An Overflowing Cornucopia of Cool Stuff for Autumn

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

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

NEW ART

Signed Prints

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

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

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

NEW MUSIC

Name-Your-Price (Free) Download

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

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

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

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

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

NEW & OLD WRITING

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

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

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

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

• Don’t Optimize Your Life

NEW PODCASTS

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

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

 

 

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

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

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

- Cormac McCarthy

Attention is our greatest natural resource. [New Stickers | New Music | New Paintings | New Conversations]

Hey friends! Here's the best of what I've been up to for the last month.  

Hope you're staying sane, calm, responsive, loving, and alert...

Feel free to write me any time.  Good luck out there.

love,

Michael

I used to think imagination is our greatest natural resource – until I realized that attention is the upstream, limiting reality. In our distracted, breakneck age, sometimes we need a good reminder to pay more attention to our fleeting lives.

Inspired in part by Aldous Huxley's awesome novel, Island (in which his utopian society trains birds to squawk "Attention!" randomly, reminding citizens of opportunities to be more mindful), these glossy laminated vinyl stickers are so close to indestructible that they will keep inspiring mindfulness for years to come.

This is guerrilla intervention against the mind-eating nonsense of our tech-plutocracy. Concerned too many people live in algorithmic feed-scrolling fugues like thumb-bearing farm animals? Just slap a few around town and sit back marveling as your town becomes more aware!

While I have your attention:

Bandcamp (download in any audio format you like)

Feedbands (streaming plants trees, pays in Bitcoin)

Spotify (since you're there already)

My sentimental final gig in Austin before relocating to New Mexico was special for more than one reason: long-time musical conspirator and ally Andrew Noble joined me for two days of live performance at the Developer Week Conference. Andrew was a regular at Loopers' Night, the two-year monthly residency that I hosted at Strange Brew, Austin's best small listening room – someone with whom I had developed such a stage rapport, I knew that I could count on him to jump in with me – no rehearsals and no plan – and improvise four hours of killer music.

Most of these two fire days were lost in a recording error – but the music that survived demonstrates something rare and wonderful amidst the sea of mostly-solo tunes in my back catalog: two artists who have played together regularly for a while and learned to follow one another's lead; two voices that contribute to each other, finish one another's sentences, erupt into ecstatic swells and spacious interstices with a trained and listening synchrony.

It's yours to do with as you please – including remix, share, play backwards during rituals, etc.

Same goes for this 17-minute electric guitar instrumental from my performance at EFF-Austin's SXSW party in 2018, fresh on all the streaming platforms (cover art by David Titterington):

Bandcamp (download in any audio format you like)

Feedbands (streaming plants trees, pays in Bitcoin)

Spotify (since you're there already)

And here are the six latest amazing conversations that we've had on Future Fossils Podcast – including the first of three patrons-only book club calls for Liu Cixin's Three Body Problem trilogy:

  

  

I’ve also appeared on a number of other people's podcasts, lately:

The Myths That Make Us, Future Tech Podcast, Tap Iñ, Third Eye Drops, Awake Aware Alive, Mutations...I won't play favorites, but my personal best was probably on display for Artsy AF.

Speaking of being artsy AF, here are two new small paintings I made for my first gallery show in Santa Fe (at Eye on the Mountain).  Both of them are 12"x12" on stretched canvas and available for a crisp Ben Franklin apiece (or its digital equivalent).  Email me if you'd like one or both – I've been hanging them from the corners and they look great on the wall together:

UPCOMING EVENTS

Velociraptor Painting + New Tunes + Ten Amazing Conversations

Whew, okay!  This "biweekly" newsletter I've been keeping since 2009 went three whole months without an update...

but it's because I just became a dad!  I hope you'll understand and stay on board.  Thank you for tuning in!

