Preview My New Solo Album | My Biggest Painting Yet | Grateful Dead Envelope Art | Novelty Generators Podcast | New Writing For Globalish

"If I had to bet my life on what's more real, I bet on the thing that inspires me."
– Annie Lalla, MDMA therapist

The thing about a planetary culture is that as the Earth gets smaller, all the consequences of our actions happen faster. Cause-effect relationships are more immediate and tangible. The feedback loops draw tighter. We can see the patterns in how everything we do affects the whole.

Re-associate yourself and let the moral evolution happen. Power lies in understanding. No, it isn't comfortable. Yes, it's an improvement.  And now, our regularly scheduled programming...

My Final Solo Cyberguitar Album's Almost Here...

Download Three Free Tracks  & Preorder the Entire Album Here

My new album drops this Tuesday, January 27th.  If, as Hakim Bey says, "Every recording is a tombstone of a live performance,” then I believe this is the greatest tombstone I have ever made. 

Most of y'all probably don't know that I make music...or that I was pouring my soul into my music career long before I became a professional artist. But songcraft and mapping new terrain between acoustic and electronic music on guitar is my great adventure, and this album is the product of techniques refined across 100,000 miles of touring.

If you enjoy my art, or my ideas, I hope you'll take some time (with headphones, or a hula hoop) to listen to this music - and the many other albums I have on that site and offer you for free. I've channeled some amazing places into sound and let some awesome inspirations through that I can't claim, but wonder at when I go back and listen.

This is music for a journey, flow arts, making love - it's rich with atmosphere and feeling, and I'm honored that I get to share it with you.  Thanks for your support!

Cleopatra

32"x48" – oil & acrylic paint pens on masonite

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Painted (so far) at:
• 15.10.2014 & 19.01.2015 – Studio
• 25-26.10.2014 – Art Outside (WELDER, DJ Vadim, Fort Knox Five, Phutureprimitive,The Widdler, BoomBaptist, Thriftworks, Kaminanda, D.V.S*, Blue Sky Black Death, Emancipator, Papadosio)
• 12.12.2014 – $3 Shows at Swan Dive (Amy Arani, One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish, Carry Illinois, Trouble in The Streets, Groovement, The Holy Child)

A tongue-in-cheek homage to some of my favorite artists (points if you can guess). I always thought that nudes were cheating: easy sales, and all too often they objectify the feminine. But that became my challenge: can I make a piece that's both ridiculous and reverent, that satirizes "festy art" yet still evokes the ancient-future sacred visionary landscape earnestly?

I don't know if I succeeded, but I really liked the process. Still deciding whether I will leave this how it is or finish it with (tasteful) iridescent highlights in two weeks at Gem and Jam Festival. Regardless, I'll post detail photos soon. This is my largest piece to date and has a lot of tiny touches in it...

Or, for those of you that need more color...

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Somehow doubt I'll win given the amazing competition...but regardless, this was super fun.  I rarely have a reason to exhume my Prismacolor pens and doodle major iconography like this...

My Guest Appearance on Novelty Generators Podcast

 Stream & Subscribe on Youtube

If you're short on big ideas and visionary vistas, here's something that should jumpstart your imagination: I recently enjoyed a wonderful discussion with filmmaker Niles Heckman on his Novelty Generators podcast. We talked about everything from how the human brain is co-evolving with machines, to the future role of myth, to some of my favorite graphic novels, to how a global culture challenges idea of wilderness...

More Writing for Globalish: Read. Watch. Awaken.

