In all the years I studied evolutionary biology in school, there was one word I can hardly believe I didn't learn.  It figures so prominently into my understanding of the evolutionary process and creativity in general that I am amazed it isn't in the lexicon of every biology studen (much less the whole human race, for we all are students - if not outright disciples - of biology, in one way or another).  It so neatly rebuts some of the flawed interpretations of evolution that so fetter our culture's full appreciation of its beauty.  And it also has a growing personal significance for me and the way I understand the whole kosmic creative affair - not just as it operates on the unfurling and ever-editing of genetic material. 

I understand my own role as a musician and songwriter as it appears within the context of a unified and harmonic universe, as a gesture of the same omnipotent principles that express everything.  As a spark of the bonfire of the Big Bang, I burn as the same flame that sings at every scale.  So whenever I can get my head around a new biological concept, it shivers my entire grasp of what it means to be and do life and art.  The word I wish I'd learned in college continues to yield to my contemplation, rewarding me with an ever-subtler appreciation of living as a human artist.

And like all really good words, it's the quickest way short of telepathy to communicate something truly tremendous, something that fought through the haze of the barely imaginable for years before it landed in our world with a faerie footstep.  To me, a word is the faint reduction, the tiniest tip of a flaming angelic archetype, the tendrilous extension of its infinite body reaching into the limit of our low-resolution physical world.  I love words for this reason:  because each is one voice in the hill of voices on which we live our lives.  Each word is the toeprint of something much larger and more foliate than we can even know from the perspective of a human brain.

For this reason, and because I do insist on my brain's perspective (most of the time), I am bemused and indignant for not having been given this word sooner; and so part of my motivation for writing about all of this is my desire to set things straight and spread the utility of an excellent construct.  But it is also a concession to my idealism, to indulge for a moment in scandalous idolatry of this one facet of the divine.  I am giving my proper respects, kissing the toes of whatever hermaphroditic gleaming angel squid, whatever slumber-stirred postmodern ishtadeva explodes fully-formed from the forehead of the word "exaptation."

In ths world, anyway, we owe the legendary paleontologists Stephen Jay Gould and Elizabeth Vrba for "exaptation," which premiered in their 1982 paper, "Exaptation - A Missing Term In The Science of Form."  Before I can explore the impact of this beautiful and lucid term on my music, I have to savor its Latin etymology (or "the truth of the word"):  "ex" as in "out of;" "apt" as in "fitted" (past participle of "apere," "to fasten"); and "ation" as an action or its consequences. 

Exaptation is function following form, making do with the tools at hand, loving the one you're with.  On one end of the spectrum, exaptation is defending yourself with that rock just within reach.  On the other end, it is taking the infinite abundance of every superimposed possibility at the root of manifestation, and using it to forget yourself in a world of frustration and constraint.  In both cases, the creative medium (the rock, or the pleroma) contains no set of instructions, no essential purpose.  It is "good for" whatever it happens to be good for, determined by the tumbling lock of relationship we call natural selection.

Gould took serious issue (in a paper with Richard Lewontin, available here, and in the follow up here) with the rampant fondness of some other biologists for assigning purpose to the various characteristics of organisms.  Even today, decades after Gould wrote so eloquently against it, we read textbooks making dubious claims that a giraffe's long neck is "for" reaching the high branches of trees and the enormous eye of a giant squid is "for" seeing in the ocean's darkest depths. 

We do this in anthropology, too:  any mysterious artifact is immediately declared a religious icon.  (It's become kind of a joke among scholars.)  And we can see this at work in our daily lives:  we succeed or fail to "make the most" of our convoluted existences, according to what interpretations we inject into them after the fact.  It's little wonder that we immediately assume the religious import of archeological anomalies, when we ourselves are total slaves to the religious impulse, filling every unexplored nook and cranny with the mortar of some stable answer.

