Greenwich Village 1984

Washington Square Park in Greenwich Village
(photo by Jean Christophe Benoist)

    I was thinking recently of my teenage years. It seems so long ago that it doesn’t even seem like it was my life. I was thinking specifically of a time when I had this idea that I didn’t need any more information about how to live. I felt like I was an adult even though in reality I didn’t have much of a clue of what being an adult meant. Did you have a time like that when you were a teenager? Well for me that time was in the summer of 1984 in Greenwich Village.

Infinite Video

    My friend posted a video of her 3 year old daughter the other day. She was making different faces, an angry face , a surprised face, a happy face. It was absolutely adorable. As I watched, I realized that my friend probably has tons of pictures and videos of her daughter since the day she was born. And so does everyone else who has kids born in the past 10 years. I often wonder how this constant video will affect how children of that generation will perceive themselves as they grow up.

Creating with Photoshop 2

Violet Tendencies

    Way back in 2015 I posted Creating with Photoshop on this blog. I wanted to share some of my work and my creative process. Since my photoshop chops have improved and I'm able to go a lot deeper with some of my work I thought I'd do an update and show some recent work. One thing I've realized is that when I'm doing this work, when I'm lost in the world of Photoshop, I feel that I am truly in the moment. 

Bowling in Ithaca

    

Cross Bay Lanes in Howard Beach, NY
(photo by Bill Aiello)

    I never excelled at organized sports as a kid. The one and only year I played in little league baseball I was terrible. I reached base just one time. I don’t think it was even a hit, I think I reached first base due to a fielding error. My younger brother was the athlete in the family. He excelled in baseball, football and basketball. He won all kinds of accolades and trophies. What I really did most of the time during those preteen and early teen years was watch a lot of television. When I was 15 my best friend Larry suggested we should join the bowling league. For some reason I agreed to this so we joined the Starrett City Youth Association bowling team.

Moving Music: "Blue Sky"

    

The Allman Brothers: (L to R) Jaimoe, Duane Allman, Greg Allman, 
Dicky Betts, Berry Oakley and Butch Trucks
(photo by Jim Marshall)

     There are a good number of songs that have affected me in profound ways throughout my life. In the next couple of months I'd like to feature some of them here. This won’t be a song analysis post and it definitely won’t be any of those “Why you should like this” type of posts either. I’ve always found them to be a bit obnoxious. Obviously, like many art forms, music is subjective. There can be many reasons why you love a song or why it speaks to you in a certain way. I want my focus to be on how these songs have transcended from something much more than a great pieces of music to something that goes deeper into my being. I won’t particularly dwell on great lyrics or fabulous musicianship of these songs, though certainly these things are some of the qualities that have endeared the song to me. It’s basically how, for whatever reasons, these songs have elicited a feeling in me that is much more than the sum of its parts. I’m also not going to try to convince you that you too should like any song I explore. I understand if you think the song is just okay or you don’t like the singer’s voice, or maybe it's too country or too disco or too whatever for your liking. I get it. It's a very personal experience. Maybe you will appreciate it or maybe you'll think about songs in your own life that have moved you in an incredible way. The first song I'd like to feature is “Blue Sky” by The Allman Brothers Band.