Rainbow Unicorn Xenomorph Painting • New Psych-Futurist Writing • Electric Ballads EP • Unplugged Peter Gabriel Cover • New Future Fossils Podcasts

“If you have a good idea, SAY IT, for God’s Sake!”

– Terence McKenna

Greetings, everyone – I hope your summer's going well!  (And that if you're in Santa Fe this week, you'll join me and a lot of awesome scientists and artists at the Interplanetary Festival...)

Here are the things I've made for you in the last month:

New Painting:
"They Only Come Out At Night, Mostly...Mostly"

36"x24" - paint pens on stretched canvas

painted live at Cosmic Flux Festival (AR) and Tap Iñ 2 (TX)

plus copious studio time over April & May 2018

- Buy A Print -

For anyone who loves HR Giger or Lisa Frank, or both, or unicorns and rainbows and pegasuses and chestbursters and biomechanical horror. Transgressive, suggestive, and downright queer (in the original sense: weird, strange, abnormal). Not intersectional, though – unless by that you mean the intersection of alien parasites and cuddly mammals (of which I will always approve, in fiction).

The title is a pun.  Guess I'm just in a "let your freak flag fly" mood...in addition to being WAY into skirting that edge between light and darkness, the sacred and profane, the happy and the horrible.  As should be evident in my latest piece of writing:

New Essay: 

"The Future Acts Like You"

Read on Medium

The latest chapter of my book-in-progress, How To Live in the Future, this twelve-minute read explores our coming age of simulated digital persons and the merged analog-digital identities we may one day possess; the effect of human cloning on the War of the Sexes; and as much deliciously freaky psychedelic futurism as I can squeeze into one wild, jazzy riff.  Enjoy!

New Free EP:

"Electric Cowboy Ballads"

Download for FREE on Bandcamp

Three new recordings on voice and solo electric guitar (Oh electric guitar, where have you been all my life?), recorded in Austin and San Marcos, 2018.

My life as a singer-songwriter is understated, passionately soulful but not something that I flaunt around. It is, however, closer to my sense of self than being a live painter, or a futurist, or essayist. Playing guitar and writing music are, I think, the best ways I know how to get a point across. These songs say more with less than I seem to be able to in other writing, or in conversation.

I wrote the closest thing I've ever made to outlaw country, "Don't Fret," in 2001; I wrote the tender neuroscience anthem "Always Catching Up" in 2015 as part of the windfall from an ayahuasca mishap; and I never actually wrote "Electric Improvisation in D Major" to begin with, just attuned to its always-already-ness and let it speak through me. So you're hearing a wide swath of my inner life and musical identity in three relatively short movements.

New Video:

Acoustic Cover of Peter Gabriel's "Don't Give Up"

Watch on YouTube

One of my favorite songs by one of my favorite artists. Peter Gabriel said he wrote this piece after seeing a collection of National Geographic's photographs from The Great Depression...since most Americans haven't benefited from economic growth since the 1960s, and my generation in particular got out of school just as the sub-prime mortgage crisis happened, I feel like many of us can resonate with these powerful lyrics.

This is my own arrangement, down 1/2 step from the original version. And yeah, I know I don't sound like Kate Bush, but hopefully you can forgive me. :)

New Episodes of Future Fossils Podcast

If you're not already in on this stream of amazing conversations, now's a great time to dive in.  As far as I'm concerned the guests and topics just keep getting better.  Image links are to the downloads and show notes for each episode, but you can find them on any podcast platform:

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts • Stitcher • Spotify • iHeart Radio

Join our Facebook Discussion Group

  

 

Stuff You Might Have Missed

 

My Finest Live Record To Date | Midwest Real Podcast | More Gigs in CO, TX

"You've got what the intergalactic call a very 'planetary' mindset, Morty."

– Rick Sanchez, Rick & Morty

"For one brief moment, I felt the heartbeat of creation, and it was one with my own."
"We ALL feel like that all the time. You don't hear US gassing on about it."