Not that I condemn this.  In fact, quite the opposite.  I cherish this half of the dialectic, the post facto deciding of things, the naming and the poetry, the revelation of how to feed ourselves with our own hands and that moment of "Yes!  This is what they do!"  But I, like Gould, don't lightly suffer the persistent mistake of confusing this construction of meaning with the discovery of some fundamental, intrinsic, and specific use.  A rock might make a great weapon, but if we were to be good statisticians, we would admit that on average it is mostly "for" just sitting there.  That's what it does best.  Same with the multiverse:  how presumptuous is it of us to assume that making universes is the quantum vacuum's métier?  Maybe it's only moonlighting.

Although I'm relieved to see that Berkeley's Integrative Biology Department is includes exaptation in their introductory tutorials, their website's definition still paints what seems to me to be a contorted distinction (apparently hailing all the way back to Gould and Vrba's coinage) between exaptation and adaptation.  According to its (hardly) common use, an adaptation was "produced by natural selection for its current function," whereas an exaptation was "produced by natural selection for a function other than the one it currently performs and was then co-opted for its current function." 

But, uh, doesn't this fall into the same pit trap the authors were trying to avoid?  Beyond merely differentiating between the first and subsequent uses of a single form, this kind of wording still suggests that natural selection produced the trait (when in fact natural selection only operates on the creative input of variation), and that there are adaptations that are not exaptations.

Why does it seem so easy for us to understand exaptation in one context, but so difficult in another?  If traits persist due to their successful functioning, and function is determined by the form's fit to its environment, then every adaptation is the marriage of two moments of creativity:  making it, and then figuring out what to do with it.

Just because we have displaced the whole "x exists for f(x)" thinking back a step doesn't mean we have gotten rid of it.  To say that the feather first evolved "for" insulation, only later to be exapted "for" flight, is just as much nonsense as claiming that we apply our brains and thumbs to ends that "God did not intend."  Right...like He had any more idea what He was doing the first time!  Whether it evolved in this generation or the millionth generation before it, every single novelty is born again in every moment without ultimate reason or utility.  Even if the feather appears to be used for the same thing in fledge after fledge of birds, each bird rediscovers what to do with its body uniquely, originally, for the first time.  Every adapation is a hypothesis, the projection of meaning onto whatever we're given.  And so, mathematically speaking, exaptation and adaptation are sets that contain each other.

So how do I exapt exaptation to inform my creative process?  What does this boon from biology mean for music?

More on that tomorrow.

(Continued from Part One.)

Every adaptation is a hypothesis, the projection of meaning onto whatever we're given.  And so, mathematically speaking, exaptation and adaptation are sets that contain each other.

So how do I exapt exaptation to inform my creative process?  What does this boon from biology mean for music?

It means that every creative act includes a moment of decision, a deliberate projection of function and meaning onto the artist's environment.  And this is what blows my mind the most about exaptation:  When I pick up my guitar and play, I'm agreeing that this is an instrument, that this is a guitar, that I play the guitar, and that I play the guitar in some specific way.  That this is what it's "for." 

But there are an infinite number of ways for the universe to express itself through the functional relationship between a human being and a guitar.  It was a definite act of creation when my friend dipped his hand into the soundhole of my friend Kate's guitar and rolled his eyes back in his head to communicate his attraction to her.  Jimi Hendrix - with the help of LSD, that unparalleled sire of iconoclasts - communicated something by burning his guitar that could never have been said by strumming it.  And that's just with the same old guitar that you and I know - luthiers have done some incredible things with the design of the instrument itself, like Manzer's "as many strings as possible" Pikasso Guitar, commissioned for Pat Metheny (pictured above).