Here are some of the new things I've created for you (and for the sheer fun of it):

Four new paintings, one new live album and a 360º video "single," and an entire treasure box of awesome conversations.  Enjoy, and drop me a line anytime if you're inspired!

gratefully yours,

Michael

"Our Lady of the Late Cretaceous"

24"x36"• acrylic and oil paint pens on canvas

available for sale

read the story + buy prints

view in context on instagram

 

"Xenoscaping III & IV"

2x 12"x24" • acrylic and oil paint pens on canvas

available for sale

view in context on instagram

"Fire Jelly Fronds"

12"x24" • acrylic and oil paint pens on canvas

sold • view in context on instagram

Live at the Apothecary

(Santa Fe, NM • 2019.05.11)

Bandcamp • Patreon • Spotify

iTunes • Apple Music • Amazon Music

My first concert as a father, and my first concert as a Santa Fean, this show was warm, intimate, and magical. Dear friends were in from out of town, and new friends were won over from the dinner crowd. My old friend Sydney Wright from Austin, Texas – one of the regulars at my two-year Austin residency, Loopers' Night – joined me while starting off her tour of the Western States, and captivated all of us. (Her songs were not recorded at this show, but I encourage all of you to check her out.)

Big thanks to Mya Kass & Cheryl Casden for inviting us to play this show at the Santa Fe Oxygen Bar Apothecary Restaurant – and even more for buying an entirely new PA system so Sydney and I could have the best possible sound for this. And thanks to Andee Jean Ostara for her concert photography – you can and should follow her new professional instagram account.

Here's one of my favorite moments from the show:

"Indecision" (Ukulele Arrangement) in 360º

Watch in 360 on YouTube

In the moment before acting lies a void 

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? 

It may seem your heart has stopped between two beats. 

It's not the universe that's ended 
but that you're already dead,

remembering everything at once 
seeing past the limits of your head. 

In the seconds it would take to drain 

the oxygen from your exquisite brain 

a few mere seconds, all your life replays 

an intimate refrain. 

It isn't just the fireworks of dying neurons firing. 

You are slipping from the grip 

of that which kept you in the slow procession. 

Now your feathered eyelids open to behold the whole terrain...

 

I'm especially excited about the Future Fossils Book Club on Patreon and the amazing video calls we've been having about the most mind-blowing books I can find.  Our first call on the science fiction horror masterpiece Blindsight by Peter Watts was great, and our second call on Diana Slattery's psychedelic science and philosophy opus Xenolinguistics was (for me, anyway) even better.

We're doing a call for Cixin Liu's Hugo-winning The Three Body Problem sometime next month.  

I'd love to hear you chime in on our next group call!

And since it's been so long since my last update, here are NINE new episodes of Future Fossils.

There's something here for everyone: Nadja Oertelt teaches scientists to speak to non-scientists; Bruce Damer's team might have figured out the origins of life; Erick Godsey has the most inspiring stance on personal mythology; Android Jones and I discuss what being visionary artist dads is like; Mitsuaki Chi leads therapeutic mushroom groups in Amsterdam; Sean Esbjörn-Hargens is about to teach a course about the philosophy of science through the lens of UFOs; Bernie Taylor has a powerful new angle on some of the oldest cave art in the world; Eliot Peper offers his empowering and sober view of history and tech; and Kevin Wohlmut offers up the first guest episode with essays on the next ten billion years.  Enjoy!

        

“All that is becomes connected even in its difference, as being and becoming share the same confused territory of ‘feathery incandescence’; ontology itself becomes not only dynamic but synesthetic.” 

– Richard Doyle, Darwin's Pharmacy

Rock Out! New Art & Merch, Music for MDMA Therapy, and Robot Love

It's almost April!  Subscribe to me on Patreon before this Sunday and you're on the list to get my first psychedelic coloring book PDF when it comes out next week.  You'll also get 27 other patrons-only posts, early and exclusive episodes of Future Fossils Podcast, my uncut (deeply psychedelic) interview with Visionary Art Australia, and an increasing share of the time I used to spend on Facebook, shouting into an abyss.

If, like me, you're kind of underwater with your money right now – I still hope that I can welcome you into some awesome conversations that inspire and enlighten.  If you are still using Facebook, join the Future Fossils Facebook group – there are 1100 of us in there sharing links about the future, awesome art, amazing science, deep thoughts, and hilarious asides.  It's where I share most of the cool news that I find, these days...