My main gig nowadays is as a writer for this fabulous new website, Globalish – where we explore the intersection between ageless spiritual teachings and contemporary culture.  Here are the articles I've written for them since my last newsletter posted:

Channel 1: Revolution

True Liberation vs. Miley Cyrus' "Tongue Tied": Free Speech by Imprisoned Minds

Yasiin Bey's Eric Garner/Ferguson Statement Set to Fallou Diop's Jazz

Channel 2: Travel

Mear One: Hip Hop Science Fiction Proletariat with Spray Cans

Neuroscientist Michele Ross Describes Her First Experience with DMT

South African Street Artist Faith47 Captures the Soul of City Living

On How to See with Loving Eyes: Sri Lanka Through a Smartphone

Channel 3: Art

Pixel-Extraits: Thought Becomes Environment in Computer-Dance Collaboration

Viktoria Modesta: The World's First Amputee Pop Star

Channel 4: Life

The Patterns of Gentrification: Who's Aware of the Story?

Honesty: Nothing Real Can Be Threatened, Nothing Unreal Exists

Pearl of Africa: The Debut of Uganda's First Transgender Web Series

Beautiful Chemical Reactions: Who's Aware of the Story?

Next Month: See you in Arizona!

"I followed weirdness and wrote about it. The exploration of the unusual became a way of being. Most of the interesting people I've met did the same thing."

– Erik Davis

Gaian Radio Podcast | My Set from Art Outside Festival | New Painting & Custom Hats | More Articles for Globalish | Attending Gem & Jam

"Don’t hanker for the other world. Live this world, and live it with intensity, with passion. Live it with totality, with your whole being. And out of that whole trust, out of that life of passion, love and joy, you will become able to go beyond."

– Osho

Happy New Year, everyone!  2014 was intense.  Maybe it's just the chronic optimism that seems to infect me at this time of year, but I think 2015 will be less about hard lessons and more about putting those lessons into practice.  I look forward to practicing with all of you.

Since we're on the cusp of what Back To The Future II officially recognized as "the future," here is a great conversation I had with the hosts of Gaian Radio Podcast about artificial intelligence, life extension, the end of privacy, and more awesome future things.  It's guaranteed to be more complicated than pro-future armchair philosophers let on, but it doesn't have to be scary.  We walk a razor's edge in this fun hour-long chat between ?? and !! – it's free to listen/download here.

And then there's this:

Live at Art Outside 2014

Free Download Here

Acoustic-electronic inventions performed at the Tenth Annual Art Outside Festival on a gorgeous and mystical laser-cut stage hidden in a grove of old pecans.

There amidst the branches and the hanging lanterns, people sprawled in blankets, chairs, and hammocks, some bizarre new breed of soaring anti-folk infused with jazz took shape – atmospheric improv raw and wild, heartfelt, numinous.

Accompanied by visual performances from the legendary florist Anthony Ward and live painter Chris Morphis, featuring guest instrumentalists Andrew Stocker (triple harmonic flute) and Jared Buchsbaum (clarinet), this music overflowed its banks and sprouted something beautiful – often dipping into darker territories, veering into strange terrains, but always moving, always full of life and curiosity.

Many thanks to everyone at Art Outside for holding such a wondrous space for work like this to grow!  (And thanks to David Titterington for the lovely cover art...)

New Studio Painting

"Ediacarans I" (2014)

Studio – oil & acrylic pens on canvas

16"x20" (four 8"x10" panels)

11"x17" prints available here

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An ode to one of the great mysteries of paleontology.  From Wikipedia:

The Ediacara biota consisted of enigmatic tubular and frond-shaped, mostly sessile organisms that lived during the Ediacaran Period (ca. 635–542 Ma). Trace fossils of these organisms have been found worldwide, and represent the earliest known complex multicellular organisms.

Determining where Ediacaran organisms fit in the tree of life has proven challenging; it is not even established that they were animals, with suggestions that they were lichens (fungus-alga symbionts), algae, protists known as foraminifera, fungi or microbial colonies, to hypothetical intermediates between plants and animals.

Most macroscopic fossils are morphologically distinct from later life-forms: they resemble discs, tubes, mud-filled bags or quilted mattresses. Due to the difficulty of deducing evolutionary relationships among these organisms some paleontologists have suggested that these represent completely extinct lineages that do not resemble any living organism. One paleontologist proposed a separate kingdom level category Vendozoa (now renamed Vendobionta) in the Linnaean hierarchy for the Ediacaran biota. If these enigmatic organisms left no descendants their strange forms might be seen as a "failed experiment" in multicellular life, with later multicellular life evolving independently from unrelated single-celled organisms.