And so it is for this feisty young man, privileged or burdened as I am with unceasing progressive inclinations, that many of my favorite musicians prefer to consider themselves as practitioners of music in general rather than the tradition of their specific instruments.  As I love to remind people, the great bassist Victor Wooten insists that his medium just happens to be the bass, and that he is not a "bassist," any more than a self-consistent practitioner of the Buddha's teachings would actually declare himself to worship "Buddhism" ("or," in the words of Ferris Bueller, "any other ism for that matter.")  Likewise, Kaki King grew up on the drums before translating those sensibilities to the acoustic guitar.  In her early interviews made it plain that her whole agenda was to "fuck with" people's ideas of what the acoustic guitar even is.  Never mind that she wasn't the first to play it like a percussion ensemble; there's no such thing as being completely original, anyway, unless you're willing to grant all phenomena the same courtesy.  On even the most newly-poured volcanic island of thought, there are as many exaptations as there are participants.  There is something utterly unique in even the most mundane copycat playing.  There is something wild and new about every instant's spontaneous perspective on the fact of the previous moment.

If I can stay wide open enough to hold every creative moment in the light of an ever-present and ever-renewing genesis, each instant is an equally wild idea.  It is absolutely creative because it happened at all.  If we take the past as a given and define it according to the standard of the present, we deny it as a moment creative in itself, and rig the game in favor of our current interpretation.  "My, how we've grown."  "What were we thinking?"  "Behold primitive man, living as a savage...the poor heathen."

And so to cherish the unique exaptation of every moment in this way is not half-blind futurist zealotry, disrespectful of tradition - it's more like telling a girl that you like her eyes, when you know that everyone else compliments her on her breasts.  It's an attempt to appreciate the whole package, past, present, and future, inside and out.

But that's a hell of a lot to appreciate, and I can rarely do it for long.  Like everyone else with limited energy and attention, I deserve to be convicted by a jury of myself for identifying with a particular set of preferences and positions, relative to a single observation platform floating one way across time.  I still often make the mistake of declaring the so-called "progressive" art forms to be more creative and therefore more interesting than their predecessors - perpetuating the false distinction between exaptation and adaptation, as if to play the guitar fretboard like a piano is a more fabulous idea than playing it like a normal freaking human being.  (Kaki King:  "Are we to have another century of guitar when the best instrument in the world is still the piano?") 

Consequently, maybe nine out of my ten favorite guitarists are doing things on the guitar that were unimaginable fifty years ago.  These people have carved out their homesteads on the freshly exposed terrain of that new island.  They have my respect for being its first inhabitants, collectively discerning (and deciding) the rules of this new land that is just now peeking over the splashy boundary of unconsciousness.

As a male mammal, I will always have a special place in my heart for the journeyers, the rogues and rovers, the wanderers and frontier families.  My love for the music coopted from its original context is just one incidence of a broader pattern in my being:  a love of reclamation, the same reconstructive postmodern desire that fuels the creation of urban gardens and beautiful graffiti murals, all manner of tattoos and piercings, circuit-bent instruments, remixes, redefinitions, and reimaginations of literature (such as Julie Taymor's film production of Shakespeare's Titus and stage production of The Lion King, and chamber ensemble Alarm Will Sound's performances of Aphex Twin's often-aggressive electronic music).  I can hardly call this "ownership," because we have inherited all of it and we will all sooner or later pass it on to someone else.  But it is beautiful and affirmative, restorative and inspiring to know that we are capable of exapting our world to the meaning and purpose we see for it now.

In this spirit, I encourage you to look upon the world with fresh eyes, to see it and feel it, not as some rigid predestined machine, but as a gift of creative jubilance inviting us to assist in the unfurlng form and function of everything we know and are.  Don't assume that you know what that guitar is when you pick it up, or that pen, or that hand.  Don't assume you know what you've got riding in your chromosomes, or that their full potential has been explored.

Every instant is a new world, with new opportunities.  It falls upon us to learn how to avoid the hamster wheel of endless adaptation to external fortune by exapting the world and playing with the flux instead.  This is a profound change of perspective.  If you have found your purpose, don't refuse opportunities for amendment.  If you still haven't found your voice or calling, relish in the flexibility of an undetermined existence. 