– Philip J. Fry & Bender Rodriguez, Futurama

––––––––––– Presenting my new live LP, Balance! –––––––––––

This month's big announcement is what I believe might be my single finest instrumental concert yet.  After ten years of perfecting my unique live rig, creative palette, workflow, tone, and voice, I've finally arrived at cruising altitude.  It's music for discovering the peace you are...with plenty of adventure, longing, glitch, and psychedelia along the way.  Enjoy!

Credit: Photo by Michael Grab | gravityglue.com @gravityglue

Pay-What-You-Want Download Here

When you buy music on Bandcamp, other people can see that the album is getting support – your avatar and comments are displayed on the album page – and they're more likely to buy it themselves.  Your purchase makes a huge difference in how new fans encounter my work!  So thank you...

An opportunity to publicly declare that you support smart music.

(Of course, you're absolutely welcome to have it for free, as well.)

Here's what some wild-eyed young kook wrote about this album:

This is the only audio recording of an musical performance that occurred on June 13th, 2015, in concert with Andrew 7 Sealy's yoga class at Firefly Gathering, in outside Flagstaff, Arizona. It descended in the pocked debris field of an old eruption, now a hilly grove of evergreens within a grassy valley deep in Northern Arizona. As the spirit of this place condensed, it clattered through a man-shaped sieve of road-emboldened curiosity and dedication to the task, then killed and resurrected the guitar by using it to channel deep-time grooves through sampled and remixed, responsive, warm, and fluid sound.

What happened there: from wood and magnets, spacey and pastoral rhymes and dreamy neo-minimalist folk-funk evolved some teeth and veered afield to afrobeat and glitch and UFO sound healing, kinda change-your-life shit, and True. Future. Jazz.

One instant reverent and pure as prayer, and then it’s like some weird organic bio-metal fused from everyone’s collected effort that surrounds and holds us, flowing chrome reflecting rainbows. Starting off all kissy, it becomes a party, goes through growing pains, and takes you through them with it, but you GET there – you can catch your breath atop the mountain and behold the epic vista, and we’re all relieved together and we’re all one thing and THAT’S the kinda show it was and is and always is.

When being part of something taking form inspires all of us to grow as well, and tells us through a kind of ritual that circumstances always change – when we involve ourselves – tears flow, the happy ones. This music was created on the spot with only training, no agenda, open mind and heart…

So listen through some quality devices. Better speakers, better sound.

––––– My spot on the delightful Midwest Real Podcast –––––

•

Credit: Photo by Reid Godshaw | Harmonic Light

Free Streaming/Download at MidwestReal.net

"Friends, we've got a sprawling, fanciful, new show with writer, visionary artist, and debonair brain-melter, Michael Garfield! You shan't regret checking it out!  Michael Garfield can only be described as a polymath… a renaissance man… Something of a debonair brain-melter. At times, exchanging words with him honestly feels kind of like speaking to a library with a mouth. I’m not really sure how he does it.  Michael is also a serial creative. He writes for a number of websites, paints and makes music."

– Midwest Real Podcast

This was a totally fun, equal parts profound and silly, chat with host Michael Nelson – who has also interviewed some of my most inspiring friends and allies, so I encourage you to dig deep with his podcast.  He also started a really cool Facebook group, Third Eye Drops.

If you're a podcast fiend like I am, you might also dig my appearances on Expanding Minds, Psychedelic Salon, In A Perfect World, Here We Are, Novelty Generators, New Paradigm Radio, Project Bring Me To Life, Gaian Radio, Zap Oracle, and Minds.com.  (And of course, there's also my free archives of talks and interviews for the truly dedicated...)

–––––––––– Upcoming gigs this month in CO, TX ––––––––––

Yay, I'm finally coming back to play some gigs in Colorado!  I hope you can attend my show in Denver with Spiritual Rez & Red Sage next Wednesday, or my set for the super fun live looping festival in Colorado Springs next Friday.  

And if you're in Austin on October 1st, the monthly avant-live-electronica group jam I've been hosting with looping cellist Jen Mulhern is coming up – it's a super intimate and hi-fi venue (voted best sound in Austin), and we go as deep as possible with it.  We'll lay a blanket out for you!

