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

New Art & Conversations From The Road To The Eclipse & Burning Man

Spotify • Bandcamp • Facebook • Instagram • YouTube • Twitter • iTunes • Available Paintings

Hey friends!  I'm on the road to the Global Eclipse Gathering in Oregon this week, then Burning Man, to speak and play music at both events – so I'm keeping this short and sweet.  If you'll be at either of those, check my full performance schedule here and come say hi!  I have both hugs and stickers for you.  :)

And now onto some fun things:

News & Interviews

I just gave an exclusive interview about my music, art, life, mission, work, etc. to Keyframe Entertainment on Reality Sandwich.  It's a solid piece, especially if you're new to my work:

"...perhaps the world’s only paleontologist-futurist, a psychedelic poet-artist whose work in every medium communicates a vision of emergent planetary renaissance, and celebrates the curiosity and play required of us if we are to make it through this age of transformation."

And a very different, short-form podcast interview on Austin's WizWarp Artist Spotlight about the intersection of my songwriting and my motivation for creating an archive of vital conversations with Future Fossils Podcast.

Those of you who like some meat on the bones of their conversations will dig my second guest appearance on Cory Allen's The Astral Hustle Podcast, in which we discuss how meditation's only growing more relevant as we walk half-blind into a world of AI-assisted forgeries and automated economies.  Cory's smart as hell, hilarious, and full of liberating insights.  Highly recommended.

Lastly, two art projects deserving of attention:

I donated 20 prints of my frog painting, Zabka, to help fund the conservation of the Sonoran River Toad, threatened by overharvesting for its potent toxins, which contain the so-called "God Molecule" 5-MeO DMT.  A beautiful and sacred creature.  Help out if you can at the Terra Incognita Project.

And my work will be joining the art of dozens of other visionary painters from around the world in a massive group show this winter, Seeds of the Anaconda in Sierra Nevada, Colombia.  It's a celebration of the prophesied reunion of the five indigenous tribes of the Sierra, and a gathering in the name and spirit of global peace and unity.  Learn more about it here.

New Paintings

"Space Pastry"

18"x24" – available

painted live at Cherry Cola Dog (Austin) & at home

prints available here

"Martian Arts"
collaboration with William Allan Ross

16"x20" – taken

painted live by Will during my set at Martian Arts Festival & finished at home by me

prints available here

FOUR New Future Fossils Episodes

Newly Exhumed Short Writing

Pieces from my old gig as the editor of Globalish – where we investigated timeless spiritual themes as they arise in modern culture – these pieces have been unavailable to anyone for two years, until recently republished on my Steemit profile.  

The New Scarlet Letter: Hong Kong Uses DNA Tests To Publicly Shame Litterers

Diriye Osman's Queer Somali Storytelling Helps Us See Beyond The Story

Sex, Drugs, and Evolution: Are We Smart Enough To See Through Separation?

Experiencing Edgelessness in the Floating City of Kompong Khleang

How New York's "Projection Napping" Turns The City Inside-Out

See You Out There...

Parting Thoughts...

"If there is one thing the history of evolution has taught us it’s that life will not be contained. Life breaks free, it expands to new territories and crashes through barriers, painfully, maybe even dangerously, but, uh…well, there it is. Life finds a way."

– Ian Malcolm, Jurassic Park

Saddhu: “Master, I can walk across the water.”

Buddha: “But the ferry’s only a nickel!”

New Leggings & Cases // Three New Paintings // New Unplugged Music Video // Custom Violins & Flatbills // Essays on the Microbiome, Necromancy // Another Guest Spot on the Midwest Real Podcast

"Sharing, not secrecy, is the means by which we create infinite wealth. The wealth of networks, the wealth of knowledge, revolutionary wealth - all can create a nonzero win-win Earth that works for one hundred percent of humanity."

– Robert David Steele (former CIA agent)

“All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another.”

– Anatole France (Nobel Prize-winning poet)

Merry Christmas, everyone!  After six months of experimentation, I've decided to make this a weekly (shorter, easier, more digestible) newsletter starting in 2016.  That way you won't be overwhelmed with an absurd abundance of new music, art, and writing (like you'll see below).  Here's to a smarter generosity, a less demanding way to stay in touch.  