Find a new meaning for your guitar, and maybe - just maybe - you'll find a new meaning for your self.

...
For more info on exaptation, you can find numerous related papers here and here.

...Speaking of exapting the guitar, allow me to introduce you to Carlos Vamos, a mad scientist of guitar percussion if there ever was one and a rogue who has twisted the guitar to do things it was certainly never meant to do.  Self-taught in the impossible pianistic style of Stanley Jordan (ludicrously difficult on the thick strings of an acoustic guitar), Spanish-born Vamos is a regular feature of Amsterdam's busking community.  Check him out:



If that were all he did, he'd still be brilliant.  But Vamos is apparently not content to settle as merely one of the most talented avant garde acoustic guitarists in the world; he has also modified several of his guitars with features that range from ultra-cool to downright insane.  

First, he attached a Floyd Rose Tremolo to his gypsy guitar.  Acoustic guitars do not use tremolos for a very important reason:  the guitar's bridge could easily crack from the extra strain.  Unlike with a solid-body electric instrument, the entire soundboard of an acoustic guitar would flex and warp with the push and pull of a bridge tremolo, which is exactly what luthiers try to keep from happening!  It is, in medical terminology, "contraindicated" for acoustic instruments in general and that is why, until Vamos, I never saw one.  But so it is that like a good exaptationist, he had to go messing with sense, and it ended up pretty cool:


And then he bored a hole into an electric guitar and implanted an Alesis AirFX module (not entirely unlike the Korg Kaoss Pad used by used by Radiohead to warp Thom Yorke's vocals on "Everything In Its Right Place," or by their neighbors Muse to add screaming intros to Matthew Bellamy's guitar anthems - similar, but not congruent).  Which looks like this:


The utility of this is dubious - I mean, you have only two hands, and manipulating the AirFX's infrared beam for innumerable wacky noises takes one of those hands.  Then again, if each hand's playing is completely independent (as is clearly the case for him), then maybe it makes some kind of twisted sense.  Although I fail to understand why he couldn't just operate it with his feet.

There also used to be a video of him on YouTube playing two acoustic guitars at the same time in a weirdo style pioneered by Stanley Jordan (here's a video of him doing this for "Autumn Leaves"), where one is worn and the other rests on a performance stand...but I guess he thought that was just too ridiculous to leave posted.  Sad, cuz I thought it was cool as hell.

Anyway, that should be plenty of evidence that Vamos definitely belongs in the ranks of those who tirelessly tear down and reassemble the way we think about so called "ordinary" things.  Unlike most guys my age, one of the most exciting prospects of a visit to Amsterdam is the opportunity to catch this guy in action, playing his wild stylings on the street.

On the freaking street.

What a world.

My first album review is for a friend, Boulder golden child and multi-talented sweetheart Caitlin DeMuth, aka Lynx.  At twenty two, Lynx demonstrates a savvy that is utterly beyond my understanding - she stands at the nexus of the suave and endearingly dorky, the clever and the sincere, and has a fireball career to show for it.  She's a minor legend in the Western States - a status she earned through numerous choice guest appearances with acts such as Zilla, Matisyahu, Kid Beyond, and The String Cheese Incident.  With her new debut independent album, Grain of Sand, she seems ready to meet a new cohort of admirers with her characteristic cool, warmth, authenticity, and wit.

For those of you unfamiliar with Lynx, Grain of Sand might seem a bit weird:  it's simultaneously slack and precise, humble and innovative.  Her invented genre, "folktronica," seems to capture this specific fondness for holding opposing perspectives.  Many of these songs might be standard girl-on-guitar fare, until she breaks into slam poetry and beatboxing, or until her skillful producers (Live PA heads G.S.P.) screw in some haunting synthesizers or fragments of glitchy percussion, embedding her café numbers into something suddenly danceable. 

