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

Waterloo Festival Team Mural | Listening To Plants | Psychonautics | New Coloring Pages & Timelapse | Future Fossils Book Club

Okay, it's been too long. So much is happening and it's all just getting faster all the time (unless you're software). My partner and I are about to have a kid. We moved to Santa Fe. I work for these insane(ly) brilliant people now. I'm almost out of paintings, and I can't make them fast enough with all the other things I'm doing at the moment...

That said, here's tons of stuff, as usual. I'm always here if you write back, and hope the upgrades' going smoothly for you – meaning easily, which probably means a river-bending, highly corrugated kind of way, like brains (they're better at computing when they're dense, so take it as a compliment).

I love you all and feel a thing about this taking so damn long to make it to you. Anyway!

The Waterloo Music Festival Collaboration Mural

A painting made in the craziest environment, at the most complete and awesome festival installation I have ever proposed, with a team of artists I can't believe I mustered into such intense collaboration.

A giant piece – nine-plus feet wide and four high – that spilled over into months of meetings and late sessions, seven of us focusing on areas and balanced coverage, and arguing a lot, and learning...all the while the looming focus of my living room, for months, and detailed in this photojournal.

This piece is in a private collection in Austin, now, but we finally can make some prints for everyone who cheered us on through this foolishly ambitious project.  Thank you!

Artist Instagram Accounts:

Michael Garfield • Elaine Alonzo • Chaeli Cardenas • Diego Zion 

Byron Aldridge • William Allan Ross • Chelsea Schulz

New Music: Listening to Plants at Starseed Gardens

Free Download (As Always)

Recorded in maybe the most magical place I have ever been, late on a sweaty summer night, surrounded by an acres-wide nursery of medicine plants growing from the black earth of a dead volcano, a short walk from a giant ancient fig tree and a slightly longer walk from the easternmost point of the continent and white sharks. 

Starseed Gardens was a standout moment in my tour Down Under and a precious, moving place. This is the music that emerged in ritual there, a song to the intelligence around us. 

Performed on acoustic guitar and hardware electronic effects. 

In memory of Dan Schreiber. 

I'm In This Movie (Speaking & Music)

If you don't already know, Shane Mauss is one of the smartest comedians on the beat right now; he hosts Here We Are, a science interview podcast that's really cool; and he's been candid (on Duncan Trussell's show, as well as on Future Fossils Episode 58) about how his psychonautic adventures helped push him over the brink into a delusional mania and temporary institutionalization (although, I think he needs to emphasize that he also quit alcoholism stone cold at that time, which may have had some tiny thing to do with it). 

This is his documentary of those adventures, and I'm in it cross-cut with the legendary James Fadiman, talking about Richard Doyle's writing on human-plant co-evolution and its role in the emergence of language...I also have a music credit, and a handful of great queues throughout, along with awesome animations by Ramin Nazer and the most paradoxically sober reflection you could expect from a documentary about psychedelic self-experimentation.

But for many other reasons that will make sense in retrospect, I highly encourage you to preorder it. One of those reasons is to help it up the charts. (I don't get a cut; I just want this conversation on the front page.)

This New Time-Lapse Video with John David Ebert (Future Fossils #65)

YouTube | Facebook

These New Future Fossils Coloring Book Pages

Five new coloring book pages for a total of 25 so far. I add new ones as often as I can!

These New Podcast Episodes & Special Features

 

   

 

In addition to the six latest episodes of Future Fossils Podcast, which span the gamut from the most confessional and bizarre episodes I've ever released to the most professional and discrete, here are two special offerings – one public and one for Patreon supporters only. 

