🎧🎨🎶 🗺️ Finding Joy In The Good Work: New Art, Music, Writing

Reflections on The Good Work • Tangentially Speaking with Chris Ryan • SEVERAL New Paintings On Market • Jazzy New Live Trio EP

Image: Just down from a honeymoon family hike up the Great Sand Dunes and celebrating my accomplishments with some intricate Atreides-flavored LEGO nonsense. Because:

✨ ICYMI:

• I just got married to Nikki Taylor, my partner of nearly twenty years!
• Philosopher Timothy Fucking Morton is my latest guest on Future Fossils!
• I just announced a new, career-focusing project on wisdom and technology!

✨ Coming Soon:

• I’m writing a VERY weird piece on carcinization for Aeon Magazine!
• I’m a guest speaker for Stephen Reid’s delicious upcoming course on Technological Metamodernism, running 17 Sept – 8 Oct 2024!
• Upcoming Future Fossils episodes include discussions with Helané Wahbeh of The Institute of Noetic Sciences, sci-fi author Robin Sloan, integral culture hacker Stephanie Lepp, Joshua Sam Miller of Embodied Sounds, Matt Segall of CIIS, professional organizer Alyssa Allegretti, and many more fresh and fascinating people. So spread the gospel!

And the patrons-only #bookclub for Joshua DiCaglio’s trippy and provocative book Scale Theory: A Nondisciplinary Inquiry is finally about to boot up in the Future Fossils Discord server!

But first…

👷🏼‍♂️ Notes on The Good Work

"One must imagine Sisyphus being happy."
— Albert Camus

Adam Elenbaas, one of my favorite astrologers and a fellow alumnus of the good old pre-corporate-takeover indie psychedelic journalism days of Reality Sandwich, recently said that the meaning of this year’s eclipses for Capricorn are about finding joy in The Good Work — about discovering that the Big Projects to which we devote our lives, the process of individuation, the journey of self-discovery, whatever Great Cause we serve, doesn’t have to be unadulterated hardship but can, in fact, be FUN.

I forgot this for a very long time while giving myself CPTSD at a day job I cared about immensely while also raising two small kids I love with incandescent fervor.

Then I didn’t have that job and still had the kids and things got even scarier and so I leapt into the first new thing that I could find, which was admittedly again a company whose mission I believed in…somebody else’s Great Work into which I felt like I could find belonging and support, if only I could fold myself completely into it in spite of what you might call “immunocompatibility” concerns.

But that was even worse. And so I left to do the work that I consider most important, with the faith that I have finally aligned my talents and desires with service and with what the world will pay for. Time will tell…but I feel like I’m rediscovering my mojo, and not a moment too soon to address some of the most vital issues of our age.

Given how insane the news is right now, my prayer for every one of you reading this is that you find whatever human-scale work you can whistle to. And that’s what I will do my best to model for you, in the hopes it helps us love the dark age that inevitably gives way to another renaissance (or are they both at once, these days?).

I want to get back to the place I was at 27 when I was living as an emblem for the benefits of following one’s own deep truth, for marrying one’s rationality and intuition so as to stride boldly into an inimitable, pathless path.

That means decoupling from some old habits and distractions. I just took a huge step back from Facebook so I can afford more time for writing and my family. And in general, at forty, it feels right to knuckle down on human-scale concerns instead of spending myself constantly into the oceanic feeding frenzy of the social web…but I will still be out there, mingling and weaving, and I hope we’ll stay in touch here, or on Discord, or wherever. You’ll find me questing, if you need me…

And now for all the miscellany I have not yet published to this blog while executing major flips — a constellation of what should have, rightly, been about five entires. Whoops! Enjoy this extra-juicy burst of novelty:

🎧 Guest Appearance on Tangentially Speaking!

Chris Ryan’s show Tangentially Speaking is far and away one of my favorite podcasts. He has a very rare blend of scientific rigor, extensive international life experience, and a soulful and compassionate perspective on the messiness and beauty of diverse human relationships. He talks to EVERYBODY and it always comes off casual and intimate and thoughtful and inspiring. I used to binge this show on my long tour drives across the country dating back over a decade…and Chris’ episode of Future Fossils (178) on his critiques of civilization is still one of my favorite to recommend. What joy it was to finally make a guest appearance! If you don’t know, now you do. We had an awesome conversation. It went EVERYWHERE. I’ll leave it at that and hope that listening enriches you.

✨ Listen to Tangentially Speaking with Chris Ryan Episode 614 - Michael Garfield

Here’s the delightful pic Chris took of me while we were jamming in my studio:

🎨 Huge Art Sale with TEN New Paintings

Here’s an avalanche of new pieces, most of them still up for grabs!

• Even though I have officially retired from making art at festivals; and
• Because I love to paint and live in what is ostensibly an arts town; and
• Because gallery owner Rachel Houseman invited me to hang my first solo show in her wonderful, quirky, super cool space Eye On The Mountain;

I therefore resolved to produce a ton of new art this spring in secrecy and reveal it all at once. And so I did! And here it is.

Please help yourself to an original, or prints, <sarcasm> or these will all be auctioned off to Saudi princes for their private collections and will never see the light of day again. Preserve them as public goods by crowdsourcing their donation to museums! Or, at least, your apartment. Or your parent’s house, where there is still space on the walls. 😅 </sarcasm>

“Global Weirding” [Original Available]

“Mesozoic Megafauna Discovers Magic Mushrooms” [Prints | Original Available]

“Tiny Tyrant” [Prints | Original Available]

“Heart Nouveau” [Sold]

“Punk Rock Stegosaurus” [Prints | Original Available]

“Scale-Free Arabesques” [Sold]

“Let Thy Will-O-The-Wisp Be The Whole of The Law” [Prints | Original Available]

“Succulent Mandorla” [Prints | Original Available]

“MicroorganiZiams” [Sold]

“Pondwater Orbs” [Original Available]

🎶 Dig My Doomed Trio’s One Glorious Live Set

I’ve already shared the full-length five-camera shoot from this super hip half-an-hour performance on YouTube. But now you go anywhere you like to listen to my first — and, sadly, LAST — delicious concert with drummer Tommy Baumann and keyboardist Sloan Fussell! My songs “Indecision”, “Transparent”, “The 120th Shrine”, and “Life Finds A Way” have never received such a luxurious and jazzy treatment. This is how I want my tunes to sound. I’m grateful that I get to share this with you.

✨ Dig MG Trio Live at Santa Fe Brewing anywhere you go for music!

And that’s that. Thanks for showing up! Parting reminder: