Michael Garfield's Love Without End Tour Newsletter

24 March 2015

Interviewing Erik Davis on TechGnosis | How To Live in Wonder | New Paintings | Printed Throw Pillows | New Articles for Globalish | More Gigs

"Forward!  Ever Forward!"
Happy Spring, everyone!  This blog marks my transition from a biweekly to a monthly newsletter, which means I'll go deeper with more carefully curated highlights.  If you'd like to stay in the flow and see absolutely everything, I welcome you to follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Youtube.  One format won't replace the other – hopefully these changes help me offer more to all of you, more fluidly.

And now, for this month's news – starting with one of the more fun conversations I have ever had:

Interview with Erik Davis on TechGnosis:
Myth, Magic, & Mysticism in the Age of Information

Last week I joined Erik Davis for a far-reaching and lively conversation on Erik's soon-to-be-reissued book, Techgnosis: Myth, Magic, and Mysticism in the Age of Information. Erik is a personal hero of mine and one of our culture's weirdest and most wonderful writers – a culture critic and religious scholar whose writing spans topics including the visionary culture of California, black metal philosophy, stage magic, neuroscience, and psychedelic transhumanism (for starters).  I've been a guest on his awesome Expanding Mind podcast twice (in 2011 and 2012) and it's always a pleasure to speak with him.

Here are both parts of our chat.  Part One is more free-ranging, and Part Two is more focused on how his ideas and the book have aged since their first publication in 1998:





Also:  Just the week before, I had another great conversation with Shawn Madden​ of New Paradigm Radio​ on how to live in wonder and thrive in an age of accelerating change.  Where history and myth intersect – where science and magic are joined – where childlike awe and grown-up discernment cross-pollinate – that's where the renaissance lives. Here is my take on it.

New Live & Studio Paintings

I've been hard at work at two of the biggest and most ambitious pieces that I've ever done, which I'll have ready for you soon!  But in the meantime I have also managed to chip off a few pieces of the transcendental hyperobject and get them down on canvas.  Here are two more modest recent works that kind of hearken back to when I started painting:

One Solstice Is Unlike Any Other
18"x24" – painted live at Llano Earth Arts Festival
oil and acrylic pens on canvas

Untitled Collaboration with Tourmaline Todd
8"x22" – painted at home
oil and acrylic pens, and acrylic paint, on canvas


"Experimentally symphonic, layered to perfection, pleasing to the ears, as if Mozart and Random Rab did a mashup series while taking a stroll through the forest. Sophisticated. Bending the lines of spirituality, electronic technology, and organic instruments..."


You can also grab a free sampler of some of my favorite tracks from 2014 here.  Enjoy!

Warning: May Increase Likelihood of Lucid Dreams

Throw pillows just joined the extensive catalog of printed items you can find at my Nuvango store – alongside men's and women's tees, greeting cards, laptop skins, and phone cases for both iPhone and Samsung models.  Click either of the images below to browse your many possibilities:


More Writing From My Full-Time Gig at Globalish


I am honored to be a part of Globalish – not only to have such a solid vehicle for my ideas and writing, but to find a business culture dedicated to real personal and social transformation.

We're offering our readers something more than just a better story.  Here are my most recent contributions, in each of our four categories (my favorites are at the top of each):

REVOLUTION

TRAVEL

ART

LIFE

Upcoming Gigs




Parting Shot

Here's a photo by the fabulous Adam Pugh of the lion painting I'll share in next month's newsletter (and which you can see in various stages of completion here):


“The spiritual qualities of the icon sought to transform the flesh, to deprive it of its coarse material substance, to dissolve it in light and re-mould it in spiritual plasma. Icons are sacred images that reflect the physical and the spiritual, the human and the Divine, the visible and the invisible.” 
– L. Evseyeva

16 February 2015

Love Takes Shape As Art & Music: New Tunes & Talks, Dinosaur & Mantis Art, New Gigs & Articles for Globalish

"Nothing is constant but change! All existence is a perpetual flux of 'being and becoming!' That is the broad lesson of the evolution of the world."

Happy birthday to Ernst Haeckel, born 16 February 1834, who coined the term "ecology" and as one of the most influential and insightful scientist-artists in history, an absolutely prolific illustrator, a romantic, and a visionary, I see him as a kind of patron saint.  And a belated Happy Valentine's Day to each and all of you!  I wouldn't dedicate my life to art and music if I didn't think that love's the most important thing worth sharing and the motivation for it all.  (Love is the feeling, Life the means, of Creativity.)

I have a lot for you in this one.  May it find you well...enjoy, and stay in touch!

love,
Michael

Neverland: Electronic Improvisations on Acoustic Guitar

My latest live album – and my last for a while – is the result of six years of exploration into pushing the envelope with the looper as a live sampling and remix instrument, turning the guitar, voice, and a sixty-pound pedalboard into a quadrapedal one-person electronic orchestra.

