✨🎸🦖 Leaving SFI for Even Bigger Projects...

I'm building a new website! This is my last blog post at Blogger.
Please follow my updates and new work at MichaelGarfield.Substack.com
and stay tuned for the launch of FutureFossils.org. 💗🖖🏼✨

Announcing A New Book + Book Club on Jurassic Park • Guest Appearances on KMO.show + Rainbow Brainskull • New Live LP + Music Videos + Concert Dates

✨ Saying Goodbye to The Santa Fe Institute

Last Friday was the end of an era. Leaving SFI was not an easy choice, but it is time to synthesize what I have learned from years of complex systems science study and communication in some “grown-up” projects.

Here is my announcement (also pinned to Facebook and to LinkedIn):

🧵 Today is my last day at @sfiscience! It's been an honor and a pleasure to oversee SFI's social media for the last 4.5 years, to launch and grow #ComplexityPodcast into an internationally-charting show, and to work amidst such a thriving and inspiring intellectual community...

🦖 Join My Book Club for Jurassic Park!

What's next? Here is an update on the HUGE undertaking I'm already working on — a new book, book club, and podcast project exploring how the science and philosophy of the Jurassic Park franchise (books, films, games, AND rides) sheds light on and entangles with the evolution of AI, VFX, biotech, and other monsters of modernity since JP’s first edition back in 1990:

Michael Crichton’s legendary techno-thriller is more relevant than ever now…which is why I’m resurrecting the Future Fossils Book Club to explore it! Grab your copy here.

The JP Book Club starts on April 29th and will mix asynchronous discussion in the Facebook group and Discord server with live calls. Patrons get a deep dive into privatized science, the breakdown of the boundaries between reality and virtuality, chaos and complex systems sciences, and science fiction as self-fulfilling prophecy.

There will be at least two live calls for this book, and then more for The Lost World later on this summer. If you have to miss them, they will be recorded.

Then, in the months to come, I'll interview a very heavy-hitting roster of scientists, philosophers, critics, and artists about all this on Future Fossils…including several of the SFI researchers whose planned episodes of Complexity Podcast I had to cancel. These two shows will start to bleed together…Future Fossils will stay weird, but also start to feature more rigor and prestigious guests.
It is a GIANT leap of faith to take this on…I hope you'll grab your front row seats, become a paid subscriber, and help me feed my family while I’m bringing all of this to life!

Read more and weigh in on Facebook or Twitter.

🎸 New Videos + Live LP Reviewed

My latest live recording marries science-inspired folk songs, high-tech improv explorations, and psychoactive concert banter into a truly magic stew I’m glad to share in full with everyone as a Bandcamp exclusive!

Anyone who buys it gets a secret playlist link with videos showcasing twenty extra very juicy minutes from the show (also available to Patreon and Substack members, if you missed that email).

Here is the album’s first review:

"I think this is his best yet...not just a good record but this is an interesting person...worth making an effort to appreciate."

🙏🏼 @WarmthHighest reviews my latest live @Bandcamp-exclusive #psychedelic #folk album: https://birdboyblizzard.music.blog/2023/04/01/a-better-trip-live-at-the-jean-cocteau-cinema-supporting-shane-mauss-by-michael-garfield/ cc @shane_mauss @CocteauCinema

🎧 New Podcast Guest Appearances

Guest on KMO.show Episode 1 (with my buddy Kevin Wohlmut!)

"In this inaugural episode of the KMO Show, KMO, Michael Garfield of the Future Fossils podcast and mutual friend, Kevin Wohlmut, discuss the dawning of the epistemological apocalypse. Thanks to AI, we can't really trust our eyes or our ears anymore. Deep faked images and voices can produce 'evidence' that people said and did things they never said or did. How do we select our reality tunnels when almost anything can be faked in real time? Do we give up on truth seeking and just believe whatever floats our boat, or are there general principals [sic] or trustworthy oracles we can depend on?"

Part one of a two-part trialogue that will conclude on Future Fossils 201. Stay tuned!