This slight twist is enough to warrant a closer listening - and for someone like me who usually doesn't get around to the words until the second or third spin, this is a blessing, because her lyrics are often subtle, intelligent, and inspiring.  Grain of Sand is full of tricky little bits, delivered with trained cadence:  "Above us and below us there is only sky," "Half full and she's nearly empty," "There's no such thing as forbidden anything," "It never has been us versus them."

She coopts "Generation Yes" from the Christian ministries to describe a "Movement Underground" that is "bigger than the scene," and reminds us that if you want to see a better world, you can't sit around dreaming but "gotta get your hands dirty, gotta dig for your purpose."  Elsewhere, she muses favorably on causing "a riot - or better yet, change" - making a distinction that betrays her post-adolescent, post-summer-of-love sensibility (rare among those so similarly idealistic).  And to my glee, she drops a mention of the constellation Pleiades - the "Seven Sisters," a celestial homebase for various watery myths of hens, maids, and aquatic aliens - into her song "Waters Rising."

The music itself is simple but solid.  Her precise, choirgirl beatboxing hovers in just the right vocal range for the DJ noises she emulates, and her alternately thick-tongued and airy intonation is fabulously endearing.  She raps a lot harder than she sings, and the occasional abrupt change of pace from wispy verse to outspoken bridge took me some getting used to.  But one look at artist sAne's cover art for this album and it makes more sense. 



His portrait is stargazing and wistful, rendered in earthtones with an urban sensibility, the right colors but a slightly strange shape, wreathed in viney and elaborate scrawls.  It's all a part of her high-contrast musical persona.

G.S.P., as well as Zilla's hammer dulcimer wizard Jamie Janover, do a bang-up job of carrying her into a fuller realization of this paradox.  The result sometimes verges on being too hip for its own good, when something slightly less beat-clocked would've driven her authentic and organic message deeper.  But it's all made okay with moments like the jam at 2:40 in "Change," when some kind of woodblock/hammer dulcimer/acoustic guitar groove pops in and summons something eerily similar to badass live-looping cellist Eugene Friesen.

Later on, nice jazzy keys, easygoing strings, and luxurious backbeats sprawl "Tangerine" out in its chair, closing the album on a more timeless and traveled sound.  And the fingerpicked intro to "Thicker Than Mud" betrays well-developed chops that are teasingly absent in the rest of the album's straightforward backbeat strumming.  If Lynx-in-person is anything like Lynx-in-music, it's clear to me that she's playing below her ability - that she'll eventually pass through the low-flying clouds of the slick hip-hop front and into a rich vintage, where the true fire I know she possesses is evident in every song.

To be even-handed, I have to admit that the effortless grace in both her intimacy and bravado doesn't always hold.  Her writing occasionally descends into self-conscious song-within-a-song confessionals ("I'm writing on the back of someone's junk mail").  Sometimes the lyrics don't even make sense:  When she says that "Tangerine is the color of the moon tonight / It's been raining for at least five days," I have to wonder if this is even possible (an orange moon is caused by atmospheric dust, and rain would pin all of that to the ground).

At the end of my first spin, I was left wishing she would be a little more adventurous with key and tempo.  Given how easy it would be to remix any of these tracks with any other, I had to wonder about what guided her decision to place the songs on this album in any particular order.  It doesn't seem to carry the listener in any given direction or with a specific intent, but just floats around.  Ultimately that might be what this album is best for - relaxing background music - which is kind of a shame, considering that so many of her lyrics deserve more attention than that.

(After listening to it a second time, however, I have to make a disclaimer.  The first time I had it playing on the reprehensible speaker system of my car.  Later, in a café with headphones, this record makes perfect sense.  So many more of G.S.P.'s soft blips and scritches come through in my studio monitor headphones.  The synthesizers' lower frequencies  kick drum add a dose of much-needed heft, and the sudden appearance of a kick drum suggests real potential for delicious noise complaints.)