RSVP on Facebook

RSVP on Facebook

RSVP on Facebook

Interviewing Erik Davis on TechGnosis | How To Live in Wonder | New Paintings | Printed Throw Pillows | New Articles for Globalish | More Gigs

"Forward!  Ever Forward!"

– Terence McKenna

Happy Spring, everyone!  This blog marks my transition from a biweekly to a monthly newsletter, which means I'll go deeper with more carefully curated highlights.  If you'd like to stay in the flow and see absolutely everything, I welcome you to follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Youtube.  One format won't replace the other – hopefully these changes help me offer more to all of you, more fluidly.

And now, for this month's news – starting with one of the more fun conversations I have ever had:

Interview with Erik Davis on TechGnosis:
Myth, Magic, & Mysticism in the Age of Information

Last week I joined Erik Davis for a far-reaching and lively conversation on Erik's soon-to-be-reissued book, Techgnosis: Myth, Magic, and Mysticism in the Age of Information. Erik is a personal hero of mine and one of our culture's weirdest and most wonderful writers – a culture critic and religious scholar whose writing spans topics including the visionary culture of California, black metal philosophy, stage magic, neuroscience, and psychedelic transhumanism (for starters).  I've been a guest on his awesome Expanding Mind podcast twice (in 2011 and 2012) and it's always a pleasure to speak with him.

Here are both parts of our chat.  Part One is more free-ranging, and Part Two is more focused on how his ideas and the book have aged since their first publication in 1998:

Watch Part One on Youtube

Watch Part Two on Youtube

Also:  Just the week before, I had another great conversation with Shawn Madden​ of New Paradigm Radio​ on how to live in wonder and thrive in an age of accelerating change.  Where history and myth intersect – where science and magic are joined – where childlike awe and grown-up discernment cross-pollinate – that's where the renaissance lives. Here is my take on it.

New Live & Studio Paintings

I've been hard at work at two of the biggest and most ambitious pieces that I've ever done, which I'll have ready for you soon!  But in the meantime I have also managed to chip off a few pieces of the transcendental hyperobject and get them down on canvas.  Here are two more modest recent works that kind of hearken back to when I started painting:

One Solstice Is Unlike Any Other

18"x24" – painted live at Llano Earth Arts Festival

oil and acrylic pens on canvas

View on FB

Untitled Collaboration with Tourmaline Todd

8"x22" – painted at home

oil and acrylic pens, and acrylic paint, on canvas

View on FB

Stream/Download My Latest Cyberguitar Album

"Experimentally symphonic, layered to perfection, pleasing to the ears, as if Mozart and Random Rab did a mashup series while taking a stroll through the forest. Sophisticated. Bending the lines of spirituality, electronic technology, and organic instruments..."

– Souls In Action

You can also grab a free sampler of some of my favorite tracks from 2014 here.  Enjoy!

Warning: May Increase Likelihood of Lucid Dreams

Throw pillows just joined the extensive catalog of printed items you can find at my Nuvango store – alongside men's and women's tees, greeting cards, laptop skins, and phone cases for both iPhone and Samsung models.  Click either of the images below to browse your many possibilities:

More Writing From My Full-Time Gig at Globalish

I am honored to be a part of Globalish – not only to have such a solid vehicle for my ideas and writing, but to find a business culture dedicated to real personal and social transformation.