Thank you so much for staying with me as we grow and change.  And now on to the show!

Rock Out!  (Fighting Rooster)

18"x24" – 2018 – paint pens on canvas

order prints

printed items (iPhone cases, stickers, tapestries, etc.)

like/comment/share on Facebook

A memorial from 2018 (Year of the Earth Dog in the Chinese calendar) looking back on 2017 (Year of the Fire Rooster) and last year's massive rooster painting, this piece sums up how it feels to me like creativity and raw belligerence so often go together – passion, fire, spirit, drive – to make is to destroy what was. Sometimes you just can't tell the difference between a fight and making love...

HD downloads now on Bandcamp

Also available for streaming on:

Spotify • Apple Music • Amazon • Google Play

Last month I played a benefit for Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) at the home of Aubrey Marcus to help raise funds for the Phase 3 FDA-approved clinical trials for MDMA-assisted psychotherapy.

These new clinical protocols are the most successful PTSD intervention known to science, more than four times as effective as antidepressants, and they don't require a lifetime of medication. These are CURES, not treatments.  And in our anxious age of overstimulation and emotional bombardment, this is more necessary than it's ever been.

I'm honored to have music in the therapeutic playlists for these trials, thanks to the endorsement of my friend and MAPS clinician Saj Razvi.  I'm also working on MAPS to release these playlists to the public. But for now, here is an half-hour excerpt from the instrumental set I played last month...

Enjoy, and let me know if any of this makes it into your own therapeutic playlists!

This week’s guest is independent culture critic John David Ebert – mythologist, philosopher, art historian, and author of twenty-six books.  We talk about the rich mythological references of Blade Runner 2049 in light of the larger – and very urgent – matter of mechanizing human reproduction and the (actually rather ancient) male quest to appropriate the mysteries of the goddess…

This week we chat with the philosopher and sociologist John Danaher about the book Robot Sex: Social & Ethical Implications, a fascinating collection of academic articles on our sexbot future he just co-edited with Neil McArthur. Chances are good you’ve seen the “Don’t Date Robots!” public service announcement from the cartoon Futurama, and probably Björk’s “All Is Full of Love” music video. Maybe you’ve seen Heror Ex Machina or Spielberg’s AI. And let’s not forget the Femmebots in Austin Powers. But does any of this media, for or against, paint a realistic portrait of the impact of machines on human intimacy?

That's 50% OR MORE off any of the pieces you see here.  I'm taking an indefinite hiatus from live painting, so the picking's only getting slimmer...but I'm happy to take far less than the asking price if something speaks to you.  Check out the pieces I have left here, then just send an email with an offer, and I'll let you know within a day.

And last, here are a couple things I'm doing soon that you might like to know about:

Thanks again for reading and have a most blessed couple weeks!

“I think it is misplaced to argue for doing fundamental research just because of its technological spinoffs. Our current standard of living vitally depends on the curiosity-driven research that was done a generation or two before…the most important things that we know fifty years from now will be things we have no idea about right now.” 

– Lawrence Krauss

Breaking The Narrative Barrier // Applied Technoshamanism // Keyhistoric Life // Apocalyptic Art Sale

“Human culture has broken the narrative barrier as change driven by technological transformation creates conditions that change faster than our ability to narrate them. There is an essential mismatch between our stories about the world and the world, the ideas we have of ourselves and ourselves – this mismatch is now unavoidable. Good News: This evolutionary shift will be easy to survive and flourish through. Quite simply, we must cease depending upon something that isn’t there: a coherent narrative that stitches together our social world.”

– Richard Doyle

Hi friends.  :)  It's been a crazy summer, full of revelations and initiations, difficult as hell, and dotted with surprise reprieves and glorious fulfillments.  Hopefully it's been as powerfully good for you as it has been for me...I think...shit's still in motion.  Hard to say for sure.  Uncertainty's the lesson, maybe.

Anyway, I'm sure about SOME things – foremost among them that I am "supposed to" help relieve our species of narrative and share techniques I've learned to play more fully in the magical rotating gem of all perspectives.  To navigate time-as-a-landscape with attention poured into the outcomes we agree we want.  To ease the pain of everybody growing up too fast at once.

