Michael Garfield's Love Without End Tour Newsletter: Live at Burning Man 2013 | Interview w/ Rich Doyle | New GRC Embroidered Flatbill | New Pins & Custom Hats | Life In The Glass Age

09 January 2014

Live at Burning Man 2013 | Interview w/ Rich Doyle | New GRC Embroidered Flatbill | New Pins & Custom Hats | Life In The Glass Age

“The zen tradition has this great saying, ‘Here comes the hearth god, looking for the fire.’ You’re looking everywhere for the fire, and it’s in you. and when you start to find it in yourself, others find you.”
Richard Doyle

I turned 30 this year on January 8th – sharing a birthday with Elvis Presley, David Bowie, and Stephen Hawking, among others.  Big shoes to fill – which is why this year I'm focused on bigger and more meaningful projects than ever before.

Here are the first preliminary echoes of those great works to come.  Thanks for reading, and enjoy!

I Miss You And It's Okay: Live at Burning Man 2013

55 minutes of dreamy, compelling electronic guitar improvisations inspired by and infused with playa magic. Recorded at Burning Man's Center Camp Café and Fractal Planet Village , this hour of multi-channel looping improvisations on guitar, voice, and hardware effects is the alchemical transmutation of enthusiasm, playa dust, and sheer PATHOS into the angelic psychofluid captured here as a trace fossil for your appreciation.

Recommended listening environment: sprawled out on carpet, couch, or bare earth while making love or waiting for inspiration to strike.  Dedicated to the dream woman for whom I spent long years searching, a fantasy I finally released by fire in this year's Temple.

Download it here and enjoy the ride...

My Chat with Sci-Fi Professor Richard Doyle

Richard Doyle is now Professor of Information Science, Rhetoric, and Science Fiction at Penn State and author of a trilogy on emergent forms of knowledge, the latest and most acclaimed of which is the epic treatise, Darwin’s Pharmacy: Sex, Plants, and the Evolution of the Noösphere – probably the finest example yet of 21st Century “psychedelic” writing.

The latest in my SolPurpose.com series of visionary-yet-personal dialogues with various inspirational thinkers, we focused on how human exploration is turning once again to the inner frontiers of consciousness.  Doyle's love for language shone through for our whole conversation.  Here are a few clips:

“Our brains have been the frontier of capitalism for the last twenty years, of which the internet is just one manifestation, and the pharmaceuticalization of everything is the other. It’s like we’re on the border of Oklahoma in the 19th century and the gunshot goes, and everybody goes to stake their claim – it’s like the inner realm is that space, now.”

“We don’t need to create another identity politics around evolving consciousness. Because that’s how we won’t evolve consciousness. But we do need other like-minded souls…to help us by verifying, and debugging, and debunking all the stuff we’re working through as all this stuff continues to unfold.”

Read more & listen at SolPurpose.

"Compass Mandala" Pins by MG x KolorSpun

1.8", gold-plated, double-posted enamel pins based on my live painting, "Compass Mandala #1" – each colorway (warm and cool) is laser-engraved in a numbered series of 250.  Preorders ship by January 24th.

MG x Herbivore x GRC Embroidered Flatbill

I think my new Grassroots California signature flatbill for Herbivore Designs must be the coolest hat I've ever made – and it damn well better be, because it took almost an entire year to get this most-complicated-design-ever prototyped and ready for sale!  I'm sure you can tell how much work went into this, from the original painted concept to the fully embroidered and sublimation-printed final product (which you can order here):




I'm also still going strong with the custom painted hats.  Here are the latest – email me if you'd like details on getting one of your own:



Join The Discussion: Technology, Art, & Consciousness

I also want you to join me in one of the most important conversations of our times.  Join Life in the Glass Age: Technology, Art, & Consciousness, my new social bookmarking club and discussion group:

We live in an age of accelerating change - not just of our technologies, but of our selves and societies. We define ourselves in relationship to our tools and each other – and as one of us changes, so do we all.  This group is for the exploration of the new worlds coming into being as powerful new knowledge technologies are born and we experience new permutations of old struggles: between privacy and accountability; freedom and security; access and permission.

Encouraged: Posts about the personal and social dimensions of sur- and sous-veillance, Big Data, augmented reality, wearable computing, the Internet of Things, etc. How are we changing - and how are we staying the same? How are we learning to make art out of our increasingly intelligent and responsive environments?  Critical perspectives welcome.

Everyone into the pool!  And thanks again for your support.