Anyway, I am frequently in the mood that suits this album, and expect it to receive regular play on my computer when I'm not too hip on whatever the baristas are playing.  Like I said, there's a yearning voice in me for Lynx's music to roar as loud as her message, something that revolts against the thought that some of the most moving and urgent words I've ever read (like the "Miracles" rant that climaxes "Half Full") might got lost in the chill:

Lynx - Half Full

"Miracles are the impossible coming through and everything is possible
This is for the possibility that guides us
and for the possibilities still waiting to sing and spread their wings inside us
cuz tonight, Saturn is on his knees proposing with all of his ten thousand rings
that whatever song we've been singing, we sing even more
The world needs us right now more than it ever has before
Pull all your strings, play every chord
If you're writing letters to the prisoners, start tearing down the bars
If you're handing out flashlights in the dark, start handing out stars
Never go a second hushing the percussion of your heart
Play loud
Play like you know the clouds have left too many people cold and broken
and you're they're last chance for sun
Play like there's no time for hoping brighter days will come
Play like the apocalypse is only four, three, two...
You have a drum in your chest that could save us
You have a song like a breath that could raise us
like the sunrise into a dark sky that cries to be blue
Play like you know we won't survive if you don't, but we will if you do
Play like Saturn is on his knees proposing with all of his ten thousand rings
that we give every single breath
Y'all, this is for saying yes
This is for saying yes"

It's a tough line to swallow when the rest of the album is so subdued. But all things considered (first album, twenty two, produced by friends), Grain of Sand is a pretty astounding statement.  I think she'll figure it out.

As a primer for my forthcoming interview with integral philosopher Ken Wilber - and because I like to consider myself an "integral artist" - I need to properly situate things with a definition of "integral art."

Integral art as I mean it is a product of integral consciousness - "integral" being a structure of consciousness beyond modern rationality and postmodern pluralism that not only recognizes an endless diversity of other perspectives, but actively accepts and engages them.  Integral consciousness, unlike the consciousness at earlier developmental "altitudes," does not regard the prior waves of development as "wrong" or "heathen" or "ill-informed," but as necessary and cherished expressions of evolution in its endlessly elaborating voyage of self-discovery.  The emergence of integral thought and being begins a process of reclamation, a return and embrace of the selves and worlds that we were in such a hurry to leave behind when growing up.  We dive back down into the depths of our pre-rational selves, newly equipped with the light of rational inquiry and the capacity to inhabit different perspectives without identifying with them.  The goal is not to fall back into the slumber of half-consciousness, but to live each of our previous selves as a crucial part of our wholeness in this moment.

This new flexibility and depth has two consequences:

1) It opens up an endless palette of viewpoints, making it significantly easier for artists to communicate their artistic intent.  A huge part of skillful expression is knowing your audience - who they are, what they experience, and how they interpret their world.  Integral art has the expressive trump card - it can speak in the voice of any of its predecessors, rather than limiting itself to the one right way of seeing and relating that characterizes pre-integral existence (often un-selfconsciously).

2) It also makes identifying integral art a challenge, precisely because of how the art tends to play around in and express itself with the languages of previous structures.  It's fairly easy to identify the Lascaux cave paintings as a form of magical artwork, or Picasso's cubist work as an expression of pluralist deconstruction.  But the very nature of integral consciousness is one of chameolonic and chimeric fluidity.  Like Paul the Apostle, truly integral communication is "all things to all people."  It meets you where you are.  Every language is its native language.  So how do we know that something is integral art just by listening to it?  Can we know?

Yes and no.  First, the bad news:  If you can't take the perspective of an integral artist, you're not likely to recognize integral art.  If the piece is intended for your altitude, it'll appear to be coming from your altitude.  If it's intended for someone else, you'll likely consider the statement to be irrelevant, ignorant, or insane.

Nonetheless, there are certain conceptual criteria we can use to help us identify an integral artist.  And where there's smoke, there's fire - find an integral artist, and you'll find integral art.

