Email me with your budget if you'd like one!
I do pretty much all of my work as a gift to the commons (that's you!) and am supported by people's donations – I'm now accepting Bitcoin as well as monthly subscriptions through Paypal on my homepage – but if you want to help me stay afloat as an artist and get something cool out of the deal, here are some options for you:
Thanks for reading! Stay in touch and have a beautiful day...
"You don't own your reputation. Most people think they do, but the reality is different. Your reputation is the accumulation of what other people think about what they think you have done or said. In other words, your reputation consists of other people's projections. You don't own that and you don't control it. You can influence it, but only up to a point."
Thank you to everyone who supported my recent crowdfunding campaign! We managed to raise enough to keep me warm and fed this winter as I get cracking on the backbone of my new book and continue to freely share more videos and writing through and about Google Glass (and living through intense technological change in general).
If you'd still like to donate but missed the window for contributing to my Indiegogo campaign, don't sweat it - you can make a paypal donation, and just let me know in the "note" section which of the perks from my campaign you'd like as a gesture of my appreciation for your support.
My summer tour is over and I'm ready again for cozy months of painting while I listen to inspiring podcasts. If you'd like a custom hat, feel free to drop me a line. Orders start at $150 (including the hat) and I am not doing any more Bassnectar or Pretty Lights designs. (Sorry, kids, but I'd rather not capitalize on someone else's stardom – and you'll thank me when you can still wear the hat in ten years.)
Since “no problem can be solved from the level of thinking that created it,” let’s look at our ecological crisis from the only angle that will help us solve it: not as an invasive species separate from the rest of the biosphere and “killing the planet,” but as something the Earth is doing, part of the story of life, participants in the distributed intelligence of the evolutionary process and thus performing a valuable function we cannot fully understand. This is the sixth mass extinction, so let’s look at how we (identifying with life as a whole, since we have never been completely removed from the layer of life that covers this planet) made it through a comparable crisis before. (Read more...)
Or if you're more of a video person, here is the article above in improvised rant form. Not as articulate, perhaps, but you can read along to the transcript and listen to the stirring musical accompaniment!
"Metaphorical thinking — our instinct not just for describing but for comprehending one thing in terms of another, for equating I with an other — shapes our view of the world, and is essential to how we communicate, learn, discover, and invent. Metaphor is a way of thought long before it is a way with words."
My talk from Rootwire Music and Arts Festival 2013 on how to use a suite of new metaphors to navigate the shifting landscape of 21st Century self and society. Topics include:
• What "The Great Oxygenation Event" of 2.5 billion years ago has in common with our current industrial eco-catastrophe, and how it might inform a solution;
• Why the universe is equally well-described as ramping "up" and "down" – and how these forces merge in the ever-morphing now;
• How every act of communication is both a manifestation of mind and an attempt to promote a specific perspective;
• How experiencing the Earth as a superorganism informs a more responsible theory of economics;
• And more ideas from the fractal horizons of human experience...
Mark Heley, author of The Everything Guide to 2012, speaks on taking a galactic perspective at Fractal Planet, Burning Man, 29 August 2013. I sit in, along with my friends Mitch Mignano and Jonathan Zap, on the conversation. We discuss the cosmic timing of mass extinctions, our need to understand the dynamic environment of interstellar space, and how we are learning to pilot "Spaceship Earth" into a new and stranger century...