We're offering our readers something more than just a better story.  Here are my most recent contributions, in each of our four categories (my favorites are at the top of each):

REVOLUTION

On Martin Luther King, Jr: The Difference Between Inter-Connection and Prior Unity

The Scent of Poopourri + Mark Cuban's Digital Waste Cleanup = War

Skateboards in Afghanistan: A New Front Line for Women's Liberation

TRAVEL

Time To Think Straight: Terence McKenna Denounces New Age Relativism

Back to Basics: Iran Through The Eyes of A Japanese Tourist

 CNN: "Can LSD Make You A Billionaire?" – Silicon Valley Tripping Goes Mainstream

Transmetropolitan: The Art and Politics of Egyptian Street Artist Ganzeer

If I Die on Mars: Finding Self "Out There" Upon the New Frontier

ART

Journey To The Dreamtime in This Will Destroy You's New Music Video

Evolving Gods: The Sci-Fi Hindu Pantheon of Abhishek Singh

Prayer Nuts: Pouring Love into Tiny Objects of Human Devotion

Scientist Uses Ion Beams to Etch Sand Castles on a Single Grain of Sand

LIFE

On "Opia": Eye Contact & The Optical Illusion of Our Separation

In & Out of Open Mouths: The Erotic Mysticism of Tooth Brushing

We Were Never Born: Jack Kerouac on Silence, Birth, and the Self Illusion

What Would Buddha Splice?: Where Synthetic Biology & Artificial Intelligence Could Meet

Upcoming Gigs

Parting Shot

Here's a photo by the fabulous Adam Pugh of the lion painting I'll share in next month's newsletter (and which you can see in various stages of completion here):

“The spiritual qualities of the icon sought to transform the flesh, to deprive it of its coarse material substance, to dissolve it in light and re-mould it in spiritual plasma. Icons are sacred images that reflect the physical and the spiritual, the human and the Divine, the visible and the invisible.” 

– L. Evseyeva

Gaian Radio Podcast | My Set from Art Outside Festival | New Painting & Custom Hats | More Articles for Globalish | Attending Gem & Jam

"Don’t hanker for the other world. Live this world, and live it with intensity, with passion. Live it with totality, with your whole being. And out of that whole trust, out of that life of passion, love and joy, you will become able to go beyond."

– Osho

Happy New Year, everyone!  2014 was intense.  Maybe it's just the chronic optimism that seems to infect me at this time of year, but I think 2015 will be less about hard lessons and more about putting those lessons into practice.  I look forward to practicing with all of you.

Since we're on the cusp of what Back To The Future II officially recognized as "the future," here is a great conversation I had with the hosts of Gaian Radio Podcast about artificial intelligence, life extension, the end of privacy, and more awesome future things.  It's guaranteed to be more complicated than pro-future armchair philosophers let on, but it doesn't have to be scary.  We walk a razor's edge in this fun hour-long chat between ?? and !! – it's free to listen/download here.

And then there's this:

Live at Art Outside 2014

Free Download Here

Acoustic-electronic inventions performed at the Tenth Annual Art Outside Festival on a gorgeous and mystical laser-cut stage hidden in a grove of old pecans.

There amidst the branches and the hanging lanterns, people sprawled in blankets, chairs, and hammocks, some bizarre new breed of soaring anti-folk infused with jazz took shape – atmospheric improv raw and wild, heartfelt, numinous.

Accompanied by visual performances from the legendary florist Anthony Ward and live painter Chris Morphis, featuring guest instrumentalists Andrew Stocker (triple harmonic flute) and Jared Buchsbaum (clarinet), this music overflowed its banks and sprouted something beautiful – often dipping into darker territories, veering into strange terrains, but always moving, always full of life and curiosity.

Many thanks to everyone at Art Outside for holding such a wondrous space for work like this to grow!  (And thanks to David Titterington for the lovely cover art...)

New Studio Painting

"Ediacarans I" (2014)

Studio – oil & acrylic pens on canvas

16"x20" (four 8"x10" panels)

11"x17" prints available here

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An ode to one of the great mysteries of paleontology.  From Wikipedia:

The Ediacara biota consisted of enigmatic tubular and frond-shaped, mostly sessile organisms that lived during the Ediacaran Period (ca. 635–542 Ma). Trace fossils of these organisms have been found worldwide, and represent the earliest known complex multicellular organisms.

Determining where Ediacaran organisms fit in the tree of life has proven challenging; it is not even established that they were animals, with suggestions that they were lichens (fungus-alga symbionts), algae, protists known as foraminifera, fungi or microbial colonies, to hypothetical intermediates between plants and animals.

