It's been a crazy autumn, friends. I pray that it's been relatively smooth for you, and that you recognize your challenges as collective opportunities for learning, growth, and evolution. May we live in interesting times! It may be hard to keep up the enthusiasm for a transformation that could stretch out past our lifespans, to contribute all we have to building something we won't live to see completed. But that is the human project. Keep with it and I will do the same.
If there's anything that I can do to help you find your peace or purpose through the madness, let me know.
Meanwhile, I'll continue working on what gives my struggles in this life a sense of meaning. Right now that means a book, a studio album, and a podcast, each of them focused on the complicated blessing of a human life in this specific time.
My Patreon subscribers have an inside track with all of this, including early access and exclusive content – plus, the benefits of knowing that you're helping me give everything to spreading messages of inspiration:
Now for all the new work. As always, thanks for reading – and may you discover all of your forgotten blessings, like a twenty in your jeans...
Sneak Peek: New Dinosaur Painting
Here are some sneak peeks of an epic dinosaur piece that I'm working on right now, another window into that revisionist prehistory, The Psychedelic Age of Dinosaurs, I started with these pieces of Tyrannosaurus, Carnotaurus, Spinosaurus, Nanotyrannus, and Triceratops.
Subscribe to me on Instagram for "stories," videos, and other fun ephemera as this piece comes together. It's already shaping up to be one of my most intensely detailed, luminous, and weird live paintings yet...
Hummingbird Blankets Available to Order!
It's time again! I only have a few of these lovely woven cotton blankets on hand that I can ship in time for Christmas – once they're gone, the wait time goes back up to 6-8 weeks, so if you would like to order one of these for someone now's the time! Grab one here (or share this link on wishlists).
Coming Down from CoSM
I just played (and spoke) at Alex & Allyson Grey's Chapel of Sacred Mirrors in upstate New York! CoSM is an amazing place, a worldwide hub for visionary art. My offerings felt very overdue. It's one thing to feel part of a "noetic polity," a community of mind, and quite another to ground that connection face-to-face, together in a place and time. I finally saw and felt what the Greys are building firsthand and it was a truly humbling weekend.
Both my three-hour presentation and my instrumental live set will be made available for free to Patreon supporters soon (and to everyone else sometime in the New Year).
Meanwhile, here's a selfie that my painter hero asked to take with me. :)
Live Looping Guitar Pedalboard Teardown
I would like to make more of an effort to put my skills to work by training other people (in guitar, live looping, paint pens, live art, and whatever else you think that you could learn from me). Skype lessons are one way so let me know if you are into that – another is this walkthrough of my rig:
"Guitar Moderne reader Michael Garfield has a natural science-based perspective on looping and live sampling that is mind expanding. He also offers some straight, nuts-and-bolts info about his gear and how he uses it."
Read all about how I turn one guitar into a symphony of glitched-out cybernetic awesomeness at Guitar Moderne (my favorite blog for experimental guitar).
While I continue grinding away at my book, podcast, and first album of actual SONGS in many years, here's a peek at some of those songs in their earliest public appearance, stripped down solo acoustic, still finding their legs but obviously chomping at the bit and rearing at the gate.
New songs here range the gamut of geek, from a piece about Jurassic Park coming true ("Life Finds A Way") to a piece of gonzo journalism from the space between birth and death ("Indecision") to a weirdly tropical number about the neurophysiology of awakening ("Always Catching Up").
You'll also hear some time-tested versions of old fan favorites like "You Don't Have To Move" and "Let It All Get Out" sprawling into lengthy and weird looping explorations, and – this is a storyteller format set – listen to a lot of weirdo ragged banter between me and everyone who was there for my girlfriend's birthday... Stream or download it on Bandcamp. (This one is free to my subscribers.)
Read all about how I turn one guitar into a symphony of glitched-out cybernetic awesomeness at Guitar Moderne (my favorite blog for experimental guitar).
New Live Release: Austin, Texas 2015-11-11
While I continue grinding away at my book, podcast, and first album of actual SONGS in many years, here's a peek at some of those songs in their earliest public appearance, stripped down solo acoustic, still finding their legs but obviously chomping at the bit and rearing at the gate.
New songs here range the gamut of geek, from a piece about Jurassic Park coming true ("Life Finds A Way") to a piece of gonzo journalism from the space between birth and death ("Indecision") to a weirdly tropical number about the neurophysiology of awakening ("Always Catching Up").
You'll also hear some time-tested versions of old fan favorites like "You Don't Have To Move" and "Let It All Get Out" sprawling into lengthy and weird looping explorations, and – this is a storyteller format set – listen to a lot of weirdo ragged banter between me and everyone who was there for my girlfriend's birthday... Stream or download it on Bandcamp. (This one is free to my subscribers.)
Read the First Few Sections of my Coming Book
Here's the preface and first two short chapters of the book I'm writing, How To Live in the Future. It's an evolutionary tour of hyperspace that hopefully helps people find their way through all the change of our extraordinary century. It begins with an homage to Archeopteryx, my spirit animals, and possibly the most important fossil ever found.
We humans are creatures of becoming, works-in-process – just like the legendary Archeopteryx, the so-called "First Bird" whose discovery in 1861 was the first fossil evidence of evolution by natural selection. Half bird, half reptile, Archeopteryx has much to teach us as we navigate this turbulent transition from apes to angels. This piece I originally wrote for Projections Magazine may well become the preface to my book. Read it here.
My Talk from Sonic Bloom 2016
In this talk I conjured up an even more ambitious bouquet of ideas than usual, constellated around the work of Penn State information scientist Richard Doyle and the argument that art and language grew from psychoactive interspecies intercourse.
What does the evolution of the Mind-At-Large teach us about the role of creativity in culture? How do artists function as the organs of erotic signaling within the selves-enjoying superorganism of the Biosphere? What is the highest purpose art can serve?
All these questions – and more – will be danced around, linked, juggled, entertained, and possibly even answered in this mind-expanding thoughtstream as it makes its way to spill out in the Ocean of Primordial Awareness... Stream or download it here for free.
And, Lastly:
Gift yourself the glowing warmth and satisfaction that you get with patronage this season, and get your front-row seat to my creativity in every medium. It is 1000 times more awesome than just getting emails from me – I host ask-me-anythings, you can connect with other patrons and meet new friends, and you get your name in the acknowledgments when I release the book and album:
"Find what you love and follow it to glory.”
- Abraham Simpson
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