We've started Future Fossils Book Club with an awesome conversation on the even-more-awesome Blindsight by Peter Watts, a truly important and unsettling work. And I also compiled dozens of my favorite excerpts from the show's 2018 run to make The Sediment of Sentiments, a kind of meta-fossil for everybody to enjoy:

  

These Two Silly Interviews:

Voyage Dallas • Voyage Houston

Origin stories, if you're bored. Weirdly got asked to do the same interview by the same magazine in two different cities where I don't live, but hey. It was an opportunity to play. :)

This Isn't New, But Still:

Patreon supporters get 10-20% off all my prints and merchandise at michaelgarfieldart.com:

The Oddest Chicken + Psychedelic Yoga + Tech Ethics + The Future is Exapted/Remixed + Future Fossils with Susan Molnar & Joanna Harcourt-Smith

“Instead of choosing your work, I would highly recommend that you choose your play...The play, at the end of the day, is a lot more important than the work.”

– Joanna Harcourt-Smith

Thanks for checking out this update!  Lots of new work in the cooker for you (you can see some of my many new paintings in progress on Instagram) – but a lot of the work lately has been in reorganizing and reimagining my life from the top down and inside out.  Every moment is an opportunity for our renewal, for a fresh start, and in spring especially.  My hope is that by getting straight at home and in my heart, that change will ripple out and grow and help us all move lovingly into a more coherent, generous, and optimistic future.

Hopefully my reinvigorated dedication to a life of love and play inspires the same in you:  release from all the fear-based narratives of both the mainstream and the "counterculture" media; enthusiasm and appreciation for the minor victories and humble private graces; the time and space to notice that which doesn't serve you, and the calm to walk away from it and into something beautiful and good and true without resentment or regret, but simple joy and gratitude for second chances.

Change is in the air.  Let's make the most of it, friends.

Here's my latest work.  More soon – 

love

Michael

"The Oddest Chicken"

48"x36" – acrylic on canvas

Click here to buy poster prints – 11"x17" for $20

Original painting available (email me)

I present to you "The Oddest Chicken" (Australian for "The Artist Check-In.") Painted live at Rainbow Serpent Festival (Victoria, Australia) during and after the Chinese New Year's celebrations. I had an amazing time in Australia and a big part of it was finding the confidence to stride boldly into this bold year.  I hope this piece does something similar for you.

Here's a 360 time-lapse video of this painting in progress (as well as fuzzy cameos by Randal Roberts, Morgan Mandala, and Luke Brown) with an excerpt from my talk at the Chapel of Sacred Mirrors on how psychedelics prepare us for an age of accelerating technology:

You can also check out my gallery of 360 photos from the making of this painting, and the rest of the tour, here. Enjoy...

...and while we're on the subject of Australia, psychedelics, and technology – here's a video of the talk I gave at The Commonwealth Bank of Australia's Innovation Lab (where they've had people like Richard Dawkins and Guy Kawasaki come to speak):

Click here for the slideshow that accompanies this presentation.

Click here to stream the audio of the full talk plus the spicy 90-minute discussion that it led to – these bank employees CHOSE to stay at work until 6 pm on a Friday to keep this conversation going...

And if that's not enough evolution talk for you, here's the latest chapter of my book, How to Live in the Future.  In this section I explain how everything's a remix, including you, and how "exaptation" (a little-known concept from evolutionary science) can improve your creativity:

How to Live in the Future Part 4:
The Future is Exapted/Remixed

An excerpt:

"Long before the first amphibian crawled out to lay our modern mythological foundation, our ancestor – some lobe-finned fish – had stubby little feet it used to cling to rocks in shallow water. The good idea of what we now call “hands” lay there unnoticed, latent, till the moment that the pool dried up and (we are told) fate benefited fish with feet, fish that could waddle back into their brackish lakes (which as a site for Epic Moments in Life History are far more likely than the sea, since estuaries offer such a trove of coves as evolutionary testbeds). All the pieces were already there, just waiting for sufficiently large waves to roll up and away, remixing them."

Read the whole thing (and leave in-line comments!) at Medium.