Most macroscopic fossils are morphologically distinct from later life-forms: they resemble discs, tubes, mud-filled bags or quilted mattresses. Due to the difficulty of deducing evolutionary relationships among these organisms some paleontologists have suggested that these represent completely extinct lineages that do not resemble any living organism. One paleontologist proposed a separate kingdom level category Vendozoa (now renamed Vendobionta) in the Linnaean hierarchy for the Ediacaran biota. If these enigmatic organisms left no descendants their strange forms might be seen as a "failed experiment" in multicellular life, with later multicellular life evolving independently from unrelated single-celled organisms.

Custom Hats

I'm so busy writing for Globalish.com these days I haven't dedicated that much time to hat work, but with new fluorescent pens a new horizon's opened up for UV-reactive lids, so I'm excited by the prospect of a new round of commissions.  Feel free to contact me if interested!

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Like/Share on FB

Like/Share on FB

More Articles For Globalish

I love my job.  If you're attracted to the seeker's path and wonder how it looks in our accelerating age, my friends and I at Globalish.com are writing for you:

Channel 1: Revolution

China Bans Puns in Attempt to Control Government Criticism

Channel 2: Travel

Damascus: A Mystical Tribute to an Old and Precious City

Yiwu: The Chinese City Where Christmas is Made and Sold

Clark's "Beacon" Music Video: Another Foray into the Psychedelic

Downtown Divas: Portraits of Russian S3x Workers in Designer Clothing

Toronto Skyline Pørn: A City is a S3xy Thing

Channel 3: Art

Splash Heroes: Jaroslav Wieczorkiewicz Uses Milk To Create Costumes

Jamón: Being an Outcast in a World Full of Humans

"Pretty Doesn't Interest Me": The Avant-Garde Perfumes of Christopher Brosius

Channel 4: Life

Geography as Mind: Recho App Brings GPS-Tagged Audio to Storytelling
100 Years of Beauty in 1 Minute: Who's Aware of the Story?

Heile Gansje: German Film Explores the Wilderness We Are in Bed

Gem & Jam Will Be My First Festival of 2015

This year, I'm focusing on fewer, more deliberate bookings.  I'm looking forward to this one and what's shaping up to be the finest live art lineup I have ever seen...it's been since 2010 and I can't wait to reconnect with all my homies in AZ.  Perhaps I'll see you there!

Stay Warm In Style This Winter

Just a reminder that my friends help me provide a wide array of wearable designs (including those for phones and such, since, yes, devices are a part of us, these days):

And that is all for now.  Thank you so much for reading!

The Very Best I Have To Offer: Painting Sale, Live Music 2011-2014, New Art, Discussing Ayahuasca, More Art & Future Coverage for Globalish

“One of the definitions of sanity is the ability to tell real from unreal. Soon we’ll need a new definition.”

– Alvin Toffler

Many thanks to all of you for your attention, for reading and listening to my work, for sharing my posts – every once in a while money gets tight but it makes me happy to know it's in service of large audience who are are (even silently) benefiting from what I share and create.

This edition's big news are my cyberguitar retrospective, a sale on my original art, a new painting, and some of the finest writing I've produced to date.  Enjoy!

25% Off All Original Paintings

Browse Available Pieces Here

I think it's actually been over a year since I last offered discounts on my paintings...at any rate, I'm back to wanting them to find good homes more than wanting to ask what people tell me they're really worth. If you connect with a piece but can't afford 25% off the marked asking price, let me know – I'm happy to split the cost up into payments, budge a little more, possibly even make partial trades.

Any money I make on this is going to help me make it through the festival off-season and to continue volunteering my time as a writer and musician. Most of what I do is unpaid labor and I am deeply, deeply grateful to all of you for your support in helping me dedicate my life to my creative work. If you want to show some love but original art is still out of your spending range, I have plenty of poster prints and pins for sale.

My Epic New Name-Your-Price Retrospective

Click Here & It's Yours

"Michael has mastered a method of looping and playing that is on a pedestal all on its own. Ultimately [this album] is an exploration into what you perceive music, the guitar, and technology can do…completely altering it. If you want to go someplace else, someplace new, get this album." 