Guest on Rainbow Brainskull Episode 81

If you want to hear me at my absolute SLOWEST, then enjoy this conversation I had with Ramin Nazer after pulling an all-nighter taking care of a cranky baby. I'm ordinarily not a fan of people listening to conversations at 2x speed because I try to pack my own episodes with as much information as possible, but in this case I think you might actually get something approximating my ordinary cruising velocity if you did so. Anyway, it was a superb conversation in spite of the fact I was a total mess (and he didn't bother to cinch it up in post-production, which I take to be basically a love letter to my mind, however ill-conceived) and I love Ramin to High Heaven so go show him some love…

🎶 Upcoming Musical Events

I WILL be making audio and video recordings of these shows for everyone who couldn’t make it. But if you live in or near Santa Fe I hope I’ll see you there!

More Info & Presale Tickets

RSVP/Invite @ Facebook Event

More Info

RSVP/Invite @ Facebook Event

A.I. Art Eruption: The Wildest Period of My Art Career is Right Now (Plus New Music, Podcasts, Public Talks, & Thoughts on Human-Tech Co-Evolution)

I finally surrender to letting these roughly-monthly updates be a magazine unto themselves. This one is about a very hot topic right now: the explosion of A.I.-assisted artwork that you've surely seen sprouting up all over the Web, and my experimentation with it. I've always believed that the future would empower "professional dreamers" to share their inner worlds instantaneously, and it feels like that vision is finally substantiating itself in our waking world. But not all is rosy in this magical future, and I'm honored to help act as psychopomp on the River of Souls we're crossing together as these new tools mature and transform society.

But first, an announcement for the thousands of you in my active online fora:

✨ Big Changes for Future Fossils!

After years of volunteering dozens of hours a week in a patrons-only Facebook group and Discord server mostly populated by free riders, I'm finally clearing out the non-patrons and restoring some focus and sanctity to the community we've built together. Spending so much time moderating non-subscribers has been taking time away from podcast production and my family, but I also don't have the heart to just nuke this group. If you'd like to stay involved please consider signing up for at least $2 a month for the part-time job it is to curate and moderate this group.

Let me clarify that old close friends, former guests of the show, and other people who routinely and consistently add value to this group are welcome to remain regardless of whether you're contributing financially. There are many ways to do this, so if you're broke but interested in staying involved please respond to me privately.

✨ There Is No One Path Forward: Pluralism in Science, Philosophy, & Art

A digestible, albeit light-speed, six-minute-and-forty-second talk on the virtues of and need for pluralism, presented at Creative Santa Fe's Pecha Kucha Talks last month. 

You can find their (audio-and-slides-only) presentation on the Pecha Kucha website, or find my own video recording and extensive supplementary notes and resources on Patreon.

Abstract:

Biodiversity is the measure of ecological health. Cognitive diversity is the secret to innovation and effective collaboration. And contrary to popular belief, there will never be one Theory of Everything to unify all of human knowledge in an equation that fits on a t-shirt. Multiplicity is how the cosmos knows itself, because all models of the world — whether they take the form of intellectual theories or organisms in an ongoing dance of adaptation with their environment — are partial, incomplete, and provisional. Every statement of truth is a conjecture based on limited information, conditioned by a specific history, and ultimately up for revision. Even the myriad standards by which we settle on satisfactory explanations are in tension and conflict with each other — and that's a good thing, because unanimous agreement results in brittle, easily disrupted strategies. If humankind stands any chance of navigating the immensely complex challenges we face, it's time for us to jettison the notion that there's One Idea To Rule Them All, and fan out into "The Adjacent Possible," covering as much ground as we can to search the space of what could be more comprehensively.

✨ AI Art Experiments Stash

Lately I've kind of lost myself in the rapture of exploring text-to-image AI art prompts on the invite-only platform Midjourney, which is (at least in some respects) considerably more advanced than similar apps like NightCafé and Wombo Dream.

