...in which I organize a benefit for Sasha Shulgin, paint with Alex Grey, talk to NASA, and rock the Nelson Ledges

"We are all completely dependent on everyone else. The point is to live freely, in the present, freely giving and freely taking, which is the way of nature. The idea is to give up control of credit and debt, and just trust the cycle of nature."

- David Suelo

"We have been hypnotized into this scarcity-based thinking. At every corner of our society, there is a conversation revolving around how much there is not enough to go around. If you can, not in a cheesy and unauthentic way, but in a truly heartfelt way embrace the world, and engage the world with that faith, and that conviction of the ultimate abundance of life, you will change the world. You will, and you will not be trying to change it, and you'll be having fun."

- John Marshall Roberts

Hi everyone. ♥ I am still love-drunk from organizing Wakarusa Festival's first-ever Live Art Team & Gallery, but it'll be a little while before I can get all of that online. Besides, there's still a lot to catch up on! Firstly, and most proudly, I coordinated this:

L.A.B. Tracks: A Benefit Compilation For Sasha Shulgin

In Partnership With MAPS, Reality Sandwich, SSDP, & The Chapel of Sacred Mirrors...

Alexander "Sasha" Shulgin is probably the most important chemist alive. In addition to rediscovering MDMA and popularizing its therapeutic use, he also synthesized hundreds of new psychoactive chemicals and – with his wife and companion Ann – chronicled their effects in the extraordinary detail of two legendary volumes, PIKHAL & TIKHAL.

At the age of 85, Sasha recently suffered a stroke and now requires full-time medical care. This benefit compilation is the response from an international network of musicians whose work and lives have been enriched and inspired by the work of these two pioneers and their courageous exploration of nonordinary consciousness.

The L.A.B., or "Large Animal Bioassay," was the pet name given to visionary chemist Sasha Shulgin's small group of friend-volunteers who spent years exploring the effects of his newly-discovered molecules on their consciousness. This heroic team of psychonauts were the first to experience hundreds of novel states of consciousness, and it is in their honor that we name this compilation of eclectic tracks.

Just as their own journeys took them into realms of both the profound and profane, pleasure and anxiety, these two hours of music – spread over two discs, one danceable and one ambient – are the perfect accompaniment for an adventure to the human mind's furthest horizons...

Support the Shulgins in their hour of need by purchasing this epic 27-track album for at least $5!

"Can't Shut Us Down" by McDonough, Garfield, Uzzardi

Watch this in full HD - Download this track for free

A couple of weeks ago Jeremy McDonough, Renee Uzzardi, and I burned across country from Denver to eastern Ohio to play at the legendary Nelson Ledges Quarry Park. We rocked the festival's closing set, facing an enormous lake made from a filled-in forest gravel quarry...beautiful red pebbles everywhere, bats flying around, the woods full of revelers... Visuals provided by my nearly completed painting (see below) and Jeremy's glow-in-the-dark laser-reactive shirt. This improvised number was the festival's final moment.

Simmer on that for a while until I'm done readying the next album of acoustic-electronic guitar loops...

River To The Source

2011 04 29, 30 Cervantes (Nadis Warriors, Octopus Nebula, ESKMO)

2011 05 20, 21 Nelson Ledges Quarry Park

(Elemental Groove Theory, Boogie Matrix Mechanism, UV Hippo, The Werks, Broccoli Samurai)

2011 05 22 The Church (Jazzam)

32"x24" - opaque pens on masonite

signed 11"x17" poster prints - $20 or two for $30 (plus $5 s/h)

(click to view in hi-res)

Well, I'm in it. You are too. I'm not always proposing we view time as linear and goal-oriented, but even in an endless field there are divots - in an endless ocean there are whirlpools - and we are rolling into one. And as we whip around the margin of this strange attractor, the feeling of inevitably increases, but it's important to remember that there's no such thing as capital The capital End...

I started this piece at the Denver Alex & Allyson Grey shows in April, but was so busy body painting that weekend I had to wait around until my trip to Ohio and Pennsylvania to complete it. The final touches were laid on during an overnight in Pittsburg when my bandmate, lunatic keyboardist Jeremy McDonough, lost his keys after a reunion gig with his old band Jazzam back home. (Turns out the keys accidentally made it home with someone else in order that the universe might keep him around an extra night with his friends. Sneaky freakin' universe!)

While at the Nelson Ledges (and big thanks to The Werks for throwing that one and inviting us!), I managed to body paint a few people...it turned out pretty well. Check out pictures in my ongoing gallery:

Body Art @ Mayflowers Springdance Festival 2011!

Also, lastly – until next week, when I'll share all of the awesomeness that came out of our art team's work at Wakarusa – here's a video made by NASA, interviewing me at Yuri's Night 2010 at Moffett Air Force Base during one of the more unlikely concerts I've ever painted. To this day, I'm still the only person ever allowed to paint in an Air Force hanger. I had just driven nineteen straight hours to make it there on time to set up and then painted for twelve straight hours, so please excuse my rambling for being slightly more incoherent than ordinary. This might be the most honest NASA video you ever see:

More soon, with love.