– Mixolydian Blog

These twenty-seven tracks are fossils of my favorite moments in four years of fully improvised performances. They chronicle the maturation of my voice and sketch the outlines of an epic tour and self-discovery...

I never thought this music would be soundtrack to the art, lovemaking, yoga, writing, childbirth, and magic that it has. I'm honored that it resonates with anyone at all. But then, we live in times when cyborg folk makes sense.

For now, this is what I consider the definitive collection of my work – THE place to start, for people new to what I'm doing, and rich terrain for introspection as I prepare for my next phase in life and music.

New Painting

"Freshwater Kraken"

Studio – 2014 – Paint pens on masonite – 16"x24"

11"x17" Poster Prints

Fourth in a series of chromatic explorations into the basic visual language emerging between microscopic life and antique vegetal design. Floral patterns, paisleys, and damasque collide with retroviruses, trichomes, and DNA in a self-organizing burst of juicy color...

More Writing For Globalish

I love to write.  I LOVE it.  And for years I have neglected this because I wasn't getting paid.  Poor form!  I know.  But now my friends at Globalish have me on board as one of their lead authors, and I'm deeply in the game again.  The topics reach from visionary art and futurism to religion, politics, and music.  You will love this website.

Here are links to all my latest – there are too many to read, realistically, so I've starred a few of my favorites:

    • Channel 1: Revolution
    Reza Aslan: There's No Such Thing As "Muslim Countries"
    Prince Ea & Glenn Beck Talk Love and Consciousness *
    The Equivalent of a Lady Pope: India's First All-Female Akhada
    City of Philadelphia Decriminalizes Marijuana

    • Channel 2: Travel
    Google Put Cameras on Camels to Map the Arabian Desert *
    Explore a Miniature Tokyo in this Tilt-Shifted Time-Lapse
    Eye of the Needle: A Psychedelic Journey with Ayahuasca

    • Channel 3: Art
    New Apps Turns Text Messages Into Face-to-Face Meetings With Strangers
    Check Out Mars-1's Freeform Psychedelic Masterworks *
    Journey Through Time and Swim at Midnight with Tokimonsta
    Drone Du Soleil: Quadcopters Join Popular Dance Troupe
    Portrait of a Dancer: José Navas Shows Paradox of Living Today *
    Is the Future of Car Commercials Visionary? *
    Inside Me: 3D Scanner Imagery Digitizes the Human Body *
    That's Not Supposed To Happen: A Film About the Mystery of Life

    • Channel 4: Life
    YourBot App Sold As Way To Preserve Legacy for Hundreds of Years
    Smart Chopsticks: Your Simple Cyborg Health Ally
    Enlightened: Divinity Will Not Beckon On Your Terms
    An Indian Satellite Is Now Circling Mars
    Prophecy: The Future Will Be Absolutely Fantastic
    The Human Heart Is No Longer Necessary To Life
    Cymatics and 3D Language: Who's Aware of the Story? *

Art Outside is in One Week!

My last festival appearance for the time being is going to be a doozy: in addition to performing my fifth annual set and live painting, I'll also be performing alongside cellist Jen Mulhern and vocalist Tina Rodriguez as the musical accompaniment to the ethereal dance & projection work of ARTheism.  Add about a hundred awesome musical acts, a superb and extensive visual art lineup, and some choice workshops, and you get probably the best festival for its price in the United States.  No joke.  Hope to see you there...

Aya Awakenings Panel Discussion Video

Full HD Video | Stream/Download the Audio

The full half-hour video of the panel discussion I had with Mitch Schultz (director of DMT: The Spirit Molecule) and Rak Razam (director of Aya: Awakenings) after Rak's film screening in Austin this February.  Rak and Mitch are amazing guys.  We went DEEP.  It was awesome.

