One Final Dispatch From Last Decade: New Paintings, Music, Podcasts, & Reading Lists

"One's ideas must be as broad as Nature, if they are to interpret Nature. “

- Arthur Conan Doyle

"Einstein thought nature would protect us from the formation of black holes."

- Janna Levin

Happy New Year, everyone! This update is, I know, more than I can hope for you to actually digest — and that's okay. I'm glad you even took the time to check it out — and think you'll be rewarded with each step into it you take.

The reason for this tome is that I've been so busy making work of lasting value that I haven't had the time to share.  Exhibit A:

I've been working hard to figure out how I can balance old and new responsibilities (including sharing the extraordinary conversations I've been hosting for the Santa Fe Institute's Complexity Podcast, about evolution and ecology, economics and sociology). The art and music still comes, just slower, more deliberately than it used to. My hope is that you too value quality over quantity.

That said, here's the last dispatch from the 2010s, a few days late due to subspace anomalies:

A few new tees and tapestries featuring my artwork made it up on Acidmath's new website:

Because a lot of people have asked me for reading lists, I've started a new shop at Amazon where I list my favorite non-fiction, fiction, and graphic novels, and if you buy them I get some small percentage of the sale:

I also got a lot of airtime in the last few months — getting interviewed by The New Modality as an advisor to their amazing new magazine, and appearing on podcasts with Cory Allen and Hardy Haberland. I left Chris Ryan a voicemail he played on Tangentially Speaking, and got name-dropped in my friend David Titterington's awesome essay on "black goo" and/in the films of David Lynch. And my public talks were quoted extensively in Marzia Braggion's lovely experimental art film, "The Great Unknown" — as well as for one of the weirdest and funniest hip hop videos I've ever seen, Jonah Mociun's "Still Life (The Ensouling)".

Two new live recordings found their way online last week: the highlights from my concert for the Psychedelic Society of Minneapolis, and the ambient set I played in Arizona for Stargate Reunion. (The former's free and public; the latter an exclusive for Bandcamp & Patreon supporters.)

 

Note: I got to play the best gig ever in December, opening for Papadosio at Meow Wolf, and I'll have that for you in the next update — along with the live painting that I made with them that weekend, and the special episode of Future Fossils I recorded with their lead guitarist and my dear old friend Anthony Thogmartin.  It seemed a bad idea to bury that in this massive update, so hold tight!

As for the painting life, I've been waiting for a while to get my hands on the scan of this deliciously disturbing pens-and-airbrush collaboration I did last year with brother-in-arms Byron Aldridge. We are not making prints of this but the original is up for purchase, if you're interested. (24"x36" on gallery-wrapped canvas.)

And if you aren't subscribed to Future Fossils Podcast yet, the four latest episodes are easily four of the best to date:

 

 

Recent Patreon-supporter-exclusives include another four solid conversations (including a personal favorite with comedian Ramin Nazer), as well as our final book club call of 2019:

 

In parting, probably the proudest non-baby art I've made in the last several months were these two studio recordings, "Transparent" and "Signal." Listeners have likened them to everything from "the kind of music Bon Iver wishes he could make" to "like listening to The Flaming Lips for the first time."

You can dig them both on Spotify, Soundcloud, Bandcamp, or anywhere you like to go for music. Or stream them while you read their lyrics and their backstories, on Medium:

Thank you for your attention!  Love and warm wishes,

Michael

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