That said, I hope you reap the full rewards of this last monster update.  Thank you so much for letting me give of myself to you in this way – some of you for eight years, now!  We'll keep learning and growing together.

For those of you with less time, here're highlights:  I finally have a complete on-demand merchandise store setup at Society6; I just quietly made all 71 of my musical recordings at Bandcamp entirely free (including several previously unreleased live albums); my sweetest and most poignant song so far is up on Youtube; and three new paintings showing off a more refined technique are now live at my online print store.  All of that and more, below.

I hope you have the greatest Christmas ever, and that you get laid by angels right as everyone is cheering and the clock rolls over to a New Year.  Much love and many blessings!

New Words (Writing Archive)

My second appearance on the Midwest Real Podcast, in which host Michael Phillip and I discuss the shifting nature of "reality" in the Internet Age, and I outline for the first time ever my belief that the 21st Century is best understood as a species-wide collective psychedelic experience.

My second article for the Body Hacking Conference Blog, in which I playfully undermine the idea that our bodies are computers with a visionary jaunt into the future of "hacking" the microbiological ecosystems in our guts.

My latest short blog for Reality Sandwich, in which I introduce you to the awesome artistry of my friend Void Denizen, whose work brilliantly confuses comedy, rap, and necromancy.

New Song (Music Archive)

Watch on Youtube // Watch on Vimeo // Watch on Facebook

A ballad for my friend, fellow songwriter Luke Redfield, in his style, about the silver lining to be found in getting stuck, in losing something beautiful, in having to sit still and wait for life to change:

Heard that you were unwound

know you have found your inspiration

closer to the ground

than you prefer to glide.

But all your pretty sounds

come from a place of desperation

the space between the howl

and the Moon inside...

All that open road is only a reflection

of the freedom that you know is in your mind.

Hard to go there when you know it's a projection.

So much easier to play it out...

I'm sorry about your car.

Sorry about your sweet Australian.

Glad to know that you can play guitar again.

It seems to all come down

at once, confounding explanation.

Feet and wings both bound

right when you need to fly.

But when you're not allowed

to get around, the revelations

come through clear and loud

and the soul grows wide.

All that time out turns you inward for reflection

and confinement makes a diamond in your eye.

You won't find it chasing highway for the legend

so I'm glad you had to sit one out.

I'm sorry about your car.

Sorry about your sweet Australian.

Glad to know that you can play guitar again.

The story of all your scars

deserve the songs you've earned by failing.

Glad to know that you can play guitar again.

New Paintings (Gallery of Available Pieces)

"Diaspora"
24"x32" - oil and acrylic pens on masonite

original painting available – email me with inquiries

Buy 11"x17" signed poster prints for $20 each

Painted at:
2015-12-19 at The Gatsby (Austin, TX) to
The Lagoons, Kindaheart, Muddy Flowers, Caterwaulrus, 365colours

I used to paint one piece a night, back when I started making art at concerts. I enjoyed the looseness, dynamism, energy, and flow of pieces that I knew I had to finish then and there. But somewhere in the last few years, I started hanging out with "real" visionary painters, folks who painted all day every day and logged 150 hours in their average works. How am I supposed to look legit next to these people if I don't start putting way more work into each new live painting? So, I left the "start-and-finish-in-one-evening" pieces on the ground behind me (metaphorically).

Flash forward to this year, and I'm nostalgic for the rapid failure and success that comes with cranking out new pieces fast-as-possible. Plus, I happen to be reading some far-future, totally insane posthuman sci-fi by the great John C. Wright at the moment, and his books have a way of focusing on loooooong-term visionary space migration projects, building spherical space stations around stars, "sophotransmogrifying" all rocks and ice in a solar system into thinking matter...that kind of thing. It really tickles me in the part obsessed with what comes after our imaginary line between machines and living things has been erased once and for all: a minded, living, and responsive world where weapons have opinions, people are technology, the ships that carry us between the stars are ecosystems, more like gods than rockets, and each new invention glorifies what we call "nature" now, instead of being held against it.