Parting Shot: MG Ravenectar Dress in Cosmic Village's Video

Full HD Video

Uche Sandra Ike wears it proud in this cool shoot for her "Creation Sessions," making music alongside painter Ali Kapper and flow artist Christine Katherine Dice.  It's a cool song and a lovely pastoral clip.  You can buy that dress she's wearing.

Thanks for reading, listening, and sharing.  I hope you have a magnificent week!

New Studio Tracks | Hyperspace Language | Phone Cases | New Hat | More Futurism & Visionary Culture at Globalish

“Perhaps musicophilia is a form of biophilia, since music itself feels almost like a living thing.”

– Oliver Sacks

This week I am proud to present my first studio recordings in six years.  I actually started these two tracks in 2009 as a follow-up to the Double-Edged Sword EP (still the closest I've come to realizing my full vision for integrating grace and grit in electronic folk music)...but life and time had other plans for me, and I went off on a great adventure in avant-garde guitar (highlights here, here, here, and here).

The Cyclist/Throwing Sparks is just an appetizer.  This fall I'm doubling down on my production study, committing myself (finally!) to recording my new compositions, and preparing to create the greatest thing I've made to date.  It's time.

Meanwhile, enjoy this sweet seven-minute token of my love for space and song.  It's a gift, for the time being.  If you like it, I hope you'll share it with someone.

Free (Pay-What-You-Like) Download Here

You taught me to own my love 

but I cannot quite pin down that bug. 

Neither of us lives all that we say 

and lovely ideas spill out and vapor away. 

I'll take what I can get, give what you'll accept... 

I no longer fear there will be nothing left. 

Evolving Hyperspatial Language
(A Clip From February's Aya Awakenings Panel)

Another shining moment from my wonderful discussion with directors Rak Razam and Mitch Schultz following the screening of Rak's ayahuasca documentary in Austin.  (You can listen to our whole talk here.)  This bit's on my conviction that there are no sensory experiences fully past our languaging – just over the horizon, maybe, for this time and place:

"Most of what we talk about today was 'trans-linguistic' a hundred years ago...I don't think it's categorically 'beyond words,' I just think that the words grow to fill the space of our consciousness."

I Made A Lot of Cool New Merchandise This Week

Browse More Sweet Junk Than You Can Manage

Look...I'm not trying to hide my mercantilism, here.  I'm a freakin' artist for a living.  It's not advised.  I need all the help I can get.  Hopefully you just bought a new phone that could use a case, or want to pimp your laptop with some cool adhesive flair.  I get 20% on every sale.  That translates into tacos.  And I need tacos to live.  So let's be symbiotic.  

Custom Painted Hat #175

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I have nothing fancy to say about this...but man do I love painting hats.  Hit me up if you'd like one of your own.  (You can see pics of the other 174 hats here.)

New Articles on Globalish

My new appointment on the writing team at Globalish.com gives me a fantastic opportunity to wax poetic about all of my favorite artists and to comment on the most amazing new developments in futuristic tech.  

After years of not writing very much, I'm now on a daily schedule – and have a new vehicle for sharing some incredibly inspiring videos.  Here are my most recent posts:

Visionary Culture

• Take A Dive Into Collin Elder's Timeless Visionary Paintings

• Go Deep With Ben Ridgway's Cosmic Flowers & Cellular Circuitry

• Sacred Dance Reimagined By Australian Kalya Scintilla's Aboriginal Bass

• William Close's Earth Harp Turns Buildings Into Instruments
• Supaman – Native American Prayer x Beatboxing DJ Looper What?

• Sound & Sight Combine In These Animated Birdsongs From Australia

• Listen To Lady Gaga Speak About Her Religion of Loving-Kindness

Current Future

• Forget Dams, Welcome The World's First Man-Made Tidal Lagoon

• Get Ready For The First Human Head Transplant

• Close The Blinds: Sound Reconstructed From Silent Video

• Harvard's Swarming Robots Form Programmable Shapes

• To Hell With Makeup – Mapping Video Projection To The Human Face

• Conquering Physics – Disney's Seemingly Impossible 3D-Printed Tops

New Meadowlark Painting & Live Cyberguitar Recording Series

"Happiness and freedom may ultimately depend less on maintaining particular states of mind than on cultivating the appropriate attitude toward whatever states of mind arise out of the elegant chaos of life."

