Owl Painting from Rootwire/AO | Gratifly 2013 Live Set | MG on Google Glass at Burning Man

"The next time you get really angry about the evils of the system, notice how good it feels, and understand how that feeling takes power away from the better angels of your nature and turns it over to something that longs for destruction, conflict and brutality as goods unto themselves. Understand that the best practice is the cultivation of your own consciousness."

– KMO

In this issue, I'm proud to share some of my finest work to date – new art, music, and ideas! An illustration from my imaginary field guide to hyperspace creatures; my first-ever full concert recording, from Gratifly Festival; and the talk I gave at Burning Man on the social and philosophical implications of wearable computing.

While I continue my search for an appropriate booking agent and record label, I'm still doing the occasional gig and soaking up inspiration for the next round of cool offerings.  As always, your comments and suggestions are encouraged.  Enjoy, and thank you for your support!

Inner Light

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20"x30" – oil & acrylic paint markers on canvas – painted live at:

• Little Tree Art Studios - 2013 08 08 (Atlanta, GA) for Kynara, Feverkin, The Fresh French

• Rootwire Music & Arts Festival 2013 08 15 - 18 for Papadosio Live PA, Evan Marc, Aligning Minds, Open Source, Hundred Waters, Dirtwire, ESKMO, The Malah, Bluetech, Welder

• Be:Tribe Gathering - 2013 09 12 (Dallas, TX) for Kaminanda, The Nadis Warriors

• Art Outside Festival 2013 10 20, 21 for Rena Jones, Bluetech, Psymbionic, Nit Grit, Happy Happy James, Brede, Somatoast, Bird of Prey, Kyle Hollingsworth Band, ISHI, The Nadis Warriors

My latest live painting is the consequence of a collision between hyperspace and the owl fetish that's haunted me since moving to Austin two years ago. Shout out to Augustin Lesage and Louis Wain, two men who went famously mad and became awesome (entirely sober) psychedelic artists.  This piece is inspired by their work,  as well as a few positively strange experiences that got me wondering about the origins of owl medicine.  Basically:  do hyperdimensional intelligences appear to us in the form of cartoon animals, as an interface that helps manage the overwhelming ineffability of higher realms?  Do our folk stories and animal archetypes point to a totally nuts "self-transforming" world beyond mundane appearances?  My vote is yes.

I had this piece scanned, so if you'd like a full-size stretched canvas giclee (practically indistinguishable from the original, and maybe even a little more durable) – email me for pricing.

Click below for a detailed look at the process:

Avalon Through Glass:

Live at Gratifly Music & Arts Festival

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A record of the most ambitious, visionary concert I have ever performed.  Listen to this loud on big speakers...preferably during a storm.

Improvised on guitar, voice, and effects at Gratifly Music & Arts Festival on the LostInSound.org Synergy Stage, 26 July 2013 (Carl Jung & Aldous Huxley's birthday). This chronicles, in its entirety, the first concert ever streamed through Google Glass over video chat and projected back on stage, creating an artist-audience feedback loop!

Lyrics are from poems turned into song on the spot. All instrumental sounds are from live guitar and hardware processing (no computers). The Glass was ceremonially consecrated that evening to ensure its use as an instrument of good.