Custom Hats

I'm so busy writing for Globalish.com these days I haven't dedicated that much time to hat work, but with new fluorescent pens a new horizon's opened up for UV-reactive lids, so I'm excited by the prospect of a new round of commissions.  Feel free to contact me if interested!

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More Articles For Globalish

I love my job.  If you're attracted to the seeker's path and wonder how it looks in our accelerating age, my friends and I at Globalish.com are writing for you:

Channel 1: Revolution

China Bans Puns in Attempt to Control Government Criticism

Channel 2: Travel

Damascus: A Mystical Tribute to an Old and Precious City

Yiwu: The Chinese City Where Christmas is Made and Sold

Clark's "Beacon" Music Video: Another Foray into the Psychedelic

Downtown Divas: Portraits of Russian S3x Workers in Designer Clothing

Toronto Skyline Pørn: A City is a S3xy Thing

Channel 3: Art

Splash Heroes: Jaroslav Wieczorkiewicz Uses Milk To Create Costumes

Jamón: Being an Outcast in a World Full of Humans

"Pretty Doesn't Interest Me": The Avant-Garde Perfumes of Christopher Brosius

Channel 4: Life

Geography as Mind: Recho App Brings GPS-Tagged Audio to Storytelling
100 Years of Beauty in 1 Minute: Who's Aware of the Story?

Heile Gansje: German Film Explores the Wilderness We Are in Bed

Gem & Jam Will Be My First Festival of 2015

This year, I'm focusing on fewer, more deliberate bookings.  I'm looking forward to this one and what's shaping up to be the finest live art lineup I have ever seen...it's been since 2010 and I can't wait to reconnect with all my homies in AZ.  Perhaps I'll see you there!

Stay Warm In Style This Winter

Just a reminder that my friends help me provide a wide array of wearable designs (including those for phones and such, since, yes, devices are a part of us, these days):

And that is all for now.  Thank you so much for reading!

New Paintings: Giger's Alien, Spinosaurus, Crystal Egg | Year-End Print Sale | Another Killer Time-Lapse | More Articles From Globalish

"If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you.

If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you."

– Gospel of Thomas

I ordinarily try to space these out and keep things focused, but it just happened that I recently completed THREE new paintings I'd been working on for quite a while, PLUS a time-lapse video, PLUS a bunch of writing for the awesome Globalish.com – so this newsletter's kind of overfull.  

Suggestion: open in a separate tab and read at leisure.  There's a lot to dig, here.  Be well and enjoy!

$10 Year-End Print Sale

Every print older than this newsletter is only $10 until 2015 – these above and dozens more, which you can browse on Bandcamp.  If you want to do all of your shopping in one place, I'm trying to make it as easy as possible for you.  Happy Holidays!

New Time-Lapse Video:

The Common Core of Science, Art, & Spirituality

Watch in HD / Share on Youtube

Free Downloads: Music | Narration

A look into my process and philosophy, inspiration and commitment as an artist.  Recorded through Google Glass; soundtrack from my New Year's Day 2014 sunrise cyberacoustic guitar set; narration from my talk at Firefly Gathering 2014.  You can get a better look at the final piece below...

Rainbow Warrior (Giger Tribute)

Buy 11"x17" Prints | Share on FB

20”x20” – oil & acrylic pens on canvas

Original painting available – email with inquiries

Painted at
• 2014.11.15 – Empire Control Room & Garage (Austin, TX)

for Govinda, Living Light, Cactus Bath

•  2014.11.14 - 18 – Studio (Austin, TX) 

H.R. Giger's alien has haunted me since childhood.  I swear their hives must occupy the bulk of my imagination's dark side.  And now my friends at Synergetic Press have just released a new book, H.R. Giger and the Zeitgeist of the Twentieth Century, by pioneering LSD psychotherapist Stanislav Grof.
It's amazing – both Grof's essay and the Giger art inside, a lot of which I've never seen – and if you would like a copy, enter "Garfield" for $10 off at checkout.