Part of this is my lifelong commitment to guinea-pigging myself with new creative tools, starting with my immersion into Google Glass and the resultant contemplation on the co-evolution of surveillance technologies and the self (see essay parts 1, 2, 3, 4). Exploring AI-assisted mass production of works that would, just two years ago, have each taken 20-50 hours to paint...well, I'm hardly the only artist that feels drawn into this as a necessary precursor to navigating the disruption of the creative sector by these tools.

In the meantime, I want to give patrons exclusive access to my curated "dream stream" of Midjourney experiments — feel free to download any of these images you like for personal use: wallpapers, desktops, one-off pillow/t-shirt printing, whatever floats your boat.

Here are some of the most exciting images to have emerged from AI "latent space" lately:

✨ Podcasts on AI, Art, and Philosophy

The above experiments have led to a whole series of fantastic conversations on the direction things are moving, how it connects to ancient esoteric practices, the labor market implications, and how I'm engaging with the mysterious Other through these tools.  Here are three solid recordings on this and related topics:

But of course it also raises deep philosophical issues, like those I recently discussed on The Jim Rutt Show with Jim and my friend and frequent Future Fossils guest J.F. Martel — questions of what art even is, whether sentience is required, what if anything is uniquely human, and how different art might be in another few years' time. I recommend digging into that discussion — and staying tuned for more, because this is a conversation I consider very squarely in the Future Fossils wheel house, and more urgent than most people seem to realize.

One conversation wasn't enough so I ALSO just appeared on my friend Michael Phillip's show Third Eye Drops to talk about Google engineer Blake Lemoine's claims of AI sentience and machine ensoulment, labor market disruptions from new creative tools like Midjourney, and what it's like to "breed" images straight out of the ethers of the imagination.

From Shane's show notes: "In this episode, I catch up with my good friend, Michael Garfield. Michael is the host of the Future Fossils podcast and the Complexity podcast. In his 4th appearance on Here We Are, we discuss topics like fatherhood, lifestyle changes, and the ever-changing world we live in."

✨ Recommended Resources on Human-Technology Egregores

I recently got into a very deep and intense conversation with Carnegie Mellon/SFI Professor Simon DeDeo during his latest visit to the Santa Fe Institute campus. (Check out his talk and my Twitter coverage of it, which I found equal parts nightmarish and utterly inspiring.)

Most of that two hours was spent in roundtable discussion with him and our 2022 cohort of Undergraduate Complexity Researchers, making for the most exciting opportunity I've ever had at work to blow the minds of a bunch of awesome, brilliant twenty-somethings.

Here is the epic mind-dump I sent them afterward, collecting resources that came to mind during our rap session. If you've been following the show for a while you've probably heard me bring most of these up at one point or another, but I'm happy to share them all in one place.

I apologize in advance for what my buddy Mitch Mignano would call an "ecodelic avalanche." Enjoy either spending the rest of time getting around to this or immediately binning it all to preserve your mental health!

(Album cover is from my ongoing series of AI art experiments with Midjourney, which as mentioned above I'm archiving for the personal use of my patrons.)

✨ New Future Fossils Podcast Episodes

Listen/Subscribe here.

Listen/Subscribe here.

✨ New Music: Live at the West China Tea House (Austin, Texas 2022.05.28)

Member-exclusive HD download on Patreon or Bandcamp.

On the musical front, here's an intimate "storyteller" format acoustic and electroacoustic concert spanning fourteen years of songwriting, with some teahouse-specific improvisations to accompany gong fu tea ceremony. This was my first show in Austin, Texas in nearly four years, a very emotionally intense reunion with old friends and the land I love and once called home. Big thanks to So Han Fan and Nate Bell at the West China Tea House for making space for me to play a family-friendly concert (you can hear my kids screaming throughout) and for the live Future Fossils Podcast I taped there in between sets with Kevin Welch and David Hensley of EFF-Austin!

(If you want a blast from the past (or into the future?), I played one of my favorite late-night instrumental sets at their pop-up tea house at Utopia Festival back in 2017, when they were still called the Guan Yin Tea House.)

