Category Archives: Music

Teen Night Out with Greg Nissen and the Blue Scholars

The past few months for me have involved a lot of reading and paper writing, so I was pretty excited when my friend Greg Nissen told me he was coming up to Seattle for the day on Friday and asked if I wanted to hang out and shoot some photos. Greg is a super talented kid that I met through the Internet thanks to Drew Levin. He’s been doing great work up and down the West Coast, with his work for Seattle hip hop artist Macklemore receiving the most acclaim. But Greg is a really centered person and we had some great talks about mindfulness practice and meditation amidst our walk this past Friday.

We met up at Glazer’s in Seattle since he was picking up some film developer, then quickly headed down to the market to find some interesting characters to shoot. While Greg will likely have a whole roll of film of unique individuals, I was mostly enjoying the sun and watching Greg work. After we walked around for a bit, we headed to the Seattle Art Museum to hang out with Geo since the Blue Scholars were playing at SAM’s “Teen Night Out,” an event that happens three times a year and exposes students from the greater Seattle area to a range of arts. It was awesome to see high school students so excited about art and asking great questions of Geo and others about the significance of different art pieces and periods of art history. Below are some photos from the walk with Greg, as well as two gif’s I made from my photos of Geo getting the crowd excited during their short performance at the end of the night.

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TED Tuesday #5 – Robert Gupta on music as the medium

TED Tuesday #5 is a short video that leaves you with a lot to think about. In under 10 minutes, violinist Robert Gupta discusses his interactions with schizophrenic Nathaniel Anthony Ayers, a Juliard-trained musician in Los Angeles, California.

Through interacting with Ayers, Gupta realizes that music is what allows Ayers to take his thoughts and delusions and shape them into reality. It is the medium by which Ayers is able to interact with society; his medicine and his sanity.

While it may not be music that allows you to truly speak, take some time to watch Gupta’s talk and think about how it is that you best communicate and receive messages. What is your uninhibited medium?

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Spring Break – Part 1

Foreword: The following is one of a number of articles I’ll be posting about my spring break trip with the Willamette Rugby Football Club in Ireland and Scotland. The posts range from personal reflections to picture updates, but all came from my thoughts and experiences between March 19th and March 26th.

While break was much too short and not nearly restful enough, I was able to spend a lot of time with friends and a lot of time in my head. One of the most intriguing things for me when I enter a new city is to look at what ads, magazines, and newspapers I see around. When in Edinburgh, Scotland, at the end of the trip, I picked up a magazine called The Skinny in the lobby of our hostel. (We stayed at SmartCityHostels, which I would definitely recommend to anyone looking for a place to stay in Edinburgh.) Continue reading