Godzilla Was Real! (Spinosaurus aegypticus)

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

Original painting available – email with inquiries

Painted at

• 2014.09.28 – Zelicks (San Marcos, TX) – Fractālà

• 2014.10.18 – Empire Control Room & Garage (Austin, TX) 

for Pretty Lights Music Showcase: Paul Basic, SuperVision, Michal Menert, Eliot Lipp

• 2014.11.18 – Holy Mountain (Austin, TX)

for DJ QBert, Jeremy Ellis, Table Manners Crew

Spinosaurus aegypticus was first discovered a century ago, but its type specimen was destroyed when the US bombed Berlin in WWII. We had no idea what this creature looked like, or how it lived, until another expedition recently discovered even more complete specimens. And the truth is weirder than anyone expected: Spinosaurus had a body specialized for living and hunting in a shallow freshwater environment: short, probably webbed hind legs, high nostrils, heavy bones to help it stay submerged...

We are talking about a fifty foot predator with a five foot head and claws longer than your foot. IT ATE SHARKS AND CROCODILES. AND while I MAY have taken artistic license with this painting, it might also have glowed with radiation...

Crystal Moon Egg Bathes in Silver Light

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2014 – oil & acrylic pens on canvas
Original painting available – email with inquiries
Painted at
• 2014.11.05 – LANAI Rooftop Lounge (Austin, TX) for Create Culture

for Shanti Planti, BogTroTTeR, EazyT, Shuniya, Fractālà
• 2014.11.19 – Empire Control Room & Garage (Austin, TX)

 Art Seen Alliance, Fool's Gold Records, & Brainfeeder present Azizi Gibson, Kamandi, & Barnes 

• Studio (Austin, Texas) 2014.09.30, 10.08, 11.04, 11.22-25, 12.01, 12.04

"They proceed to sing objects into existence. Amazing objects. Objects that are Fabergé Eggs, things made of pearl, and metal, and glass, and gel, and when you're shown one of these things, you look at it and you know, without a shadow of a doubt, that if it were right here, right now, this world would go mad. It's like something from another dimension. It's like an artifact from a flying saucer. It's like something falling out of the mind of God – such objects do not exist in this universe, and yet, you're looking at it."

– Terence McKenna

More Thought-Provoking Articles at Globalish

I can't think of any other site that keeps its finger on the pulse while staying deep like Globalish.  If you're the kind that wants both gorgeous videos and excellent companion text, we work for you:

Revolution

2014 Year in Review: DJ Earworm's Mashup on the United State of Pop

Travel

Slow Life: Where Underwater Creatures and Psychedelic Journeys Meet

Pripyat, Chernobyl: Postcards From A Nuclear Disaster

Inside the Gay Wing of Men's Central Jail in Los Angeles

B Style: Japanese Girls Who Want To "Look Black"

Art

Money Collage: Giving Dollars Value By Destroying Them

Karim Jabbari's Light Calligraphy Illuminates the Desert Night

Seeing The Invisible: Merging Music and Science to Visualize Sound

A New Take on "Depth of Field": Android Jones with "Electric Love"

Life

Living Buildings: Futuristic Family Homes Based on Biogenetic Forms

Meat: A Visual Poem on Youth Sexuality in Online Spaces

Barnyard Human-Horse Burlesque: Who's Aware of the Story?

Tis The Season For Ridiculous Trippy Clothing!

Because if it doesn't cause permanent brain damage for innocent bystanders, it's not worth wearing.

On a slightly less hyperbolic note, you are in fact guaranteeing that you will become a walking conversation piece if you leave the house with this stuff on.  With great power comes great responsibility.