Lastly, for now, here's a link to my ever-growing Spotify playlist of new music discoveries and old favorites. I've been keeping and cultivating this for three years now, and it's EXTENSIVE, over 37 hours long. Enjoy!:

When Papadosio Came To Meow Wolf: New Music, Art, & Conversation From An Epic Weekend

Listen Here

2020 is feeling very black and white: revenge or compassion, hope or despair...not a lot of room in the middle as the social centrifuge picks up speed. Without wanting to come off too heavy-handed, it seems like all of us future-shocked apes find it easier to settle into an extreme instead of constantly exerting the extraordinary (non)effort it takes to remain a Buddha in this bedlam...

It feels important to acknowledge that we're organisms with metabolisms and the even most awakened person I have ever met (his brain scans show no blood flow in the brain regions associated with ego activity) said he gets a little selfish when his blood sugar is low. So take it easy on yourselves and let it be okay for all this molten transformation to congeal into a person when your energies are low.

Me, personally, I'd prefer to land on "optimism" when the music stops. My friend Mark Nelson, one of the brave souls who lived in Biosphere 2, inside a giant greenhouse growing all of their own food for two years in one of the craziest and most precarious experiments humanity has ever ventured, told me on Future Fossils Podcast optimism is a yoga. It's a practical approach that's less about what your tired brain believes is fact and more about what science shows is good for you, the animal that needs a reason to keep going. It's the difference between a mouse that keeps on swimming in the bucket and a mouse that drowns.

I'm waxing purple on all this because I've spent a lot of time in some extremely dark spots over the last decade and feel like it is time to change my tune. Still love and flex that gallows humor, but frankly, if we don't believe we'll make it through we won't. As – dork alert! – Guinan said to Riker when Picard was captured by the Borg and all seemed lost, "When a man is convinced he's going to die tomorrow, he'll probably find a way to make it happen."

The other opportunity, the one that opens into iterative branching possibility and, obviously, is more fun, is to adopt the "as if" attitude that we'll get through this — even if our weary minds can't help but trace the pattern of defeat in all we see. That's why I so believe in how some of my friends, notably Anthony Thogmartin, wield their public influence in full awareness of emotional contagion and the practicality of hope. I feel like every time I talk to Anthony he sets me straight — just through the force of his enthusiasm and his curiosity and passion for the weird and wonderful times that we live in. It's so obvious in speaking to him that "the world" is mostly epistemic, so thoroughly inflected by our colored lenses that it's comic how we think we know what's what. And that is why I cherish every conversation that I have with him, and every opportunity I have to share his wonder with the world.

I just had Anthony on Future Fossils and think it's the best way I could have started out this year — the perfect tone to ring out in an annunciation of what I think matters and what I hope to encourage in this next ten years. I hope (ha ha) that you will find the time to listen and allow his optimism to osmose into you. Surely it's pragmatic, to invite this in and help it tune you, like it tunes me, so that when I can't maintain the Zen not-knowing, I'm at least convinced of something good.

Chin up, my friends. For real: your body steers your mind...

Listen Here

This was my opening set for Papadosio on their "Desert Dosio" mini-tour, the first time I've played a show with my beloved old friends since 2013. It was a beautiful homecoming. The venue is amazing, the sound engineer impeccable, the audience loving and attentive, and the vibes high. I got to test drive some new arrangements. Overall, my favorite live show since I got to play Boom Festival in Portugal in 2016.

These are songs about living in an accelerating and mysterious world...dealing with the transcendent opportunity, turbulence, and anxiety of our century. Some of these songs are over ten years old and are only now just finding wings. If you would like to hear their fully-realized studio versions later this year, follow me here on Bandcamp or on Patreon and I'll be happy to update you.

Because there was an unanticipated glitch in the recording for the last track that kind of ruined the second verse, I don't feel comfortable accepting money for this live album, and hope you'll enjoy it as my gift to you. Thanks for listening!