Two New Live Paintings, More Body Art, & A New Electronic Trio!

“The greatest achievement was at first and for a time a dream. The oak sleeps in the acorn;

the bird waits in the egg; and in the highest vision of the soul a waking angel stirs.

Dreams are the seedlings of realities.”

- James Allen

"At that instant he saw, in one blaze of light, an image of unutterable conviction, the reason why the artist works and lives and has his being. It is to snare the spirits of mankind in nets of magic...to wreak the vision of his life, the rude and painful substance of his own experience, into the congruence of blazing and enchanted images that are themselves the core of life, the essential pattern whence all other things proceed, the kernel of eternity."

- Thomas Wolfe

In the past few weeks I was blessed to participate in some rare and truly amazing convergences of visionary artists and great minds – Boulder shows with Martina Hoffmann and Amanda Sage; the Sonic Bloom Festival Pre-Party with Alex & Allyson Grey; and The Manifestation Celebration in Dallas (an era-defining, boundary-smashing event at the Dallas Museum of Nature & Science). Explosively creative shows lead to a profusion of intense new live paintings, body art galleries, and sketchbook pages, as you'll see below.

Somewhere in there I had the time to spark a so-new-it's-nameless live electronic trio with fellow Papadosio family friends Jeremy McDonough on keyboards and Renee Uzzardi on tablas. We captured one of our instudio performances on video...I'm on electric guitar for the first time ever (I bought it long ago from a gypsy in an ice canyon), and it's a beautiful sound.

It'll be a little while before I can release the new cyber-guitar recordings from Dallas (or my speech about the relationship between Earth's magnetic fields and human consciousness), but there's already a huge art harvest to share. You can listen to the new sound while you check it out:

"Space Migration" by McDonough, Garfield, Uzzardi

download this track free / watch on Youtube

If you happen to be in or around Ohio this weekend, come enjoy our first show at the Nelson Ledges Quarry Park's Mayflower Springdance Festival!

And now for the art:

- (Click any image to enlarge it for detail.) -

Under Another Sky

2011 04 20 The Root (Sacred Plants Visionary Art Panel) & Studio

24"x24" – opaque pens on masonite

original painting for sale – make an offer

signed poster prints for sale – 1/$20 or 2/$30 + s/h

4/20, Boulder CO – quite possibly the cannabis capital of the world. In the midst of this storm of heedless intoxication (once a campus display of civil disobedience, now an epic rager celebrating marijuana's medical legalization) we assembled a crew of respected "visionary" artists – Martina, Amanda, Krystle Smith, Mackenzie Page, Jumbie, and myself – and we had a nice long panel discussion about sacred plants and their role in the creative process. Kind of an antidote or counterbalance. Thoughtful and provocative, the discussion was well-received...and I went home loaded with the other artists' visionary mojo to finish the painting I'd started. Maybe you can see a hint of their flavor in this piece, another in a series of vegetable landscapes on other planets.

Moon Well

2011 05 06 The Kessler (Language Love, DVS*, Archnemesis)

2011 05 07 Dallas Museum (Bluetech)

2011 05 08 Ruta Maya (Polymyth, Dimitri's Ascent, Jamie Janover)

24"x24" – opaque pens on masonite

original painting for sale – make an offer

signed poster prints for sale – 1/$20 or 2/$30 + s/h

Still not getting tired of drawing golden spirals and moon portraits. What can I say? I have also been obsessed for years with creating gradients of complexity, leaving unelaborated sections, showing the weaving-into-being caught in action. Seems only appropriate for The Manifestation Celebration, which turned Dallas – if but for a moment – into one of the coolest places on the planet. Thanks to the hard work of the big-hearted people at Re:Evolution Media. Post script: I finished it up in Austin, during a few days of satiated lounging. Grounding that love, Texas...grounding that love.

Temporary flashback to April. While listening to Martina and Amanda give presentations on their artwork at Boulder's Shining Mountain Waldorf school last month, I regressed to "classroom doodling" mode and went to town on the paper plates they gave us for cheese and crackers:

The Love You Withhold Is The Pain That You Carry

I'm Too Wrapped Up In Not Being Wrapped Up

My extreme thanks to everyone who invited me to paint on them for Denver & Dallas's Alex & Allyson Grey shows. I take body painting seriously – a precious opportunity to see someone's soul and unfold it on them – and I got to work on some beautiful human beings. Here are links to body art galleries for both two-night events...as you browse, see if you can't absorb the ambience of each party:

Body Art at Unified Field - Denver

Body Art at The Manifestation Celebration - Dallas

Festival season is upon me (curious people: summer calendar on the blog), which means a lot more art and music, and less time to publish it. I already have a lot of work in store I'm honored-eager to share with you...in the meantime, take care and thanks for reading!