Linked thematically to many earlier pieces, this one is another love song to the emptiness of space, which life would fill (indeed, it probably already has) if given any chance to do so. Think of the lusty yearning to explore the vast frontier...now lay that feeling over images of coral spawning under the Full Moon...

"Carnotaurus Wakes Up In A Very Unfamiliar Place"
36"x24" - oil and acrylic pens on canvas

original painting available – email me with inquiries

Buy 11"x17" signed poster prints for $20 each

Painted at:
2015-11-04 Empire Control Room (Austin, TX) to Hullabaloo, Detox Unit, Gaddy, and Fractālà
2015-11-07 Calavera Corazon, 2 GypsyZ Art (Kerrville, TX)
2015-11-11 Home Studio (Austin, TX)
2015-12-02 Empire Control Room to Digital Rust, Somatoast, InertG, Twips
2015-12-11 Empire Control Room to Blockhead, Botany, Bonus Junk, Lefty

The premise: is there is a "bardo" realm between lives for human beings, why not for dinosaurs? The Tibetan Book of the Dead talks about how when your body fades away at the moment of death, you are plunged into a bizarre and turbulent world of mental reactions. I can only imagine the surprise our protagonist must be feeling to discover herself in the whirling kaleidoscopic hyperspace of the after-and-before-life...

"Cosmic Giggle"
24"x24" - oil and acrylic paint pens on four canvases

original painting available – email me with inquiries

Buy 11"x17" signed poster prints for $20 each

A studio painting of what I imagine God's crystalline internal organs must jiggle like when humans do our ordinary silly human things like fall in love and kill each other...

In addition to this month's live paintings, I also painted violins #003 & #004, and hats #180 and #181:

Apparently it is my lot in life to craft or reimagine magic sigils people use to shield and ornament their withered-but-recuperating pineal glands.  If you would like my help re-framing this time-honored gangsta tradition as the PC alternative to wearing indigenous head-dresses to music festivals (or the politically incorrect alternative for anyone attending a funeral), just let me know what's crying to express itself through you...

New Designs (Full Collection)

You asked, I answered: here are seven spankin' new leggings for all of your cyborg Shakti cosplay shenanigans!  Make a memorable exit in these lovely all-over printed, six panel polyester leggings, which will let you move and keep you warm and wick the sweat and turn heads.  If you order a pair, tag me in a Facebook or Instagram post about them and I'll share your picture!

But that's only one facet of the many-sided jewel that is my new Society6 design collection.  You'll also find phone cases, clocks, travel mugs, fleece blankets, t-shirts, and innumerable other made-on-demand items upon which you can blow your lottery winnings, legal settlements, and 401K.  I get 10% of what you spend.  Yay!

Upcoming Events (Full Calendar)

A few of my first major dates in 2016, with plenty more in store!  I hope to see you out there...

Keeping The Portal Open // New Legendary Babe Live Painting // My Talk From Firefly 2015 // Four New T-Shirt Designs // Stuff You May Have Missed

Aloha, everyone! I hope that you're enjoying autumn – and that you don't mind me starting out this latest update with a lengthy but amazing quote. It's worth it.

“Inhabiting your body – reuniting with its intelligence – is one of the most potent political statements you can make. Disembodiment is tacitly modeled and promoted by every institutional hierarchy in our society – whether corporate, political or religious. Each of them is shaped around a top-down ‘command and control’ power structure run by the head of the organization, with executive power consolidated at headquarters – which might lie with the CEO (‘chief’ derives from the Latin word for ‘head’) in head office, or with the head of a political party in the nation’s capital (‘capital comes from a Latin word for ‘head’), or with the head of the church. The implicit message embedded in these hierarchies is that the head should rule. That message remains acceptable to us only because it expresses, even as it further consolidates, our relationship with ourselves."

– Philip Shepherd, "The Embodiment Manifesto"

“Oh, would that my mind could let fall its dead ideas, as the tree does its withered leaves!”

– Andre Gide

Wouldn't that be something. ;) And now...