Prints & Original

Painted live at Meow Wolf's House of Eternal Return to the music of Papadosio on 13 & 14 December 2019. Acrylic and oil pens on canvas (16"x20"x1.5", gallery wrapped).

I have no idea what I was thinking, other than that the music was excellent and I was set up right next to the subwoofer and five feet from the drums (reading 96 decibels on my friend's phone app), so the more-than-usually intense and gestural take on live painting was very obviously a result of my environment. Some kind of fractal psychedelic seahorse sigil.

This is what happens when after eleven years of painting at concerts you decide to finally let the music speak through the paint. When you let the energies of a band in an experimental growth spurt and a very full and intensely weird venue carry you where they may...

Sneak Peek at my new Dinosaur Painting • Coming Down from CoSM • Live Looping Pedalboard Teardown • New Live Album • Read the First Few Sections of my Book • My Talk from Sonic Bloom 2016 • And I Love You

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).

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:

Thanks again for reading and may all your days and nights be full of sweet embodied ease!  Now:

"Find what you love and follow it to glory.”

- Abraham Simpson

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!

21st Century Romance: Digital Music for Analog Love | William Irwin Thompson x Burning Man | John Perry Barlow x Google Glass | New Videos, Merch, & Live Recordings

"They say when you meet the love of your life, time stops, and that's true.  What they don't tell you is when time starts again, it moves extra fast to catch up."

- Ed Bloom, Big Fish

Ideamensch recently quoted my interview with them in their list of "35 Habits That Successful Entrepreneurs Use To Get Things Done."  My contribution is old and taken out of context, but it's a good list in general, if you're looking for ways to be more productive.

But I'm not sure that being productive is most important thing in life – try as they might to convince us all otherwise.  I often feel like it's a bad habit I have to unlearn, that I'm stuck on "show and tell" overdrive – but to what end?  I'm sure I could improve my strategies for saying more with less, inspiring by example with a fuller-yet-more-spacious life, and I'm always open to your insights.

In the meantime, here I am sharing work of which I am extremely proud.  I do this as an offering to others, but I really love this stuff.  I get lost in this music and these patterns for hours every day, and hope that you ultimately benefit from the loving dedication and enjoyment I invest into my work.

And I deeply appreciate all of the help you guys continue to provide to keep it flowing.  When you pick up prints or music, or commission a painting, or hire me for a private party, or whatever – it all goes to paying rent that just doubled; to starting a long-overdue life in Austin with my beloved; and to finishing the most ambitious projects I have ever undertaken.

Whenever you share my work with your friends, or invite me to enjoy your own creative efforts, our every interaction helps reinforce this path of joy and service.  Thank you.

May all of this blossom like red fireworks in your heart.

Michael

21st Century Romance:
Digital Music for Analog Love

Listen/Download

21st Century Romance is a double-disc LP of highlights from my 2013 tour, improvised performances channeling the spirit of places like Rootwire Festival and Austin's Historic Scoot Inn into luminous, deep-chill heroic electro-ballads.

It is a consummate recording of my years honing a new kind of music – freestyle instrumentals that wed past and future, live and studio, the world's most familiar folk instrument with a dazzling array of electronic hardware.

The music is just one part of a multimedia release exploring the ever-more-intimate embrace human and machine through multiple channels, including original digital art, first-person time-lapse live painting videos taken through Google Glass, laser-engraved bamboo jewelry, inspirational performance philosophy, and more – a feast for the senses, articulating a healing transcendental vision for humankind as we stride forward into an age of epochal change.

But what it all comes down to is this:  an hour and a half of music I'm really proud of and can't believe I made live in concert without premeditation.

Two tracks – "Sweat Anthem" and "Green Ranger" – are entirely free downloads and the rest of the album, liner notes and all, is $7.  It's the only record of dozens on my site for which I'm asking anything at all – mostly just to see who still cares about all the time and love and work that goes into the craft of music.