Live At Eight Thousand Feet & Two New Paintings

"For a relationship to stay alive, love alone is not enough. Without imagination, love stales into sentiment, duty, boredom. Relationships fail not because we have stopped loving but because we first stopped imagining."
- James Hillman, archetypal psychologist

"Imagine it's 30 years from now. You're looking back at the history of your relationship with desire. There was a certain watershed moment when you clearly saw that some of your desires were mediocre, inferior, and wasteful, while others were pure, righteous, and invigorating. Beginning then, you made it a life goal to purge the former and cultivate the latter. Thereafter, you occasionally wandered down dead ends trying to gratify yearnings that weren't worthy of you, but usually you wielded your passions with discrimination, dedicating them to serve the highest and most interesting good."
- Rob Brezsny, pronoid astrologer

(Before we begin, let me suggest you view this on my website, the way it was intended...)

..:: MUSIC ::..

Live At Eight Thousand Feet (2011)

Back in March, I played at the Shumei International Institute, a spiritual center built on the holy mountain outside Crestone, Colorado. Not only did the magical energy of the land and venue infuse my playing and singing with a special clarity, but I had the rare blessing of guest musician Andy Skellenger adding cajon and tablas to half the set. And he kicked ass. From now on, whenever I play those tunes alone, there will be pieces missing!

Plus, I got some best-yet recordings of other tunes, like the slow-burning acoustic-electronic love song "Underground River." And I finally caught the lightning bug in the bottle: my three-minute rant on the co-evolution of LSD, DNA, the atomb bomb, and the internet is there for you all to agree or disagree with, as you see fit...

As usual, the whole album is free if you want it (although you have the option to pay me too, if you see fit); but unlike usual, I scored four lovely videos of Andy and I rocking out together and linked to them on the download page.

Check out the two of us tearing it up with the rowdy "Offering Hands" – an ode to the ego-obliterating intensity of revelation, if you're into that kind of thing:

Watch this full-size on Youtube / Vimeo

Like that? Go watch the other three, and help yourself to the whole album, at MichaelGarfield.net.

..:: VISUAL ART ::..

(Click on each image for a closer look.)

In Between Seasons

2011 04 08 Quixote's (Math Games, Absynth Quintet)

2011 04 13 Hodi's (That 1 Guy, Better Than Bacon)
24"x24" - paint markers on 1/4" masonite

- signed 11"x17" poster prints - $20 or two for $30 (plus $5 s/h) -
original painting for sale - make me an offer

This painting is as confused as Boulder's recent hailing-while-sunny "spring" weather. There are no such things as five-pointed snow flakes...so what are these? Cherry blossoms have five petals, not three...so what is going on here?

Well, as within, so without. Admittedly, I made this while Mercury was full flush Retrograde – confusing communication, technology, and insight, and driving us inward for integration. I don't feel quite as much like an ice-captured blooming than I did a few weeks ago, Thank God.

Endlessness

2011 04 15 The Other Side (That 1 Guy)

2010 09 02 Portal Patch (Lynx, Vibesquad, Future Simple Project)

18"x24" - paint marker on 1/8" masonite

- signed 11"x17" poster prints - $20 or two for $30 (plus $5 s/h) -

original painting for sale - make me an offer

Started at Burning Man 2010, but it was missing the really juicy detail that convinces me a painting is actually complete...so I got back in there with the fine-tipped markers and ripped it up with some tryptamine jewels. You might say this is an overhead map of one person "getting it" in a crowd of the oblivious...but you'll notice that we're all woven together and already that insight is starting to bleed over into everyone else.

..:: WRITING ::..

• Part Two of Ode To A Paradigm Shift, my rant on the evolving philosophy of science, is now up on Solpurpose.com. Here's a clip to whet your appetite:

We are at the end of one science and the beginning of a new science – one that dismisses the ancient but futile quest for total knowledge (and, not so implicitly, total control) and the narrow-minded insistence on the linear progression of cause and effect, for a celebration of the newer and more confounding questions introduced by each answer, for a playful exploration of co-causation’s latticework, which unifies all perspectives in a mutual creation and returns us each to center even as the dream of measuring our world’s boundaries recedes into nonsense.

And it is in nonsense that we rediscover ourselves – in the ceaseless irruption of the incompletely understood into our tidy matrices, a reminder (a co-conspiratorial one, if we are lucky) that the universe is bigger than our laws (even if we call them “universal”) and as its fruit, our lives are themselves a thin tiling of the familiar like verdigris/filigree/gold leaf over the faceless mind of tireless, revelatory, orgasmic creation.

• Taste-making music blog LostInSound.org just reviewed my cyber-acoustic guitar album The Body Electric and had some very cool things to say about it. Coming from another musician and trusted voice in the live electronic music scene – LiS's Pietro Bondi – these words are high praise:

Experimental and unique...this latest work shows great skill and potential as a guitarist and composer. Patient in their construction and determined to stay in melodic but unpredictable territory, [Garfield's] tracks glide through seamless changes, sometimes climaxing, sometimes spiraling off into quiet grooves or gurgling swamp sounds. The spacey, modern edge brings the simple pluckings and cleverly produced sounds into an envelope in which anything seems possible...

Right on! I hope you enjoy the reads...this weekend I'm off to paint at two more gigs in Denver with the esteemed visionary artists Alex & Allyson Grey, so expect some really inspired work from me in the next newsletter.

Thanks for your time, and have a beautiful day!