. . . but, boy, does this photo make me miss San Francisco!
. . . but, boy, does this photo make me miss San Francisco!
I've been feeling a bit strung out lately by the digital world. As is obvious to anyone who knows me, I'm a geek: I love gadgets and the Web and computers and all that stuff. But more and more, I feel its making me a very material person, one caught up in craving and desiring and wanting. Following the up-to-the-minute news on the latest Mac or iPod makes me feel like I have to have one, which then makes me feel like I'm not making enough money if I can't afford one, which then makes me re-think my career choices and my priorities and . . . ugh! Enough! That is no way to live.
I've had the great honor of being a featured artist over at "Shut Your Mouth," a Pearl Jam fan site. Murray, who runs the excellent site, put out a call to his readers, trying to find out who among them were musicians themselves. Murray will then be interviewing the featured Pearl Jam fans/artists and providing download links to their stuff. The interview we did last week has just gone up -- you can find it here. I'm pretty psyched about spreading the word a little bit about what I'm doing, and the interview itself was a lot of fun -- we wound up talking a lot about the creative process, which, as you may know, I absolutely love exploring and dissecting!
Once Jill and I are back in New York, I'm going to record two new songs that are in the can. Also, I'm going to look into setting up a performance -- either another open mic or perhaps a show of my own (it might be nice to play more than two songs!). Also, I might hook up with my friend Elana for some musical collaboration, which is something I haven't done in a long, long time. Should be interesting . . . And I've just got my hands on a cassette tape of the demo recording of Revolver, the band I was in during high school. In some ways it still sounds pretty good, especially this one song of my called "Boxcars." Once I can figure out how to do the cassette-to-mp3 conversion, I'll post some of those tracks.
Lastly, here are a few of my favorite recent pictures. I am so happy with the Canon EOS Rebel DSLR Jillian got me for Christmas. It can really take excellent pictures with not a lot of tinkering.
Here's a photo a took this weekend with my brand-new DSLR Nikon Rebel, which Jill was so kind to give to me for the holidays! I'm pretty happy with this shot, especially the focus of the grass in the foreground contrasted to the blurry fog in the background.
I really love taking pictures, and I can't wait to get more familiar with all the techniques involved. It's fun learning something new, being reduced to a beginner again. Very humbling, very healthy.
Being out here in San Francisco has been so transformative in so many ways. One great effect has been my increased level of blogging. If you check out the San Francisco blog that Jill and I are keeping, Flowers in Our Hair, you'll see that I've been blogging like a madman, especially in the last few weeks. Having to keep friends and family up to date on our doings has inspired me to be a much more diligent Web writer and sharer. Now that we're headed back for New York (fewer than two days from now!), I really want to keep up with that productivity, to build on that, to not let it go to waste.
So look for this site to transform from pretty much just a way for me to share my music into a fully formed blog: I'll still post and share and discuss my music, but I'll also cover my photography, my other interests, and just the general doings in my life. You know, a blog. (Duh.)
So raise a glass to Niko, the blogger reborn!
Hey all,
Check out this post over at our San Francisco blog for details about my mustache-growing charity campaign!
All best,
Niko
In the last few weeks, there's been a lot of talk about Radiohead's new album, which apparently is finished but won't be released until 2008 (I think they're still looking for a new record label). I came across this really high-quality video of Thom Yorke performing one of the new songs, "Videotape," by himself with a piano. If this song is any indication, this album is going to be really amazing. I find this haunting, beautiful, and really, really impressive. I especially like "You are my center / when I spin away / out of control / on videotape."