Special thanks to my Indiegogo campaign supporters:
Adam Scott Miller, Alan Wood, Allan Badiner, Asa Henderson, Austin W. Lucas, Ben Gordon, Billy Mays III, Brett Bonnist, Brett Thomas, Brian Hampton, Candy Hogrefe, Carl Jacobson, Chelsea Schulz, Christopher Ergen, Cody Westerlund, Connor Wood, Dan Sockrider, David Hyde, David Swirsky, Diana Martinez, Douglas Tataryn, Eliza R. Williams, Erin O'Brien, Evan Snyder, George Crosby, Harlan Emil Gruber, Isabella Melo, Jason White, Jessica Nielson, Joey Walter, John Harrison, Jonathan Zap, Jordan Allen, Jordan Sadler, Joseph Chang, Josh Audiss, Kevin Seagraves, Kristen Wood, Kylie stein, Lawrence Wang, Lindsey Wilkinson, Marcello Herreshoff, Marya Stark, Michael William Benton, Molly Gardner, Nick Kampe, Patrick Gomez, Phil Osophical, Philip Heath, Richard Guerra, Robin Arnott, Ryan Meredith, Sandra Lam, Sebastian Siegel, Simon Haiduk, Stephen C. Drena, Steven Sampson, Sven Jorgensen, Tara Fahmie, Taylor Steelman, Thomas Stokes, Tristan Gulliford, Tyler Kimbro, Ursula Anderson, Vance Feldman
...we did it!

Dedicated to Donna Merrill.

Life In The Glass Age:

Michael Garfield at Palenque Norte 2013

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"Glass’s success isn’t predicated on how it looks. Rather, it’s all about how Glass invites us to lookand how it makes us more aware of when and where we’re looking. The ecstasy-inducing capacity of Google Glass lies in the pleasure of watching: watching others, being watched, and watching for the meaning of the technocultural moment heralded by Google’s evocative new product. Glass promises a new way to get out of our own bodies and to enter those of others. And we like it."

– John Garrison, "How Glass Magnifies Desire"

My provocative talk on Google Glass as the emblem of a new era – in which democratized surveillance and the "individual" self have become the medium of avant social art, and we have a responsibility to reprogram them for the greater good of an emerging planetary consciousness.  Recorded for the Psychedelic Salon podcast, as part of the Palenque Norte lecture series at Burning Man, 30 August 2013.

If this talk inspires you and you'd like to stay abreast of my tech news and commentary, join the conversation about art, technology, and consciousness in my new facebook group, Life in the Glass Age.

What We Can Learn From Mass Extinctions | Metaphors & Meta-organisms | The Science of Transformation | Back in the Hat Game

"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."

– Ken McLeod

“If you don't have enemies, you don't have character.”

– Paul Newman

Life in the Glass Age: Technology, Art, & Consciousness

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).

I've started a new FB group – "Life in the Glass Age: Technology, Art, & Consciousness" – to keep the conversation going.  Please join us there with your questions, comments, and news items.

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.

And now for some big new stuff:

Organizing my thoughts for The Long-Delayed Book!

From catastrophe, new life.  Luckily I've been a compulsive note-taker for the last eight years...

Back in the Hat Game

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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.)

What We Can Learn From Mass Extinctions

Read at BigThink.com

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...)

Find hope for the future by studying the past.

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!

Meta-phors & -organisms, my talk from Rootwire 2013

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"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."

– James Geary

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 at Fractal Planet: The Science of Transformation

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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...

My Creation Skateboard Is Here! | Burning Man Through Google Glass | Rootwire Mural Video | New Live Painting

"As consciousness expands, so does the risk of insanity."
– John Horgan

"Our idea of unity and our way of solving conflicts is simply to eliminate one of the two parties...But this is the habitual dualist's solution to the problem of dualism:  to solve the dilemma by chopping off one of the horns."
– Alan Watts

My Creation Skateboards deck is finally here!

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Before I say another word, let me simply revel with you in a moment of modest success:  back in January over 1300 friends, family, and total strangers voted my design to victory in the international Creation Skateboards DIY Contest.  Thank you guys so much!  I just got word from the company that the boards are on their way – and not a moment too soon, because I'm broke as a joke after summer tour and needed another kickass perk for my indiegogo campaign to help support me while I pursue my Greater Calling as writer of provocative, futuristic meta-disciplinary ecodelia.  

So please:  buy this skateboard by contributing to my campaign.  You're helping me dedicate more time to sharing my words and insights with the world, and less time to hustling art.

