MG Music on PBS! | Winning Skateboard | New Collab Painting | On The Road To AURA

"Confusion is a word we have invented for an order which is not understood."

– Henry Miller

"Some things, though right, were considered wrong for generations. Since the value of righteousness may be recognized after centuries, there is no need to crave an immediate appreciation."
– Zengetsu

Good advice for navigating an increasingly novel universe, don't you agree?  At any rate, here are my latest creative (or possibly not) offerings, for you to evaluate now and then again in a few hundred years:

MG music featured in KLRU's Arts in Context: Sky Candy

A milestone moment came for me last week when I watched the PBS documentary on my friends Austin aerial dance troupe Sky Candy and our show together last fall...and found my music woven into most of the 26-minute film.

I have film scoring fantasies, and am super honored that the producers at Arts In Context went with the music I offered them – which is now available to you for free, my first soundtrack, taken from four albums from the last two years:

~ Free Download Here ~

You can watch the KLRU documentary at this link.  And do, because it rocks.  I have a few quick appearances on screen around 7:25 and 20:00, during rehearsal and performance for the amazing Land Without Evil.

Creation Skateboards Contest -- We Won!

Thanks to everyone's help, my entry into the Creation Skateboards skateboard design contest won with over 1,300 votes – the most "likes" I've ever gotten on anything, ever.  Y'all rock, I am so grateful for my frands!  This board will join the fall lineup and live forever alongside boards by some of my favorite visionary artists.

Creation Skateboards interviewed me about my inspiration for this painting and more:

This is a year for both more light and darkness, but that dragon has a buddha riding in its brow, and that’s the Master we each have in us that knows how to abide and ride this out. We all have many voices in our heads, many neural subroutines, but we can develop the Master self-pattern that organizes and integrates the rest. That’s the best way to make it through an age of crazy transitions…

Read the whole interview here and then cruise around their site, it's pretty cool.

HeARTs Aware Collaboration Painting

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painted live by 
Chaeli Cardenas, Chance Roberts, Molly Gardner, 
Michael Garfield, Randi Southard, Nathan Jones
(...did I leave anyone out?)
on 2012 February 9 - 10 at La Zona Rosa, Austin, TX
for HeARTs Aware, a benefit for The Amala Foundation

I don't know if I can say anything authoritative about what was essentially a transpersonal effort.  Live art collabs are a very special kind of special...some kind of greater vision emerges silently from the interaction of our partialities.  Our techniques complement one another, our rhythms playing across one another sometimes intimately.  This piece is just wow, for me.  Just...wow.  It's raw, because I told everyone to just leave it be after a weekend of attention.  Time for us to move on to the next more perfectly visioned landscape....

Nonetheless, we were all still itching to touch it up.  I had to remind my friends of our half a dozen other unfinished collaborations.  Get a hefty serving of integrity with your rainbow cat!

Playing, Painting, & Speaking at AURA This Weekend!

I'm excited about this.  Beautiful locale, fabulous musicians, world-class artists in the gallery.  Stretch your body and mind together while I play live music for yoga with Kelly Searcy...or download those yoga sets and listen later, because I record so many of my sets, after all.

There will be so much cool stuff going down in the Tribal Council dome alone, not to mention the rest of this event...really, truly, I hope I'll see you there.  Florida in February.

You Know, "Hats"

The latest custom numbers for adventurous heads:

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A note on hats for the invested reader:  I'm honestly swamped with hat orders, so unless you want something ambitious and pricey, then I hope you're willing to wait.  It's a meditative, patient task, not exactly lucrative, more of a way to pray and play and practice and make money all at the same time while living in what my grandmother calls "holy poverty."  Which I enjoy...but it's not scalable – hence my renewed focus on licensing and merchandising.  If you have any ideas for how my art could be applied to something useful, let me know.  I'm open to and appreciative for your suggestions.

And with that, I must disappear into a smoke bomb to rest my fingers.  Love you.  Stay in touch if you want to.  And live amazed, because it's good for you, and all of us...

My First Painted Skateboard, Festival Photos, and What Inspires Me

"The truth, from my perspective, is that the world, indeed, is ending – and is also being reborn.  It's been doing that all day, every day, forever.  Each time we exhale, the world ends; when we inhale, there can be, if we allow it, rebirth and spiritual renewal.  It all transpires inside of us.  In our consciousness, in our hearts.  All the time."

- Tom Robbins

So!  Craziest summer of our lives so far?  I'm only twenty-eight but this year's cross between the energies of 1929 and 1969 has me singing the changes; regardless of what futures you imagine are on their way, everyone I talk to is feeling a massive shift in our understanding of social norms, relationships, and personal beliefs at the same time that rapid technological changes are reshaping our very definition of "human."  What a perfect time to be on tour working to inspire everyone to ground themselves in loving participation through these transformations!

On that note, my intense schedule has kept me from posting all of the new art and music as quickly as I'd like, but here are my photographs from Wakarusa, Desert Rocks, and Impulse Festivals over the last few weeks.  I'll continue to add to this album as the summer continues – for now this is the best way to get behind my eyes and see festival season as I do (minus the rain- and dust-storms).  Enjoy!

View the entire album on FB

Oh, and I painted a skateboard!  Picked up a couple of blank decks in Wichita during my move to Austin last fall, and this is the first of them – dedicated to my awesome skateboarding brother John Garfield, who wows all with his legendary skillz.  Click the pictures for a closer view:

 

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Yes, it's for sale.  I'm not sure for how much but if you want it, drop me a line.  This is a concept piece, not meant for skating – but the hope is that I can show this to a skateboard company and convince them to collaborate on something.  (Know anybody who'd be into that?)

On Creativity, Evolution, & Inspiration at SXSW:

Riffing at the New Basics Poetry Series

Watch on Youtube

For anyone who wonders what inspires me – or wants to see me at my jazziest, my friends at New Basics Poetry in Austin set up this cool speaking opportunity on their bus (aka guerrilla venue) downtown during South By Southwest.  I winged this forty-five minute talk about creativity, evolution, aliens – oh yeah, and my work – with musical accompaniment by my favorite cyberguitar recordings.  It's a DIY multimedia philosophy performance, as lively and spark-throwing as I could make it.

Upcoming Gigs

I'll be playing cyberacoustic guitar improvisations (folktronic prayerformances honoring the sacredness of each here and now) as well as making live art at all of these amazing events this summer.  These are just the festivals, though – I have more dates all over the country on my full calendar, here on facebook and here on my website.  Hope to see you out there!