And so here it is:  In the clearest terms I can present to you, my definition of integral art.  Please, if you have questions about any of this, don't hesitate to ask.

...

HOW TO SPOT AN INTEGRAL ARTIST

If the artist is conscious of the following elements:

- WHAT they are making (ontology)
- HOW they are making it (methodology)
- WHO is doing the making... (epistemology)

If the artist is accounting for how the piece resonates in the following dimensions:

- the "I" space (how it feels, what it evokes)
- the "We" space (what it means, how it influences relationships)
- the "It" space (its physical characteristics, patterns, and ecological context)...

If the artist recognizes the partiality of all of these techniques and perspectives in the ground of emptiness/nonduality...

Then it's safe to call it integral art.

You don't have to literate in the work of any particular person (although I owe a great deal of my perspective-taking abilities to familiarity with the work of Ken, Genpo Roshi, Allan Combs, Paul Levy, Daniel Pinchbeck, Paul Lonely, Alan Watts, Helen Palmer, Erik Davis, Tom Robbins, Alan Moore, David Deida, Greg Egan, David Titterington, and many others).

You don't have to be recognized for what you're doing (although if you're good at being integral, you probably will be, because your work will "speak" in a profound way to your intended audience).

You just need to be moving from this place of explorative depth - and therefore the only way to know if something is actually integral art (and that you're not simply providing an integral criticism of a piece) is to talk to the artist.

...

There may be more adequate ways to understand and communicate integral art, but it's a topic that by its very nature cannot be contained in a single and final definition.  To honor the multiperspectival nature of this subject, I encourage you to read what others have written about integral art.  Taken together, these different vantage points provide a much clearer and fuller portrait than I could ever hope to relate on my own.  (Besides, how convincing would it be to declare myself an integral artist according solely to my own definition?)

Matthew Dallman has already written extensively about this:
http://matthewdallman.com

There is also an integral art Wikipedia entry with links to the work of several amazing artists, available here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integral_art

(And lastly, there's a growing discussion about integral music in particular - especially, its development alongside new spiritual and material technologies - in the forums at Zaadz Visionary Music.)

Guys.  I am so excited.  My dry academic veneer has been pierced and I'm bleeding all over the upholstery in joy.

My friend Paul Lonely (awesome interview with him here) is about to celebrate his 30th birthday at The Hive Gallery in L.A., and I've been invited to play.  Paul, author of that masterpiece of spiritual fiction, Suicide Dictionary, never had a birthday party when he was growing up - but this one stands to make up for those lost 29 years.  His partner Malena Gamboa, editor of the sweet spirituality website One Mind Village, has not only organized a killer event, but also played an instrumental role in getting my broke ass out to Los Angeles for to shred before the whole freakin' Angeltown integral community (and whomever else is interested in beautiful things and participating in a superconscious, inclusive community).

For me:  It'll mark my first sponsored travel as a musician, not to mention my first professional performance in the city of my birth, and an opportunity to finally meet in the flesh several amazing people whom I've known for years online.

For you:  It'll be a heart-stirring night of music and some deep freakin' poetry (Paul's composing a fresh manifesto with which to dazzle us).  It'll be a catered party at one of the coolest galleries in L.A. (and if you don't believe me, check out their last few exhibits!).  It'll be an orgy for your top four chakras, at least.  And it'll be kind of an unofficial CD release party for my new live album and a public unveiling of the first musical composition I recorded - on the Chapman Stick, bitches! - to accompany Paul's book (more info at The Illuminated Suicide Dictionary website).

For all those reasons (and more upon request) I highly, highly encourage you to tell everybody you know in Los Angeles to cancel their high colonics and traffic jam their yoga-toned butts out to this party, if they know a good thing when they see it.  The ninth of February marks our passage into a new era of unprecedented awesomeness.  Be there.  Don't forget to bring your hyperbole.