And we have two new episodes of Future Fossils Podcast!  Click the images for download links to awesome chats with coder and tech educator Susan Molnar and podcasting psychedelic socialite Joanna Harcourt-Smith:

  

Available Original Paintings • Music Archive • Print Shop

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 Live Painting | Ken Adams on SolPurpose Conversations | Audio-Visual Psychedelia with Topher Sipes | Two New Concert Recordings

"Don’t think of night as the absence of day; think of it as a kind of freedom. Turned away from our sun, we see the dawning of far-flung galaxies. We are no longer sun-blind to the star-coated universe we inhabit."
– Diane Ackerman

So the summer begins.  The last few weeks in particular have been among the most transformational of my whole life to date...new home, new lease on love, new insights into Being...a fuller update is going to have to wait, cuz Duty Calls.  Or maybe I'll just let the art speak for itself.  :)

Enjoy these latest offerings.  I'm honored to share them with you.  As always, art prints are here, email me if you want something custom, like my page if you haven't already, and feel free to reach out to me at any time for any reason.  Thanks for reading!

"The Soul of Night"

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

24"x32" – paint markers on masonite panel

Painted at:

• LANAI Rooftop Lounge 2014.03.05 for Fractālà, Ram-Z, Pharo, Blunt Force

• Head for the Hills Music, Arts, and Brew Festival 2014.03.07 for Gobi, Dimitri's Ascent

• Studio 2014.03.22, 04.09, 04.10, 04.12

In honor of H.R. Giger, may he rest in peace. Also inspired by Mardis Gras, Jumping Spiders, Lingerie, Fabergé Eggs, Christmas Ornaments, and the Chapel of Sacred Mirrors. What more can I say?  

SolPurpose Podcast with special guest Ken Adams

Read More / Free Download

“It’s important that we pay attention. We only have this attention for a very short time in this human frame, and what we put our attention onto is where the most magic and power is. It’s where the most freedom is. Really the ONLY place there’s any freedom is where you put your attention. And it’s time for us to turn our attention to preserving the planet, to loving one another, to sharing what there is…there’s plenty to go around.” 

– Ken Adams

For anyone new to this blog, I'm the editor-in-chief of SolPurpose – a creative nexus for visionaries covering the amazing art and ideas, festivals, music, and healthy life practices of transformational culture.

In the latest episode of our podcast, I speak with Ken Adams – experimental filmmaker, longtime friend and collaborator with psychedelic philosopher Terence McKenna, and director of Imaginatrix: The Terence McKenna Experience, a masterful new work of psychedelic cinema. Ken’s greatest gifts to the community, though, may be his peaceful and compassionate demeanor and the perspective cultivated over years at the front lines of conscious evolution.

For a great conversation on the history of the psychedelic revolution, aging as a spiritual path, and the importance of elders in evolutionary community, you can download our chat for free right here.

Live Digital Psychedelia:

Michael Garfield + Topher Sipes = A/V Medicine Journey

Watch in HD | Like/Share on FB | Download the Music

Simulated DMT Trip performed in light and sound...

Here's the full 22 minute cyberguitar performance I did at the Austin Scottish Rite Theater, the oldest theater west of the Mississippi River, back on February 6th – a collaboration with my friend, digital animator Topher Sipes, following the screening of my friend Rak Razam's film Aya Awakenings.

Topher "danced with light" along to my loosely scripted guitar looping improvisation using the Boss RC-300 Loopstation. (Looping enthusiasts will probably appreciate my application of the three sets of independent transport controls for counterpoint and sample hits, especially toward the end of the performance as things pick up pace.)

Enjoy! Shares and feedback always appreciated.

Two New Live Concert Recordings

2014.02.06 – Scottish Rite Theatre (Austin, TX)

Download it Here

The audio from the video above...since this was an intermission performance between the screening of Rak Razam's ayahuasca documentary Aya Awakenings and a panel discussion about the film, Topher and I tried to make it as jungle triptastic as possible.  Those of you who have any experience with the Vine of Souls are more likely to appreciate how this piece rears its jeweled and streaming head for full-on medicinal overwhelm over an accelerating 22 minutes...programmatic music tracing the opening movements of a transcendental inner symphony.

Download "Dream Snakes" for free.