Buying my friends' music is one of the most satisfying things I do and I hope you feel the same...because it sounds so much sweeter when you've made that commitment.  (Remember new CDs?)  If you want a physical souvenir, the album is a free download with this poster:

Ernst Haeckel Tribute Poster

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Ernst Haeckel is one of my personal heroes – the 19th Century scientific illustrator who single-handedly named, described, and drew thousands of deep sea creatures discovered by the world's first trans-oceanic research expedition.  (If you want to be inspired, watch this documentary about his life.)

He saw evolution as the unfolding mind of God and recognized no boundary between art and science...and his lavish illustrations reflect his sensitivity to natural beauty and geometric perfection.  This signed 11" x 17" poster on glossy cardstock is an homage to his beautiful plates of diatoms, sea stars, and jellyfish – featuring the series of hand-drawn and digitally manipulated fractals I designed for the liner notes of 21st Century Romance as part of its exploration of the analog-digital embrace.

I Made These Videos & They're Super Cool

Cultural historian William Irwin Thompson had no idea when he gave this talk on the circus in 1975 that it would one day go so nicely over Burning Man footage taken thirty-eight years later...

My friend and colleague Topher Sipes threw down some epic visuals with me at the Scottish Rite Theatre in Austin a few weeks ago.  Here's a clip of that super trippy set – full video coming soon...

John Perry Barlow, co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and author of the Declaration of Independence of Cyberspace, seems surprisingly at odds with Google Glass in this short interview...

I shred eight-finger polyphonic fretboard tapping in this vaguely latin lightning number on the overwhelmingness of modern life, recorded at my 30th birthday show in Austin...

Here's A New Painted Hat!

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Yay!  I had a lot of fun with this "Biomechanical Slurk meets Easter Sunday" snapback – painted on a canvas Grassroots California lid, which offered a better surface and let me render more detail.  Let me know if you'd like one – or custom-painted anything.  (Murals!)

These Pins = Mmm

Two of the prettier things in which I've played a part, these matched "warm" and "cool" double-posted enamel pins are $20 each from my homies at Kolorspun.  This is a banger 2" pin – the kind that would shine like a train headlight on the front of a fedora or flash enough to signal a search plane if you ever got lost in the woods.  Just saying.

New Pay-Whatever Live Recordings

Download for Free/Donation
Buy 11"x17" Prints of the Album Cover

Recorded at my friend Aisha's Valentine's Day 50th Birthday Party in North Austin...we start off with a lengthy melodic psyambient guitar improvisation, then roll through a few of my fan favorite "standards" from the twelve-year MG catalogue. Suffused with dark chocolate and the seductive decor, these performances for a home full of Burners and other delightful weirdos are rife with shimmering, sultry haute technique.

Highights include a best-yet take on the ongoing quasi-improvisation, "Extinct" - building on but significantly different from prior iterations from The Manifestation Celebration 2011 and my birthday party at Whip In 2012.  Also, a pretty tight version of my percussive guitar anthem, "Offering Hands".

Download for Free/Donation

Improvised by strangers on the tail end of an all-night house party, while sampled and remixed on the fly by Michael Garfield. Featuring: Mitch Mignano on Microkorg, Acoustic Guitar, & iPad; Jared Buchsbaum on Melodica, Mellophone, & Clarinet; and Anthony Paul on Human Beatbox.

Recorded live at a private house party in Austin, Texas on New Year's Day, immediately following my solo sunrise set.  Be warned:  this is extremely weird.  Album artwork by the inimitable Kaliptus.

New Time-Lapse Live Painting Video | Preorder My New Album | Free: Live at Whip In | Remastered Painting | New Hats | Gratifly Videos

"Elites aren't defined by birth or wealth, they are people with a project, individuals who want to do work they believe in, folks seeking to make an impact. Averaging down everything we do so that it becomes cheap and ubiquitous and palatable to all is a hollow goal."

– Seth Godin

I'm just going to apologize right now for overloading you with awesome new stuff over the next couple of weeks.  This year finds me on an incredible creative roll and I feel like I'm doing my best work ever, faster than ever before.  