Here's what's been on my mind, of late:

Someone whose opinion I greatly respect just pointed out to me that my posts about Google Glass sound like unequivocally positive fanboy raving - "breathless like a nun in adoration" - and so I want to be totally clear about how conflicted and ambivalent I am about all of this. It's important you guys know where I'm coming from, and that I'm not just gleefully strolling into Borgdom. In fact, the only reason I took on this opportunity as a beta tester is because the whole thing scares me silly.

I'm terrified by the knowledge that the people in power today think human beings can be reduced to data and reprogrammed...by the thought that I may not even recognize my children as human, or the world they grow up in as one in which we can survive. That we will be so caught up in the "bread and circus" of our Brave New World that won't even remember what we've lost.

But fearing the technological future feels to me like a symptom of the same dissociation that got us into this mess in the first place: the idea that we are separate from the automatic, unconscious realm of nature and the body, that we are one thing and the planet is another.

That is exactly why I agreed to become a Glass Explorer – to face these fears, to better understand them, to find what peace I can in my heart torn between enthusiasm for a world of unimagined possibilities and grief for a world crushed underfoot by machines. Demons are angels denied, hell is heaven resisted. I feel the urging of a greater Self and I'd rather help it come alive in love than fear.

Kevin Kelly inspired me with the thesis of his book What Technology Wants that we take a more deliberate, discerning approach to technological adoption. That we not simply rush in aroused by the thrill of novelty. That we treat our technologies (both machines and ideas) as our children - acknowledging that they have a life of their own, and we can only do our best to rear them lovingly.

What some might call giving myself to Google in human sacrifice, I call choosing to love a problem child, in the hope that taking the third path between the past-loathing uncritical techno-optimist and future-loathing neo-luddite reactionary will lead us into a world where the Made can get along with the Born.

If I'm a sacrifice, it's in the service of trying to teach people how to relate to technology with caution, care, sensitivity, and discernment. I think the vast majority of my fellow Glass Explorers are just cracked out on a Future High and walking into an open manhole. All the more reason to try and be a loud, exemplary exception to the rule. Figure out what good things can be done with this, and how to think about it in a healthy way.

The knights of old wielded double-edged swords. They were trusted to do so. Just because something could hurt you doesn't mean we shouldn't use it. (In fact, "If guns are outlawed...") So yeah, I'm an enthusiast. A reluctant enthusiast. I want to do my small part to steer this in the right direction.

"The good news is that the increase in entropy of the civilization we're experiencing is, in a sense, feeding the whole new information of a planetary culture. It's precisely the chaos of an industrial society that is creating the passion to create alternatives, so that the entropy or noise is creating the possibilities for innovation and music."

–William Irwin Thompson

This is a conversation.  Feel free to weigh in on Facebook or Indiegogo, or email me personally.  I'll find a way to answer you in the essays I'm writing about this over the next several months.  Your feedback is invaluable to me.

In the meantime, below are the some of the videos I've taken through Glass at Burning Man & Rootwire:

Message To Your Future Self, Part Three

Daniel Pinchbeck on Surveillance & Transparency

The Cathedral of Celestial Mathgic Through Glass

Rootwire Collaboration Mural Through Glass

The Arrest

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Dedicated to everyone violated by the prison industrial complex for a nonviolent crime.  I wanted to do a painting that disturbed me, that was visceral and unsettling.  That felt violating.  (And, I wanted to ape the style of my homie and fellow live painter Andy Reed.)  I don't know if I pulled it off...looking at it now, all I can think is "space bacon."  Which in some weird way, I guess, is appropriate.  :P

Painted live at

Ecstatic Saturdays (Dallas, TX) 2013 04 13 - Bliss Goddess

The Upper Decks (ATX) 2013 04 19 - Sun Salutation

The Parish (ATX) 2013 04 27 - A Live One, Papadosio

The Granada Theater (Lawrence, KS) 2013 05 01 - Papadosio

Californos (KCMO) 2013 06 29 - Luminaries, Miss Conception, Wstndgrl

The Parish (ATX) 2013 07 04 - Psymbionic, Gladkill, Andreilien (Heyoka)

The Parish (ATX) 2013 07 05 - Mountain Standard Time, Earphunk

12th & Porter (Nashville) 2013 07 21 - Gates

Click for a closer look at the process:

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That's all for now, folks.  I know it's a lot.  I'm being way too productive these days.  Thanks for sticking with it!  Love and gratitude...