New Live Painting: "Navel Gazer"

Paper & Canvas Prints Here

24"x36" - oil & acrylic paint pens on canvas

Painted live at the following spacetime coordinates:

2015-10-17 Austin String Band Festival

2015-10-23 Art Outside Festival*

2015-10-28, 11-02 Studio

* to the music of Liberation Movement, GAUDI, DJ Happy Happy James World, Bonus Junk, Nightmares On Wax, Invisible Allies, & KiloWatts

My first portrait – sort of. Based originally on the legendary beauty of Renee Somerfield (@reneesomerfield), but – just like they always do – it took on a life of its own. In accordance with my tireless and inane quest for personal firsts, this is also the first black and white painting I've ever done. There's a lot of subtle detail and transparency that even I can scarcely believe was accomplished with paint markers...but hey, it's in the limitations of the medium that both adventure and discovery reveal themselves.

Check it out in more depth and detail on my art site.

Four New T-Shirt Designs
Just in Time for the Holidays

Yay, finally, I got some new art on all-over printed tees!  (Still sorting out where to get more leggings, yoga pants, etc. printed after learning that my last manufacturers weren't delivering up to my standards.  But hold on tight!  I care about helping you ornament your lower half, as well.)

Clockwise from the upper left, we have: "Pura Vida," "New Age Cleopatra," "Purple Haze," and "21st Century Romance."  Three of these are based on sketchbook pen and ink work that I took into new dimensions digitally, blending human and machine, you know, like I like to do.

Speaking of which:

My Talk from Firefly Gathering 2015,

"Human Meta-Organisms: Endosymbiosis 

& Emergent Planetary Culture"

Free Streaming/Download

Recorded in the Light Lab Creations Dome at Firefly Gathering 2015, here is my deepest and most complete rap yet – mashing up nondual eastern mysticism with western psychology with evolutionary biology with psychedelic transhumanism with your standard MG standup goofery.  And thanks again to David Titterington for his amazing cover art!  Some juicy nuggets from the talk:

Love does not require a relationship between separate selves in order to exist.

The self is something that the world is doing. And the self is an adaptation to a specific set of ecological circumstances. It’s not a fixed point.

To talk about this time in the life of the Earth as the human age is not anthropocentric. It’s not arrogant. It’s an act of our growing humility in recognition that we are a phenomenon of the planet’s automatic processes. That a city is something that the planet is doing.

Listen to it and let me know if it stirs up any big ideas!

Keeping The Portal Open:

MG interviews Erik Davis on the

Blurring of "Real" & "Virtual"

Erik Davis is the author of TechGnosis: Myth, Magic, & Mysticism in the Age of Information (recently reissued by North Atlantic Books with a new afterword). An investigation into how our transcendental urges play out in the realm of high technology, it is a rare treat – both an exemplary work of scholarship and also a delightful read – a florid, fun, and virtuosic play of language. Even more impressive is that in our metamorphic times, this book has aged considerably well. TechGnosis is in ways more relevant today than it was in the rosy dawn of 1998, before The Matrix and the iPhone, Facebook, and Edward Snowden. We’re living in the future. Read this book and learn the territory.

Over a glitchy Google Hangout (you can watch both parts on YouTube), Erik and I discussed our culture’s highest hopes and darkest dreams for our collective future, and how they’ve both become more complicated since the turn of the Millennium.

If you imagine browser windows as a kind of portal in between dimensions – if you wonder when the apes and whales will open social media accounts – if you believe that we can find a way to surf the turbulence of our connected century with grace and humor – then read on…

Stuff You Might Have Missed

Free download of my definitive "cyberacoustic guitar" live PA set from Firefly Gathering 2015.  Improvised to a yoga class and thus well-suited for movement, but I hear the music's also good for straight-up chillout sessions, painting, writing, driving – anything where you would like to set a deep and atmospheric mood.  Download it here.

I found this cleaning out my hard drive and found it interesting and worthwhile, reflecting on how little and how much my life has changed in two short years. I’ve released more virtuosic and accomplished music since the EP we discuss here, City of Jewels – but it remains one of my favorites, and is still as free as ever on my Bandcamp page. Enjoy...

para bien de todos,

Michael Garfield

My TED Application, Three New Paintings, Debating The Singularity, Collected Musical Works Volume I

"A man is a method, a progressive arrangement, a selecting principle, gathering his like to him, wherever he goes. He takes only his own, out of multiplicity that sweeps and circles round him." 

