David Woodard

In 2004, acknowledging sustainable aspects of Nueva Germania's founding ideals, Woodard composed the choral anthem "Our Jungle Holy Land".

From 2004 to 2006 Woodard led numerous expeditions to Nueva Germania, winning support from then U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney. In 2011 Woodard granted Swiss writer Christian Kracht permission to publish their sizable personal correspondence, largely concerning Nueva Germania, under Leibniz University Hannover imprint Wehrhahn Verlag. Of the correspondence, FAZ relates, "[The authors] obliterate the boundary between life and art." Der Spiegel posits that Five Years constitutes "the spiritual preparatory work" of Kracht's subsequent novel Imperium.

In 2003 Woodard was elected councilman in Juniper Hills (Los Angeles County), California. In this capacity he proposed a sister city relationship with Nueva Germania, Paraguay. To advance his plan, Woodard traveled to the erstwhile vegetarian/feminist utopia and met with its municipal leadership. Following an initial visit, he chose not to pursue the relationship but had found in the community an object of study for later writings. What particularly interests him are the proto-transhumanist ideas of speculative planner Richard Wagner and Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche, who along with her husband Bernhard Förster founded and lived in the colony between 1886 and 1889.

Los Angeles memorial services at which Woodard has served as conductor or music director include a 2001 civic ceremony held at the Angels Flight funicular railway honoring mishap casualty Leon Praport and his injured widow Lola. He has conducted wildlife requiems, including for a California Brown Pelican on the berm crest of a beach where the animal had fallen. He is reputed to favor colored inks in preparing a score.

From 1989 to 2007 Woodard built replicas of the Dreamachine, a stroboscopic device created by Brion Gysin and Ian Sommerville which involves a slotted cylinder, made of copper or paper, rotating around an electrical lamp. When observed with closed eyes, the machine can trigger mental states that are comparable to substance intoxication or dreaming. Agreeing to contribute a Dreamachine to William S. Burroughs' 1996 LACMA visual retrospective Ports of Entry, Woodard befriended the elderly author and presented him with a paper "Bohemian model" Dreamachine for his 83rd and final birthday. Sotheby's auctioned the former machine to a private collector in 2002, and the latter machine remains on extended loan from Burroughs' estate to the Spencer Museum of Art in Lawrence, Kansas.

David Woodard (UK: /ˈ w ʊ d ɑːr d / ( listen ) , US: /ˈ w ʊ d ər d / ; born April 6, 1964) is an American conductor and writer. During the 1990s he coined the term prequiem, a portmanteau of preemptive and requiem, to describe his Buddhist practice of composing dedicated music to be rendered during or slightly before the death of its subject.