These 80 minutes were recorded over five months across the Western US and run the gamut from atmospheric psych-western scores to films that don't exist to glitched-out proggy slow burners.   Enjoy, and thanks for your support!

Fan reviews:

"Like walking through a cathedral being constructed before your eyes. Stained glass shiftin around and mutating with digital light statues."
– Chance Roberts

"'Hopeful' is so amazing! It made me tear up within the first two minutes and had made it into my top twenty favorite songs of ever by halfway through."
– Xandrie Sampson

"A great wake up soundtrack. Your music is so thoughtful, it would be amazing to collaborate with you as a movement artist..."
–  Nnedi Nebula

"Barney Was Real!" (Nanotyrannus lancensis)
12"x12" – Original Painting Available
Oil & Acrylic Pens on Artboard
Buy 11"x17" Prints ~ Like/Share on FB

Believe it or not, there really was such a thing as a pygmy Tyrannosaurus. Nanotyrannus stood about six feet tall and seventeen feet long – still a formidable predator by any modern standards, but more "ride into battle" size than "swallows you whole" size. While scientists can't be sure that they were actually purple, their close relationship to birds makes it likely that they at least occasionally broke out in song...and it's a fair bet, given their stature and dentition, that real life "Barney" would have loved children (probably several at a time).  And in related news, Godzilla Was Real.  ;)

New Art for Cello Joe
Graphite & Digital Coloring

It feels good to be back in the saddle with my Wacom digital stylus working in Photoshop...you can definitely expect more digital shenanigans from me in the months to come.  There's something truly meditative and aligned about working in this format; I found it super easy to get into flow with it.  Anyhow, Cello Joe is a friend of mine and a very talented looping cellist and beatboxer, and I recommend that you go listen to his music (all of it is pay-what-you-like).

My Talk from Gratifly 2014 on Entertainment As Social Action

“Only by realizing that you’re a robot are you able to reprogram that robot. And that’s where the divine invasion occurs. That’s where the choice enters this matrix of causative endless karmic billiards. That’s where the real magic occurs. And that’s the opportunity that we have before us.”

Find an hour to chill on this laid-back but heady talk I gave at Gratifly Festival last year...  The first hour of a longer talk – apologies for the abrupt ending, but what's on tape is still one of the more interesting festival talks I think I've given.  On technology, culture, and consciousness, and how art can be used malevolently as mind control or for the good of all as a liberating force.

(I go into these knowing the theme but they always go off in new directions I didn't plan, so this one is pretty different from my previous rants on the same theme from Art Outside Festival and Firefly Gathering.)

MG on the Project Bring Me To Life Podcast

This conversation with the super fun Project Bring Me To Life crew includes probably my best rant to date on the historical significance of visionary art, as well as a lot of lively banter on adventure and mystery (!) and things like my favorite science fiction, and how to live the life you love and still get along with your family...

New Articles for Globalish: Read. Watch. Awaken

At Globalish, we're offering a totally unique online experience exploring post-religious spirituality in an age of electronic media.  We share the most engaging videos that we can find and frame them each as lessons in non-separation – opportunities to practice how to live and breathe a path of practice that is not afraid to actually be a part of – even celebrate – our wild world.  Here are my latest articles:

Channel 1: Revolution

Channel 2: Travel

Channel 3: Art

Channel 4: Life

Upcoming Gigs

The first night of this new monthly event I'm facilitating at the exquisite Strange Brew Lounge in Austin was a smash success.  Exploring spontaneous collaborations between instrumental electronic musicians is a recipe for emotionally compelling and intellectually intriguing live performances – and next month's way-cheaper-than-it-should-be show is going to feature several awesome new musicians in addition to the crew who took us all to hyperspace the first time!  I'm excited to be part of this.


Still a ways out, with plenty of great things happening between now and then, but I'm happy to announce that I'll be playing music and painting at the new Luminosa Festival in Eastern Texas.  Its ancestor, Archaic Revival, was mentioned in the New York Times in an article on the transformational movement – and this one has a very juicy lineup, including Kalya Scintilla, Bluetech, Erothyme, The Motet, Mingo Fishtrap, Henry & The Invisibles, and more...

"I want to be free in the mystery of love. I want to be wild when the world begins again. I want to wake up and listen, be in love with my life and death. And I want you to be there with me. I want all the children to have enough to eat. I want all the angry men to destroy their own pain. I want us all to be happy and crazy and safe and real. I want everybody to be loved."

25 January 2015

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...

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

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...

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

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

Channel 2: Travel

Channel 3: Art

Channel 4: Life

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."