2014.02.15 – Tantra Coffee House (Austin, TX)

Download it Here

Violinda Lola and I went totally nuts in the climactic moments of this concert we performed together for a Texas Wild Rice Festival fundraiser at Tantra Coffee House in San Marcos, Texas.  I used to have doubts about my ability to launch a crowd to their feet in dance, but this show obliterated them – by the end of the 45 minutes, over 200 people were spilling out of the café's side yard and into the streets, adults and children dancing, people packed up at the front of house, a gorgeous and intense celebration of life I was honored to facilitate.  Super great energy!

Download the whole thing for free until May 28th, and "Do The Aquarena" free after that.

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!

Godhood Is Boring

“The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead.”

– Albert Einstein, physicist

"We live on an island of knowledge surrounded by a shore of ignorance. As our island of knowledge grows, so does the shore of our ignorance."

– John A. Wheeler, physicist

'All scientifically possible technology and social change predicted in science fiction will come to pass, but none of it will work properly.'

– Neil Gaiman's Second Law

“Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment.”

– Jellaludin Rumi

Perhaps within our lifetimes, humankind's coevolutionary dance with biomedical technology will extend the lifespan of our bodies to currently inconceivable lengths.  There are a lot of brilliant minds today waxing poetic about such a future, in which our newfound immortality makes existence an ongoing act of creative bliss where the medium is reality itself.

But these Singularity pundits almost entirely neglect the obvious psychological effects of such radical life extension, imagining that we would continue to trundle on as a species with similar needs and desires.  This is about as sophisticated as 19th Century lithographs of the year 2000, when everyone rides to their formal affairs in sleek dirigibles and flies masted ships to the Moon.

It also forgets the initial rush of power we all felt when taking our first steps, or shaking a rattle.  The thrill of control is the seed of the self, the earliest and most primitive emotional response to discovering our participation in reality.  This rush sustained the growth of modernity as it magnified and became dams, skyscrapers, and space shuttles.  But what sustains our awe into adulthood is not the continued magnification of the control thrill – for which we quickly develop a tolerance and require even more bombastic displays of control – but the deepening recognition of a world finally and utterly beyond our ability to rule.

Science is, in the final count, not about the increase of knowledge, but the increase of ignorance – if every question answered means two more questions asked, what we don't know is growing faster than what we do.  And so a mature science, grounded in the same wonder at mystery that impelled natural inquiry in the first place, welcomes this mystery.  It is not a program of rapturous domination, or prideful power en route to ultimate mastery of the matter, but the cultivation of wisdom through the exploration of nature as macrocosm and the self as microcosm, of the ego embedded in a world defined by interbeing.

This is the curve ignored by graph-happy Singulitarians when they give the hockey stick chart argument for our impending divinity.  We're spiraling increasingly out of control, not into it – evermore aware that control is actually the delusion of a not-actually-separate self, woven dynamically with uncountable feedback loops into the rest of the world.  We are participants, not lords – not creators, but co-creators.  We will learn to work with, not upon.

But even if we don't end up as the Lactobacillus in Google's intestinal tract, even if we become the genie we let out of this bottle, it'll undoubtedly disappoint us.  "Turning into gods" may seem exciting now, but eventually every new plateau becomes the norm, every age's fancy new garb goes out of fashion – and it seems pretty likely that one day, moving planets will be as prosaic as moving chairs is to us today.  When that age comes, will we still seek the awesome creative power of even greater deities?  Or will we finally accept the horizon of our knowledge and ability as an ever-receding target and, humbled to the transcendental mystery of life, find the transhuman here and now, deeper in the present?

After all, it only takes a cursory study of world mythology to realize that the gods are BORED.  Omnipotence is a dead-end street.  Once you have it all, the only way forward is to imagine yourself as a lesser and lesser being, like Alan Watts' lucid dreamer who eventually hides himself so deep he forgets he is dreaming...and here we are, imagining in a distinctly un-Copernican fashion that meaning and purpose exist only in the head, and ours is the first and un-simulated world.

