This World and Me

Song of the Week #4 is "Fresh Static Snow" by Porter Robinson . I'm excited to finally share some of Porter's music as my song of the week. I've written about one of his other songs before: his phenomenal "Shelter" , on which he collaborated with French electronic music producer Madeon. "Fresh Static Snow" is the fifth song off Robinson's 2014 album Worlds . Worlds  is a departure from the kind of harsher bass-heavy, high-BPM electronic dance music that Robinson produced early in his career. "Fresh Static Snow" is no exception. This is not dance music for the sake of dance music. The beat is moderately paced, and though it still uses bass to provide its main hook, the song has a far more melodic and more artistic feel than his previous works once the vocals kick in. The vocals themselves are provided by  Avanna , which is a part of the  Vocaloid voice synthesizer program . In other words, it is a computer singing the song, n...

I'd like to vent for a bit. I'm from a decently sized, upper-middle class suburb of Columbus, Ohio, called Dublin. In Dublin, we have sidewalks along basically every street, but since we're not a city, we don't need to cross the street as pedestrians very often. Most of our commuting is done in cars. Having now moved to Berkeley, California, I had to make a quick adjustment to crossing streets every day. Now, crossing streets wasn't new to me; I also had to do it every day as I was at The Ohio State University in Columbus my senior year of high school for a dual enrollment program. I am – if I do say so myself – more or less familiar with how crossing the street as a pedestrian works. And quite frankly, it is a matter of common sense. I was surprised to find that on some occasions while living in Berkeley, this has not been the case. In this post, I'd like to step on a soapbox for a bit and give a totally arrogant lecture on how to stay safe as a pedestrian. ...

Song of the Week #3 is actually a combination of two tracks called "Desiderium 207" and "Mirage", both by Armin van Buuren . This is the third part of a weekly series of posts: check out my very first one for more details. The reason I am presenting them together is because they were made to go together; "Desiderium 207" is the first track on Armin van Buuren's 2010 album Mirage , and "Mirage" is the second. The two tracks flow directly into one another. Whenever I need to refer to the two tracks together by name, I will simply use "Mirage". To explain, nowadays, albums usually consist of tracks, each of which can stand on their own. As I understand it, this has been influenced heavily by the advent of digital download as a medium through which consumers may obtain music. With digital download, people can choose specific songs on albums to download on their own, and in programs like iTunes, you can choose specific tracks on alb...

Almost all of the heavy elements that exist in nature – carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, calcium, etc. – were originally formed as a result of nuclear reactions within the core of dying stars. This is one of the only locations in the universe we know of that is capable of producing these elements naturally. You are made of all of these elements. The material that constitutes your body was formed in the core of a star a long time ago. The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of star stuff. —Carl Sagan, Cosmos Look up at the night sky. See those little pinpricks of light? Who knows whether, at the end of the star's life, the elements it formed will eventually come together to form new life?

Song of the Week #2 is "Das kann uns keiner nehmen" by Revolverheld . This is the second part of a weekly series of posts that I have started doing: see my post last week for more information about it. "Das kann uns keiner nehmen" is sung in German. The title means "no one can take that from us", and it is the second song off Revolverheld's 2013 album Immer in Bewegung  (German for Always in Motion ). I've been learning the German language for about 4 years now—since my freshman year of high school and still now in my freshman year of college. It was actually my graduate student instructor (GSI) in my first semester at UC Berkeley who introduced me to this song. Almost every day, she would play a German song for us as we prepared for class. We could even suggest songs for her to play. As I was unpacking my notebook and pencils from my backpack before class, she began to play "Das kann uns keiner nehmen". I was not listening closely e...

Today, I'd like to try something new. I haven't been posting as often to this blog this year as I did in 2016. Much of this is due to a lack of creative energy. There are several draft posts that I've started, but I either don't know how to go about finishing them or don't feel motivated enough to do so. Some of the topics I have spent the last few months drafting are challenging to write about. For example, there's a draft about goodbyes that touches upon various goodbyes I've had to experience throughout my life and how they've shaped me, and there's also a draft I've procrastinated on for almost a year now about my thoughts on the competitiveness of the music industry, and there's another one about the similarities between Shakespearean comedy and a modern animated film series. As I've drafted these posts, I found myself frustrated by my inability to articulate precisely what I feel, which perhaps stems from an underlying uncertainty a...

Prince. Why, thou owest God a death. [Exit Prince.] Falstaff. 'Tis not due yet: I would be loath to pay him before his day. What need I be so forward with him that calls not on me? Well, 'tis no matter; honor pricks me on. Yea, but how if honor prick me off when I come on? How then? Can honor set to a leg?  No. Or an arm? No. Or take away the grief of a wound? No. Honor hath no skill in surgery then? No. What is honor? A word. What is in that word honor? What is that honor? Air—a trim reckoning! Who hath it? He that died a Wednesday. Doth he feel it? No. Doth he hear it? No. 'Tis insensible then? Yea, to the dead. But will it not live with the living? No. Why? Detraction will not suffer it. Therefore I'll none of it. Honor is a mere scutcheon—and so ends my catechism. Exit. —William Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part 1    (1597), Act 5, Scene 1. An attack on the value of "honor" to those who fight to the death. A soliloquy by the cowardly Sir John Falstaff at t...