If you don't have time to read this whole newsletter – and I certainly understand if that's the case – then please watch this time-lapse live painting video, download this free live album, and check out this sweet painted fedora.  I'll have more videos and music and artwork I am proud to share with you next week.  Feel free to reach out to me with your own artwork, or questions, and have a beautiful day!

Oh, and also!  If you know of any festivals I should play this year, please let me know.  I still do all of my own booking, it's hard work, and I can use all of the help I can get.  I really appreciate your input.

love,

Michael

Time-Lapse Live Painting through Google Glass

Watch in HD on Youtube

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I finally made good on my promise to Google Glass to film my live painting #throughglass and share the video. Here is that time-lapse – taken while painting "Inner Light" at Rootwire Festival and the Dallas Be:Tribe Gathering in 2013 – along with a preview of my forthcoming electronic guitar album (which you can preorder here) and a bit of a manifesto-rant on the importance of taking something home with you from your festival experience...

Laser-Engraved Bamboo Pendants + CDR Physical Package

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My buddy Jamie Greene at Biomorphics is helping me make these delicious laser-engraved 2" pendants for the physical release of my forthcoming album, 21st Century Romance, to be released on March 4th.  (The pics above are of the prototype...I'm open to your feedback on whether this would be better with a leather cord or pin backings so you can wear it as a hat pin.)

Live at Whip In

Pay-What-You-Like

(or download it for free...just be sure to enjoy it)

Heart-spearing pathos, virtuosic fingerstyle acoustic guitar, and ecstatic live electronic improvisation come together in this definitive live recording of my set at Whip In on January 9th, 2014 – the belated second anniversary of my first concert in Austin (and birthday party for me, David Bowie, Elvis Presley, and Stephen Hawking).

This album features two new live looping improvisations as well as the first public performance of the song "Signal," first-ever recordings of "Really," "Gatecrashing," and a new guitar arrangement of the fan favorite, "It Hurts So We're Not Dead." A true landmark recording in my development as a performing singer-songwriter and avant-guitarist.

Written, Performed, Recorded, & Mixed by Yours Truly – Released 7 February 2014

Remastered Painting: "Cabochons"

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32" x 32" - paint marker on stretched canvas

Email me to bid on the original painting.

Painted at

2012 07 27 The Parish (The Nadis Warriors, Paul Basic, Metranohm)

2012 08 04 Frank (Sheer Khan and the Space Case, Henry and the Invisibles)

2012 08 16, 18 Rootwire Festival

(Papadosio Live PA, Futexture, Kaminanda, Mazeguider, Random Rab)

2014 01 21, 22, 31 Studio

This painting hung on my wall in its original form for over a year...and I just hated, hated looking at it.  Every piece goes through its awkward adolescence, but sometimes I think it's done when it's actually not, and then eighteen months later I get fed up, take it down, and work on it until I'm finally satisfied looking at it.  No compromise!  I'm happy with this piece, now.  

If you live in Austin you can go check it out, along with a few other pieces, in its new temporary home at Lunar Mattress on South Congress.  What?  Yes.  This furniture store is also an art gallery.  :)

New Painted Hats

Now that I am refusing Bassnectar commissions, hat work has been a little slower-going.  Sigh.  Come on, people!  I want to do something totally unique and YOU.  You'll be glad in twenty years you challenged me with something different that grew along with your musical tastes.  (No offense to Lorin, whose work I admire.  But a man can only draw so many bass drops before he goes mad.)

If you'd like a hat, drop me a line.  You're helping me pay rent, and I love to beautify your domes.

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Taking A Cosmic Perspective at Gratifly 2013 Videos

If you'd prefer to listen, you can download the audio from these talks right here.  But if you want to feel like you were there, these videos capture that morning-after glow we were all feeling...

Watch Part 1 on Youtube

Watch Part 2 on Youtube

If you made it all the way through this you are a gladiator!  Thanks for your time and attention.