2011 11 22, Orlando FL

Post-script:

"'Transhumanist' comes from 'transhuman,' a word that seems to have received its modern meaning in correspondence between Julian Huxley and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, the French Jesuit paleontologist and theologian. Teilhard distinguished the 'transhuman' from the 'ultrahuman,' with the latter meaning a kind of souped-up version of the human, and the former indicating an actual transformation – evolution – of who we are. The challenge of the transhuman is to actualize our unique individuality within the much larger planetary collective he saw emerging...he insisted that planetary 'communion' could only come about through the difficult work of individuation: In order to evolve, we each must become who we are, together.

"Now most recent usages of 'transhuman,' it seems to me, have forgotten most of this, and mistaken the 'transhuman' for the 'ultrahuman' – a kind of upgrade to the same basic model, still denying our connection to each other and the environment. Huxley, a biologist, very much intended 'transhumanism' to indicate a change in who and how we are, and this change centered on a recognize of our radical interconnection with the cosmos, a perception of unity. Now 'transhuman' etymologically suggests 'beyond the human,' and in my view much of what we call 'transhuman' these days – the technological enhancement of our already existing nature to cling to life and deny the role of death, for example – is, as Friedrich Nietzsche wrote, 'human, all too human.' It is an individual ego’s vision of evolution."

– Richard Doyle, information scientist

Gem & Jam, Entheon Videos, and a Valentine's Day Exclusive Track

> Imagery

Crystal Eggs

2010 02 04 Plush

(Ana Sia, BLVD)

20"x30" - paint markers on masonite

- check availability -

(signed 11"x17" prints available, $20)

I can't seem to shake the bad habit of hauling ass on zero sleep from Colorado to Arizona only to leap out of the car and immediately begin painting...which is exactly how it went down at last year's Gem & Jam, and exactly how it went down this year, as well. My friend, globetrotting photographer Megan Illgner, and I made it there with literally five minutes to spare before Ana Sia went on, after burning a fierce downhill highway from Durango to Tucson in one lightning stretch. It was pretty epic to begin with, considering our two-day drive together rang in her first real foray into vagabonding (and snowy mountain driving...ask me to tell you about our near-death experience on an icy road over Durango, one of these days). And no, I'm not just trying to terrify my mother. We were perfectly safe the entire time.

This painting is inspired by the oil pattern on the lenses of a pair of sunglasses I bought that morning (they were so cool I had to buy them, but they bore an MTV logo I had to scratch off with a pair of scissors so as not to infect my vibe), and it is dedicated to Amy Otto the masseuse, who took good care of my hands that night and is a luminous woman. After such a strenuous trip down, painting this in the company of friends I rarely see was a real treat. And I think it shows.

Whomporaptors vs. The Sunrise, or Dubstep Dinos Defeat The Dawn

2010 02 05 Rialto Theatre

(Telepath, Random Rab, EOTO)

20"x30" - paint markers on masonite

- check availability -

(signed 11"x17" prints available, $20)

After my recent critical review of EOTO's ongoing dubstep obsession, I figured I'd make a point to tell keyboardist/guitarist/looper Michael Travis that whatever they played that night would not be dark enough. Because I'd be painting dinosaurs. Half kidding, but I really was in an unusually grindy mood, and after all my railing on their overwrought fixation I was smitten by irony: their set was, indeed, not dark enough for my tastes. However, Megan and I talked on the way down to Arizona about how we wanted Travis to include bongos in their dubstep, and we had a high five moment when it actually happened at the show...pioneering a new genre she and I have lovingly dubbed "bongstep."

So this painting is dedicated to Megan, and indirectly, to bongstep. Here's to having the first Google hit for something (like I did for the statement, "Imagination is our greatest natural resource"). It's a direct response to my friends who insisted on more dinosaurs, and it was a challenge to myself, since the Maniraptorans were covered in feathers and I knew it'd be a growth opportunity to attempt them. Also, it's difficult to tell from this photograph but the background of this painting has a lot of really intricate dripwork and subtle color layering going on. I had a lot of fun prepping it.