New Painting, Music, & Enamel Pins | Message To Your Future Self | Burning Man Schedule

"Any action can be practiced as an art, as a craft, or as drudgery."

– Stephen Nachmanovitch, Free Play (p10)

"From the evidence...it seems that feeling good is not enough. People need meaning to thrive."

– Emily Esfahani Smith

I'm leaving today for Burning Man (schedule below) and will spend the next week collecting interviews and other inspirational content to share with you all...in the meantime, my tireless sharing includes:

• My live painting from Gratifly Music & Arts Festival,

• My deepest, jazziest album of cyberacoustic guitar music to date;

• A new series of crowd-sourced inspirational videos taken through Google Glass;

...as well as some very shiny enamel pins!  I think that's already more than I should try and lay on you at once, but I've always been better at making art than hustling it.  Enjoy, and have a magnificent week!

"Message To Your Future Self" Video Series

I think it's very important to have a conversation about what role Glass (and other vastly more powerful technologies just around the bend) can play in our lives - how to wield these double-edged swords constructively, how to bring the new world into being in ways that maximize its promise and minimize its peril.   I really want us to have a thoughtful conversation about this and welcome your thoughts and feedback by email or publicly on this facebook event page.

My first idea for using Glass to empower and uplift people was to take 10-second videos of everyone who wanted to share their message with the world:

Part 1: Gratifly & Unitus Festivals

Watch in HD on Youtube

Part 2: Rootwire Festival

Watch in HD on Youtube

In the last six years I have given almost all of my work away for free to people out of faith that the most important thing is to help people find meaning and purpose in their lives, not set a price on the value of my time. So please take a moment to check out what I'm doing with Glass and make a contribution to my fundraising campaign if you can.

My New Enamel Pin Collection

Buy the whole set for $50 + s/h or individually: Triceratops | Butterfly | Dragon

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Thanks to The Headspace for their help making this happen!  A little about each design:

"As Awesome As Three Unicorns" (the dinosaur) – Painted at Sonic Bloom in 2012, this piece bridges my two lives as a scientific illustrator and live artist, and ended up in the collection of Mary Jane, the youngest live painter ever, who is also totally awesome. 

"Every Day Is A New Year" (the dragon) – Painted at Rootwire and Art Outside Festivals as well as innumerable other small shows, this piece was my anticipatory portrait of 2013, an homage to the late Terence McKenna, and led to my being selected by Google for their Glass Explorer Program.

"Takes Flight" (the butterfly) – Painted at the MAPS 2010 Psychedelic Science Conference, this piece was inspired by a vision I received in a workshop with Alex & Allyson Grey the day before the event.

A New Album of Oceanic Cyber-Guitar Grooves

Stream/Download it here

Grab "Dance on the Roof" for free on Soundcloud

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I'm rebranding my work as an electroacoustic improvisational instrumentalist to reflect the inherent contradictions in making electronic music on an acoustic guitar – and to tap into the potent relationship I've developed with owl medicine since moving to Austin two years ago.  Here's a little bit about this release and the work to come:

If Michael Garfield can be said to collect anything, it would be great gigs in strange venues – from The Cave Without A Name to the MAPS Psychedelic Science conference, from Black Rock Desert to all four stages in the Austin-Bergstrom International Airport. 

Possessed by a passion for the feeling of spaces and determined to translate "vibe" into sound, Michael's increasingly all-improvised acoustic-electronic sets wed house concert intimacy with ravetastic cyberdelia in magical performances that draw down the spirit of a place into music. 