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

Here's to change.  Now that festival culture is getting featured by The New York Times, perhaps it's time for me to move on...or at least grow, to include my last seven years' of work in the body of something greater.  Something that serves you better.

Let's start with my bid for the big time – an amazing opportunity to join a few dozen people selected from a worldwide pool of applicants to attend the TED conference all expenses paid, speak at the conference, and benefit from free professional coaching. Filling out this application was exciting, hopeful, inspiring, and deep.  Having to explain why you're a promising young human to The Wizard of Oz is a ripe moment of reflection...

My 2015 TED Fellows Application

Q: Tell us about your work.

A: The goal of my work is to heal the divide in people's minds between art, science, and spiritual practice – to help others see these three domains as lenses through which anything can be explored, in service of a map that marries disciplines and sees beyond the isolation of modernity into a world whose richness only deepens as we add perspectives.

I am a liminal creature, standing between cultures and traditions to help suture them together – speaking one world in the language of another, juggling metaphors and dancing in the flow of information. My work is an evolving map that links our generation's struggle to a cosmic story, and hopefully empowers people to be true cosmopolitans creatively engaged in our world's future. We need all hands on deck right now. I'm a life-as-art recruiter.

Read my whole application here.

Three New Paintings

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...

Dragon Tail

11"x17" Prints Here

Dragon Eggs

11"x17" Prints Here

Happy Kraken

11"x17" Prints Here

Global Brains & Singularities: Debating The Technopocalypse with Cadell Last

Cadell Last and I put a ton of time into this thorough exploration of light and dark potentials for our future. If you've ever gazed at the stars wondering what's in store for us, check this out.

It goes without saying, please share this. I think it's an important conversation.

"Humanity” will probably come to mean all kinds of wacky things – I know a bunch of people who are already camping in a proverbial line around the block for their new tentacles, gills, wings, computer backups, etc. But I seem to have a harder time than you do imagining that some watershed moment is ahead of us in time that marks an epochal break point into a radically different state of being than any previous radical shift. As far as I’m concerned, we’re already over the rainbow – it’s just become the new normal to us.

Read the whole thing here.

Collected Works, Volume I

Stream Selected Clips & Download Here

321 TRACKS across THIRTY live releases chronicling my evolution as an avant-garde guitarist and singer-songwriter – including previously unreleased material recorded everywhere from underground caves to mountaintops – now exclusively available in this bundled collection!

FOR SUPER-FANS ONLY – if you're just getting started, turn back now. This collection captures some of my weirdest musical moments to date – tripping in the desert west of Albuquerque, jamming under tarps during a central Texas rainstorm – as well as improvs from the Costa Rican jungle and MAPS Psychedelic Science conference, radio broadcast performances, coffeehouse gigs, festival sets, and records of more wild house parties than you can shake a stick at.

New Art & Future Writing For Globalish

My big thing recently has been writing for the awesome website Globalish.com, covering visionary culture, technology, and perspectives on our ever-faster headlong dive into the future.  Here are my latest pieces on our strange and beautiful age:

Current Future

• The Future of Journalism is Virtual Reality
• Silicon Valley Children Interviewed About Earth’s Future
• Interspecies Internet: Apps for Ape & Dolphin Computers
• New “Electree” Solar Chargers Mimic Potted Plants
• Meet Pepper, the “Love Powered” Robot that Knows How You’re Feeling
• Humans are Next: Reprogramming Mice’s Brains with Light
• New Website Promises Social Media Fame to Subscriber Who Dies First

• Air Purifying Billboard Cleans Construction Site in Peru

• Love Project: See Human Emotions Transformed into 3D Printed Objects

Visionary Culture

• Discover Liquid Stranger’s “Underwater Extraterrestrial Bass Music”
• Quixotic: Barnum and Bailey’s Circus for the 21st Century
• Desert Dwellers: Celebrating Tribal Culture with the Temple Step Project
• Eskmo’s New Track & Video Addresses California Drought
• Dance & Animation Merge in ARTheism’s Colorful Light Shows

And Now A Message From Our Sponsor

I couldn't do it without you...seriously.  If you have any suggestions for how my art could go on clothes, or gear, or anything – please let me know!  I am so dedicated to producing what you want.