As for the dinosaurs...well, I meant for them to be Velociraptors, originally, but I hadn't looked at any in a while. So we ended up with one likely Velociraptor in the middle, there; one anonymous sickle-clawed beast above; and something that looks like a primitive Tyrannosaurid (perhaps Dilong) in the lower right. I had no choice but to invent a taxon for this bizarre menagerie...genus Whomporaptor. So much for scientific precision. :)

Serpent DNA Love Regeneration

2010 02 06 Rialto Theatre

(Pnuma Trio, Vibesquad, Boombox)

20"x30" - paint markers on masonite

- check availability -

(signed 11"x17" prints available, $20)

Another painting named courtesy of the lovely Leesah Noble. I need to draw more snakes...after all, they're one of the few subjects with which I have significant professional experience from my time at KUNHM's Department of Herpetology, and it'd be a shame to squander what little official training I have in these things. So I got all Jeremy Narby on the green-and-yellow-and-silver background and delighted in scales for a few hours.

This painting is dedicated to Taylor Lupardo, with whom I stayed (along with about a dozen other people) during Gem & Jam, and whose Facebook profile picture I took at sunset from the roof of the parking complex across the street from his place...one of the most magical moments I had out there, maybe the closest any of us got to soaking up "real" Arizona during the festival. Thanks for the crash space, man.

> Writing & Speech

At Burning Man's Entheon Village in 2009, I participated in a series of lectures and panel discussions on evolution, consciousness, 2012, and the future of our species. And they were videotaped! I am SO excited to share with you the fruits of that project:

In this first (two-part) video, I'm on a panel with authors Daniel Pinchbeck, Tony Vigorito, and Mark Heley, as well as the mysterious Mark Martinez. It was incredibly fun to share the stage and assume the guise of expertise for this conversation about the evolution of consciousness and our current global transition, and except for a few rough spots the discussion was truly inspired and inspiring. It was an honor to participate, and it's an honor now to finally get to share it with you.

http://entheonvillage.blip.tv/file/3194601/

Right after the panel, I gave what is doubtlessly the most important speech of my life so far: a half-hour presentation on the emerging science of biogeomagnetics, a discipline that studies the relationship between living creatures and the electromagnetic fiels of our planet and star. By describing how magnetic fields trigger the release of various human biochemicals, and by grounding the presentation in the understanding that mind and matter are two perspectives of the same phenomenon, I suggest that the 2012 prophesies may actually have a legitimate, modern, naturalistic explanation – and that biogeomagnetics may offer us a prescription for how to stay afloat through the tumultuous years to come.

http://entheonvillage.blip.tv/file/3183885/

Those are my good friends, visionary artist Adam Scott Miller, activist and hero Taylor Steelman, beacon of joy Tessa Ruttan, and synchromystical faerie goddess Jacqueline North listening rapt in the audience (both pics are courtesy of the magnificent Sergio Lub, founder of favors.org, who moderated many of the panels that week with wisdom and grace). These talks are dedicated to anyone who might benefit from them, but I'll give a special nod to my friends who were actually in attendance that amazing day.

> Music

For my last gig at Quixote's in Denver, my friend M Vincent Miller, virtuoso pianist, sat in on about half of my set. It was messy, unrehearsed, and utterly ridiculous...it was also a dream come true. I've wanted to gig with Vince since we met in the fall of 2007, and I am so, so glad that at least some of the recordings came out well enough to share them with you. As a blog exclusive (except, of course, for the people who were there), here is one of my more intense love ballads – a gift to you all for Valentine's Day.

This unusual recording of "Underground River" captures my first-ever duet performance with Vince, who turned this ordinarily brief-but-trancey number into a sprawling, edgy jazz-scape. Truly strange and beautiful...enjoy!

"Underground River" feat. M Vincent Miller

(2010 01 28 Quixote's True Blue)

http://michaelgarfield.bandcamp.com/track/bonus-underground-river-feat-m-vincent