About | The Ungoogleable

The About section. The Big Questions.

"Who are you? What do you do? Who do you think you are? What do you think you're doing?"

Surreal

Sublime

Absurd

Image

Sound

Word

Wit

Whimsy

Wisdom

Excavation

Distillation

Realization

The Michaelangelo that can be googled is not The Ungoogleable Michaelangelo.

Try it, and what you're likely to find is a foundation of (ninja) turtles-all-the-way-down, or some sistine chapel-perilous, way over-your-head, where angels wink in sync. (That famous mural was created by Michelangelo by the way--that's "mee-kel-angelo". A common mistake.)

Oh perilous paradox of Ungoogleablity! The Ungoogleable is the "one-hand-clapping" of branding. It is the paradoxical anti-brand brand, an incidentally satirical snail trail of avatar-as-residue, impressed upon the web.

Speaking of webs, "did I ever tell you about the time a spider lent me his eyes? He just lifted them from his head like a crown and put them on me like they were a VR headset!" Oh sorry, so easy to lose track of the yarn with all these frayed threads.

Michaelangelo chases many rabbits, so to speak. The proverb would imply that one who chases many rabbits, catches none, but you should ask yourself is catching rabbits even the goal in life? Imagine what you could learn from such pursuits, about the habits of rabbits, rabbit-holes, and the wonderlands beyond. Think of all the mad hatter's tea parties you might attend, and all the stories you could tell!

So perhaps chasing rabbits isn't the right way to frame it. Maybe it's more apt to say that Michaelangelo wears a lot of different hats. Yes, let's think of it in terms of hats for a moment.

The dome of the hat serves the function of keeping the head cool, just as the brim serves to shield the eye from the sun. But the dome could also serve as a little cathedral through which thoughts may inescapably resound. In this sense a hat is a sentient extension of the mind. Now imagine a giant hat, many stories tall, tall as tales, with myriad eyes stacked vertically to imply high, multi-dimensional vision. Imagine hookah tentacles branching off of this hat, so that others may partake in the smoky substance of the man's mind in order to gain second-sight through that mind's eyes. Now we're approximating the functional utility of an Ungoogleable Michaelangelo as a psychoactive personality, as an aspiring entheogen.

I wish I could give you a straightforward answer, or provide you with a simple catalogue of credentials and achievements, but in essence the "about" section touches onto the big questions that The Ungoogleable's work strives to explore.

The ultimate creative medium is the Self itself.

All the disparate parts strive towards the light of its totality, which, in turn, fragments its light into a spectrum of differentiation through the prism of the mind. This turning of all instruments and senses upon themselves to reach towards the sensed source, and the mapping of that strange terrain, is at the heart of these explorations.

Ultimately, his work always strives towards a self-transcendent medium--words that reach for the unspeakable, images that seek to touch the imaginary, music that paints a picture, and presence beyond a fixed identity--utilizing the material realm to springboard into the metaphysical domain of The Imagination, the interface of the conscious and the unconscious mind.

Through a synergy of written and spoken word, music, visual art and film, he intends to instill a sense of contemplative wonder for the strangeness and mystery of the moment, inspiring others to see the creative possibilities and fluid personalities that can be conjured like color from the white noise, thereby sharpening the tools with which our human stories can unfold and be told.

Art, in its many facets, is a language through which to understand and communicate one's experience of the world. It is, says JF Martel, "the only truly effective means we have of engaging, in a communal context, the psyche on its own terms." That covers the motivation, to a fair extent...

...now let's look at some of the hats he wears!

MICHAELANGELO IS A...

...PSYCHONAUT: This term, which means "sailor of the mind", can also be called "interior decorator of the void" or "abyssnessman". The role of the psychonaut is that of the explorer & map-maker, but not only does the psychonaut chart uncharted, psychic terrain--they also interior decorate and define its design. The psychonaut's trail of wonder-breadcrumbs craft a new user experience. The mind is not some preconceived or established domain; the mind is made up.

...WRITER: words are a malleable medium, plyable and playable, they are a great fabric with which to decorate the emptiness and summon reality. The Ungoogleable "explores where the limits of language meet the fringes of reality"--in other words, where the subjectivity of mind ends and the objective world begins--a real "out there" theory. This liminal zone is the interfacial fabric of consciousness, and the operating system that makes all the difference. This is the fabric of "maya" or art and illusion. His words-works can be described as a blend of mythopoetic prose, internal journalism, meta-fiction and essay. His poetic prose has been described as "imagination cinema" for the way it paints pictures that dance and transform before the mind's eye, like an invocative dream spell.

...BARDO BARD: This term could also be replaced by "Poet/Philosopher" or "Shroomy Rumi". A bardo is a liminal zone, like the place between life and death. A bardo bard is one who knows how to maneuver language is such a way as to convey a sense of these spaces. The Ungoogleable believes that language can be a kind of rocket ship, with the potential of transporting us through time and space. "The fastest way to the moon is by word of mouth," he has been heard to say. He also understands that, not only is the map not the territory, but it is an entirely new territory altogether.

Screen%20Shot%202017-12-28%20at%204.15_e

The Ungoogleable Michaelangelo was born and raised in The Netherlands as Michael R. Jacobs before moving to the US at the turn of the millennium, where he underwent a name-change operation. English is his second language; he considers it a phantom tongue, because he learned it through fiction, through TV, mimicry and (an inability to read) subtitles. He is self-taught in all his creative disciplines.

...STORYTELLER: this is, of course, an umbrella term that can apply to most mediums, but he has been know to quite literally spin a yarn as an oratory storyteller in various settings.

...MUSICIAN: As a songwriter, vocalist, frontman and lyricist for the bands TheaTerRa and Morph Dwarf, he has crafted mythic, cinematic storysongs that ring like whimsical parables or frameless films. His most recent release was 2016's Séance Fiction, an album put forth under the name Void Denizen, which explores philosophical ideas through impressionistic lyricism, music, and film, resulting in a dead serious alchemical comedy that makes light of the dark arts. Nowadays he mostly composes micro songs for his podcast, using mostly his voice to create musical vocalizations and beatboxed rhytms.

...FILMMAKER: (writing, directing, and acting) is a longtime ambition and the logical conclusion of Michaelangelo's alchemical aspirations--where the trinity of image, sound, and word are unified as one--where their essence becomes presence and is set into motion as an all-inclusive storytelling vessel.

...PODCASTER: After a number of podcast guest appearances, which he considers a kind of "modular storytelling scavenger hunt across the web", he was encouraged to create his own show. Self Portraits As Other People is a "schizovereign" vehicle that facilitates conversational explorations with kindred artists, thinkers, and fringe personalities. The show also includes intricately sound-scaped introductions that combine Michaelangelo's storytelling, writing, voice-acting and musical skills, and allow him to fragment and multiply himself while reflecting himself in the mirror of the other.

...STAND-UP CHAMELEON/SCROLL-DOWN COMEDIAN: with a rubber face, a talent for mimicry and a range of impressive impression under his belt (from Terence Mckenna to Werner Herzog to Slavoi Zizec and beyong) a quicksilver tongue and a mercurial mind, you'd expect Michaelangelo to elicit laughs as a comic. But the aversion to becoming trapped in the laughing stocks of an audience's comedic expectations, he prefers to keep the comedy contained to social media and artistic integrations.