Capturing both past and future in alchemical alloys where fingerpicking and hardware live PA join in soaring transcendental freestyles, this is music as adventurous as the stages on which it's performed. Half Zen calligrapher and half starship captain, Michael Garfield is building a cathedral of sound for our paradoxical Age of Transition. 

Album artwork by Bonnie Goodson.

New Live Painting From Gratifly Festival

Splash!

11" x 17" Prints For Sale Here

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24"x36" - paint markers on masonite

Original available - email me to inquire/offer

Painted live at Gratifly Music and Arts Festival to the music of:
Thriftworks, Gaudi, Papadosio, Kalya Scintilla, The Werks,
Eskmo, Govinda, Desert Dwellers, Akara DJ, Ployd

My Burning Man Schedule

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• Tuesday ("Monday Night"): Center Camp Café

12:45 - 1:30 am: Cyberacoustic Guitar Improv

• Wednesday: Center Camp Café

4:00 - 5:00 pm: "These are the Good Old Days: Reverse Nostalgia from a Citizen of the Future" (talk)

5:30 - 6:00 pm: Cyberacoustic Guitar for the Aerial Dance Showcase

• Thursday: Fractal Planet Speaker Series

2:30 - 3:45 pm: Taking A Cosmic Perspective (talk)

7:30 - 8:15 pm: Musical Break - Cyberacoustic Guitar 

• Friday: Palenque Norte Speaker Series

2:00 - 3:00 pm: "The Age of Aquarius & The End of the Cargo Cult" (talk)

• Saturday: Sacred Spaces Village

5:00 - 6:00 pm: Cyberacoustic Guitar in the Grand Hall 

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.

My Talk From Rootwire, Best Hat Yet, & New Live Music Archive

"There are some people who live in a dream world, and there are some who face reality

– and then there are those who turn one into the other."

– Douglas Everett

“Everything that is really great and inspiring is created by the individual who can labor in freedom.”

– Albert Einstein

Thank you all for supporting my efforts to make my life an inspiration and example to others, to help people find a way to bring their work and creativity together.  All of us can live a life of passionate and illuminated service.  Here's how I'm doing that, for now:

My Talk From Rootwire Festival

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Just say yes to evolution!  The talk I gave at Rootwire Music & Arts Festival in between awesome offerings by Jamaica Stevens of Tribal Convergence and visionary artist Amanda Sage, and featuring a guest appearance by the awesome electronic producer Evan Skytree Snyder.  May it serve you in your continued growth and learning...

"I think there is a great deal of coming out right now, as we admit ourselves to ourselves.  As we step forward and identify as children of the planet to the parents who may still be identifying with nationalistic or industrial concerns, with specific ideologies or cultural affiliations.  These are things to be celebrated because we no longer rely on them.  They're an art form, now, not a technology of survival.  Terence McKenna said that culture is not your friend, but that's not entirely true; culture is an art project, now.  It can be our friend if we raise it to learn to be our friend, because the choice is ours."

Custom-Painted Hats

Orders for more detailed, time-intensive hats have been coming in, and I've been having a blast with it!  Check out my full gallery of 100+ painted hats if you'd like inspiration for your own custom design.

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New Live Shows, All Free at Archive.org

I put out a lot of music.  A lot.  In order to separate studio-produced or deeply-curated live albums from less epic (but still worth-sharing) recordings, I've decided to launch a page at archive.org's etree Live Music Archive.  These are all partial shows – some more complete than others – free and fun and full of silly banter and strange sonic experiments.

If you like what I'm doing enough to buy some music, here & here are two great albums worth sharing. I'm about to record a long-overdue studio album and can definitely use your help to bring it into being!

Thanks, and enjoy...

download it here

Fifteen minutes of raw, molten basement jams with acoustic & electronic drums.

download it here

Twenty minutes of touchstyle guitar etudes & silly banter from my show in Boulder this summer.

download it here

On sacred land in the desert outside of Albuquerque this summer, I let it get as weird as possible....

download it here

A pretty solid sampling of both my acoustic singer-songwriter music and cyberacoustic improvisations.