That includes original art.  I've got a long season at home ahead of me and would love to make you something at a price you can afford.  Meanwhile:

My Next Big Gig

One of my favorite festivals all year, now even more amazing than before.  The lineup this year is incredible.  I'm putting a lot of love (and guests) into this very special set...and have some tickets at a discount if you'd like one.

New Hummingbird Live Painting | William Irwin Thompson Interview | More Sublimation Tees & Tanks

“I carry a torch that is as old as the human spirit, and as I journey forth I seek a broader vision and support to help me communicate as purely and uninhibitedly as possible. This is a statement and a prayer…”
– Amanda Sage

This week I'm giving you a lot to chew on, some work that I'm especially proud of.  So I'll skip the preamble and let the content do the talking.  Enjoy!  And hopefully I'll see you at Holy Mountain in Austin opening for Taylor McFerrin this Saturday, or at Gratifly Festival, or Arise Festival...

Beija Flor

11"x17" Poster Prints | Full-Size Giclée Prints

Like/Share on FB

"Note that the flower – with its multiple and layered invocation, a figure-ground dissolution of inside/outside that works as a snare for insect attraction – the (now self-referential) book, and the jewel share a vocation: organized, and thoroughly seductive, fluctuation."

– Richard Doyle, Darwin's Pharmacy pp.64-65

16"x24" – paint pens on canvas, created live at:

2014 06 13 – 16 Firefly Gathering (Flagstaff, Arizona) during

Kokopelli, Jahmontee, Nico Luminous, Nanda, Quanta, Akasha, Digital Rust, Love & Light, Mr. Rogers, Sixis, Johnny Swoope, Pumpkin, Random Rab, Kaminanda, Whitebear, Itom Lab

2014 06 19 – 22 Sonic Bloom Festival (South Park, Colorado) during

Soulacybin, DJedi, Kyrstyn Pixton, Cualli, OTT, Tipper, Nominus, Future Simple Project, Merkaba, Amani, Treavor Moontribe, Ayla Nereo, Saqi, Wildlight, Bird of Prey, Dopapod, Birds of Paradise, Mr. Bill, Random Rab

"Beija Flor" means "flower kisser" in Portugeuse. This summer has been full of visits from hummingbird energy in various ways and it only seemed appropriate to honor these beautiful creatures with a portrait that recognizes their sublime and joyous spirit. After nearly a year at home in Texas, this is how I felt to get back out on the road and join my friends for festival season...

(What flower is he kissing?  Why, the 1000-petaled lotus connecting us to God, of course – the "glass chrysanthemum" or Sahasrara chakra that mediates our soul's descent to matter, and through which various spiritual traditions direct attention at the time of death.  What better place to plant a kiss?)

Browse Buttons, Cards, & More on Zazzle

On The Horizons of Planetary Culture: 

Cyborgs, Psychedelics, & Spiritual Evolution

Listen/Watch at Reality Sandwich

One of the of the best – and most controversial – conversations I’ve ever had is now live at Reality Sandwich: My second rap (here is the first) with poet-philosopher William Irwin Thompson, former MIT professor and founder of the legendary Lindisfarne Association, on the transformations of self and society in the collapse of civilization and the emergence of a planetary culture – cyborgs, surveillance, and psychedelics in an age of paranoid apocalypticism and inspired new visions for our species.  Get ready for a wild one, folks…comments welcome!

Full notes on the two-hour conversation – including mentions of Douglas Rushkoff, Erik Davis, Buddhist Geeks, Mindful Cyborgs, Richard Doyle, Philip K. Dick, Jan Irvin, Buckminster Fuller, Marshall McLuhan,Terence McKenna, Burning Man, Bitcoin, Google Glass, DADARA, Joan Halifax, Wendell Berry, and more – at the link above.

New Dye-Sublimation Shirts at Infinite Bit

I still have several cool shirt & dress designs for sale at Ravenectar.  Here are a few more in production with another great apparel startup, Infinite Bit.  Being able to my print art on clothes like this almost makes up for the no-hoverboard thing, in my opinion...

T-Shirts | Tees

T-Shirts | Tees

T-Shirts | Tees

Upcoming Appearances

Now Accepting Commissions!