And urgency abounds: we're in the process of transforming evolution, from a thing we didn't even know we do, to a technology we'll use to totally reshape the planet.  Kind of a big deal.  It's time for all of us to level up as wizards, witches, or whatever so we're IN IT and engaged with, not resistant to, a world in which ideas become shared (virtual) realities more rapidly than ever.  We must rise to the occasion so that we don't accidentally create more monsters than we absolutely must.  We must raise whatever comes next right.

AND SO!  

I'm writing a collection of short pieces (some of which are here on Medium) that ties science fiction and creative non-fiction together, then sets them on fire with mystic poetry.  I'm selling all the paintings that I've kept around to fund the writing of this book.  It's time.  It's going to TAKE time – time that I will take away from travel and commissions, limiting what little "flow" I've surfed on for the last few years.

If you would like a 50% discount on my art, it's yours.  Here is the link to all of my available originals.  Here is the event page with more info.

   

(And since of course we're mostly skating by, perhaps the sacred economics of our mutualist gifting might appeal to you more, anyway.  That's why I use Patreon: for people who GET what I'm trying to say on everyone's behalf, and want to help me weave more people into it, ground and expand it, make it relevant and real.)

So anyway.  I love you.  Thank you.  Here are things.

Live Looping As Applied Technoshamanism at Moogfest 2016

Download Here

This masterclass I taught at Moogfest 2016 covers my occult philosophy of loop-based music and drills into my tech specifics for performance. Drawing from twelve years of looping at festivals and concerts worldwide, there's plenty here to fascinate you – whether you're a looping artist or just interested in the intersection between the esoteric and technology.

FREE to my silver-level Patreon supporters or available for a one-time donation of $5 (which also grants you access to extensive archives of my music).

Also included in the download is a transcript of my full pedalboard teardown and looping process.  As Reggie Watts said, "Don't 'tech-no' from a shaman for an answer..."

Topics covered include:
• How to be your own whole "Citadel of Ricks"
• Recursion, reiteration, and live looping as the Crucifixion of what is and what could be
• The emergence of order from chaos – inviting randomness into the matrix
• An alchemy of elemental energies in improvised live composition
• Technical considerations and gear suggestions
• Hacking the audience’s attention
• Multichannel live production as the blending of different sonic spaces
• Pedalboard vs. Ableton Live for Looping - opinions

For more direct and personal instruction, I’m available for private lessons over Skype – just write me if you’re interested!

New Future Fossils Episodes!

Hunter Maats – host of the Mixed Mental Arts Podcast and co-author of The Straight-A Conspiracy. We talk about the future of education and human collaboration – moving past a world of routine factory-worker indoctrination and the “insane cargo cult” of the academic system, and into a new model for the transmission of knowledge that suits a truly planetary culture.

Andrew J. O’Keefe II – documentarian, archivist for Singularity University, devoted recordist of the emergent planetary culture, and a dear old friend I met back in the Dawn of Time when he was working as the personal assistant to Android Jones. We talk about the motivations for preserving and reliving the significant (AND insignificant) moments of our lives.

Hannah Yata – visionary painter whose riotous, ecstatic work explores and celebrates natural biodiversity, and exalts the repressed feminine – the beautiful and the grotesque, death and life in vivid color all at once.

Sketchbook:  "Keyhistoric Life"

Just for fun.  This is how my brain works.  Get a better look on Instagram.

Coming Up: UTOPiAfest!

I'm playing the festival's first-ever sunrise set (and last ever at Four Sisters Ranch, where it has been held for the last nine years).  Come if you're in Texas – I hear that it's the best-in-class!

Just a reminder that I have a ton of work on Spotify for all your playlist pleasures – and also on Bandcamp for free download (or paid, if you are feeling frisky).  Go listen to it now and reap the sweetness!

"Yes, this planet is a terrible mess. But it has always been a mess. 

 There have never been any 'Good Old Days,' there have just been days."

– Kurt Vonnegut