– Erik Davis

"There is no strength outside of balance."

– Marcus Ambrester

In recent news:  We just announced Sonic Bloom Festival's 2014 Live Art Lineup and it's amazing.

My $10 print sale is over on May 15th and I deeply appreciate all the support so far!

I published a great talk on SolPurpose with author James Jesso about psilocybin psychotherapy.

My art and music got shoutouts from Trendhunter, Mechanical Dummy, and Emergence Earth.

And I'm juuuust about to announce my summer festival lineup...the arrangements are taking a little longer than usual but it's shaping up to be a beautiful season.  Meanwhile, I have more new art and music than I know what to do with, so here you go!

Thanks so much for spending some time with my love's labor.  I hope it gets you there.

"You've Got A Song In Your Heart"

Buy 11"x17" Poster Prints | Like/Share on FB

24"x32" – paint markers on masonite

Original Painting Available (email me if interested)

Painted live at The Parish (Austin, Texas) for:

2014.02.08 - Desert Dwellers, Futexture, CactusBath

2014.02.22 - New Car Caviar, Loose Leaf, Henry + The Invisibles

2014.03.30 - Kalya Scintilla, Space Jesus, DRRTYWULVZ

2014.04.02 - Zach Deputy, Henry + The Invisibles

2014.04.10 - The Malah, Jamie Janover + Resunator

My first live painting of 2014 is of a bird very dear to me, the Western Meadowlark. They live all over the United States (the state bird of Kansas, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oregon, AND Wyoming) and have one of the most beautiful songs I have ever heard.

When I was going to college at the University of Kansas my friends and would go camping at the lake west of town and these birds singing from fence posts were the soundtrack to sunset for more beautiful experiences than I can count. They are what peace sounds like, to me. My partner and I decided when we get married we're going to do it in one of those meadows by the lake, and I'm so looking forward to the meadowlarks that day...

Announcing Tunnels of Gates
A New Series of Live Recordings

After five years of exploring the frontiers of guitar looping electronica, I'm finally comfortable sharing the majority of my improvised sets – each with a different character, reflecting the spirit of a place and time, venue and audience.  Like wine, each release in this new series is a unique vintage – everything about each show makes a difference in how these sets turn out, and every one of them explores a different musical territory.  

Tunnels of Gates is inspired by the Japanese tradition of placing hundreds of decorative gates in a row on temple paths – a meditation on time and change that (for me) evokes the transcendental voyage described described from near-death experiences and rendered masterfully by the climax of 2001: A Space Odyssey.  

My music is intended as a soundtrack to these transformational times, an attempt to communicate and celebrate the metamorphic intensity of life in the early 21st Century.  Every constantly shifting guitar soundscape is a musical tunnel of gates – taken together, they are a hyperspace trip through the evolution of my ideas and experiences as an artist.

It's the Year of the Horse, y'all.  Grab ahold and enjoy the ride!  Here are the first two sets:

2014.01.01 – Reunion Party (Austin, TX)
Download it Here

Heart opening, hopeful, dreamy and romantic sunrise set from New Year's Day...it was an awesome honor to set the tone for this year, and with the help of Jared Buchsbaum on various wind instruments we caught some real longing and expansion.  Download "Dawn Run Through The Grasses" for free.

2014.02.04 – Triple Crown (San Marcos, TX)
Download it Here

Flowing riverine grooves open my first show improvised alongside live visuals by Topher Sipes – an evening that got bluesy, then straight up shamanic (video here), culminating in an apocalyptically intense extraterrestrial meltdown with violinist Linda Lola.  Download "Devotion" for free.

I'll post another live set every Tuesday until I run out of shows worth sharing – stay tuned by following Facebook and Twitter for a bunch of other news, art, and ideas that I can't possibly squeeze into these newsletters.

Feel free to reach out to me any time with your questions or feedback, and have a beautiful day!