A Sneak Peek Of My Coolest Painting Yet

"Be fearless and pure; never waver in your determination or your dedication to the spiritual life.  Give freely.  Be self-controlled, sincere, truthful, loving, and full of the desire to serve.  Learn to be detached and to take joy in renunciation.  Do not get angry or harm any living creature, but be compassionate and gentle; show good will to all.  Cultivate vigor, patience, will, purity; avoid malice and pride.  Then, you will achieve your destiny."

– Krishna

Every Day Is A New Year (Unfinished)

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Preorder Prints of the Finished Painting

Click on the picture to get a better look at my anticipatory portrait of 2013, in all of its dragon-UFO-space-buddha glory.  (In an homage to Android Jones' 2011 Burning Man ticket art, yes that is a tiny buddha meditating on the brow of the great dragon.)  I started this piece at Rootwire Festival back in August and have taken it all over Central Texas since, including Art Outside Festival and shows with Papadosio, Octopus Nebula, The Human Experience, and Kaminanda.

I'm taking preorders now for 11"x17" prints of the completed painting (I want to have it finished in time for the Solstice, wink) – as well as accepting bids for the painting itself, which will be professionally scanned and made available on stretched canvas fine art giclée prints for anyone interested.

(Everyone who preorders it gets a free download of my album, Golden Hour: A Cyberacoustic Summer Daydream, which is indeed about as dreamy as I can make it.  Good for writing and yoga, I hear.  Enjoy!)

 Click for a closer view of the process:

Visionary Soundscapes:

A Conversation with Electronic Musician Mystical Sun

My latest article for badass culture blog Reality Sandwich is an in-depth conversation with studio electronic music sculptor Mystical Sun.  Here's a taste.  You can read the entire conversation and album review here...

"The relationship between 'music' and 'noise' is that they're from the same source and everything else is just subtle differences.  I don't distinguish between the two.  Typical music is about relationships, emotions, stories, opinions, politics, etc.  The vision I have for my music is closer to virtual reality:  I'm not writing songs about what's happened in my life; I'm attempting to create music that transports listeners out of the day-in/day-out world, like a good science fiction movie might...each second is unique and not repeated."

- Mystical Sun

The Latest Custom Painted Hats

It continues to amaze me that sometime in the last year I acquired a reputation for "straight killin' it with the dope headwear"...as it were.  ;)  I'm honored and endlessly grateful that you all continue to show your support and offer me these opportunities to bless your heads.  If you'd like your own one-of-a-kind custom hat, or want me to make one for someone you love, just email me and we can talk budget and logistics.  You can check out the hats so far on my FB art page.

This one was for a friend to wear at his wedding:

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This one was a birthday present for a Bassnectar fan, so I worked the logo all subtly into a few places:

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Help Me Win 75 Hours of Studio Recording Time!

Thanks to everyone who has voted so far, I'm pulling a 100-vote lead in a competition by The Recording Conservatory of Austin to win 75 hours of studio recording time...this is the break that would finally enable me to record the pro studio album I've been wanting to make for over a decade.

Please take ten seconds to vote for me (you don't have to sign up for anything) and SHARE THIS LINK with your friends:  http://a.pgtb.me/cG4D  Voting ends December 4th. One vote per IP address and email address. Play fair, now!

And once you've voted, please help yourself to a complimentary copy of Deleted Scenes: Outtakes from Love Scenes & Field Recordings, my latest live EP.  Not to mention all of the other music I've made available as a gift to you...

Thank You

That's all for now.  Thank you so much for reading!  This newsletter is a constant reminder to be grateful for my opportunity to serve and inspire others.  Without you, I would never have learned how doing what I love can have a positive impact on people.  So let me just express my deep gratitude for you, on the other end of this connection.  I wish you a most wonderful day!