Week 1: The Biggest Geek In The School

I am proud to be a geek.

I define a geek as someone who loves something beyond a common level of passion.  This is a person who finds the minutia related to the subject fascinating beyond other people's comprehension and allows interest to become part of what defines them.  Often we have negative thoughts about "geeks" because these are people who love something so much that they have no regard about whether or not their passion is "cool" or "in."

For example, I’m a music geek. I love breaking apart a song  and reading about stories behind the music which even though I find fascinating, most people do not. My brother-in-law is a Northwestern football geek. He who knows the names the players on the Northwestern University football team as well as the complex rules to this game. My wife is kind of a Harry Potter geek and revels in the weaving plot lines and foreshadowing throughout the series.

My new principal is a geek about our school.

Addressing the entire staff at the end of a day of meetings I was eager to hear what our fearless leader had to say.  I wondered why there was a desk with file folder holder with about eight folders filled with papers set up next to the podium. I thought maybe he’s going to hand out some awards or something but that thought quickly left my mind as he began to speak.

After some warm opening remarks he began to describe one of his accomplishments over the summer: cleaning out the file cabinets administrative office. Twenty-four long filling cabinets filled one side of the wall of the office containing documents from throughout the school’s over one hundred year history and he went through it all.

Like a Star Wars fan watching the premiere of a new film or like me listening to a new Bruce Springsteen album for the first time, my principal dove through mountains of papers with excitement and shared many of these fascinating documents with the staff.

At first I was though “really . . . REALLY, you’re going to read through this stuff to all of us?” But then like listening to anyone who is passionate about a subject speak about it, I couldn’t help but get drawn in.  He shared a variety of materials including  documents about the school trying to integrate African-Americans in the school in the 1960s philosophy statements written in 1930s about the purpose of the school that still rang true today.

What I found most touching was when our principal shared with us a hand-written note his father had written to the school about involving more board members in educational meetings.  It was a touching connection that our principal could feel with his late father that displayed a personal connection to this school that crossed generations.

I love how my principal is a geek about our school, our history and education as a whole. I love how he unapologetically “geeked-out” in front of the whole school sharing his passion and his love with all of us.  And I love how his passion sets a tone as a school where where I can be open about my passion about music education with students, teachers and parents feeling free to pass on my geeky fascination with the world of music to them. 

A school should be a place where passions should be embraced, people should study what they love and love what they study.

It's awesome to have a principal that shows us the way.

Reflections Of My Life by Marmalade

A great 1960s gem.



The dude is a little down a life. Either he was continuously dumped by girlfriend after girlfriend or he's reflecting back on a life wasted looking up esoteric songs on youtube.com and posting them on his blog.

My Problem WIth "Family Values"

"It has nothing to do with politics, it has everything to do with God, turning our face back to the values and principals that made us great.”
-Glenn Beck at the Restoring Honor rally (8/28/10)

During Glenn Beck’s speech in front of the Lincoln Memorial, he reinforced an argument that has been in the political field since the time of Nixon. It’s the idea returning to core Christians values, “family values” as a way to improve our country.

Here's the thing: My parents aren’t Christian and they didn’t raise my brother with an affiliation to any organized religion. However, all of us are good citizens. We pay our taxes, work hard at our jobs, don’t disturb the peace (except for maybe a parking ticket) and we’ve all done the best we can to take care of the people we love and improve the world around us. We did this all without "Christian" values.

You may argue that my family does exhibit Christian values even though we are not Christian, but that’s implying that only in Christianity do you find the values of hard working, love and family. These wonderful ideas are found in almost every book of faith from religions around the world including the Koran, Torah and the teachings of Buddha.

Christian values directly contributed to some of the greatest things in our country including the public schools system and music education. However, these same "values" also were distorted to lead to institutional racism and the ethnic cleansing of the Native Americans (If you think the term "ethnic cleansing" is too rough a term, read up on the Trail Of Tears).

I understand that it seems like there’s a lot people acting wickedly in society. People regularly cheat and steal from each other. Some people are motivated more by money than by good deeds while many of us ignore the plight of others who are most in need of our compassion. If doesn’t take a lot of effort to find examples of people who act sinfully.

Maybe an injection of “values” into all of us will remind us what it means to take care of each other and be a community. However it’s not a return to a Christian God that will get us there. It’s in acknowledging and embracing the best values that we share, religious or not that we can improve our communities.

The main reason I feel so strongly about embracing religious plurality is because it’s been such a positive aspect of my marriage. My wife is Catholic and I’m Buddhist. I’ve watched her cantor in her Catholic Church and she’s done Buddhist chants with me at my grandfather’s funeral. We had a beautiful interfaith wedding ceremony and while I would never claim that we have the greatest marriage ever, I’m proud of our relationship.

One of the reasons we make such great partners is because we share so many values. My parents and my in-laws are similar in the best ways and the instilled in us life-affirming ideas and a perspective in life that Diana and I share across religions.

By preaching a return to a Christian ideas and values it divides us alienating non-Christians.  Instead let's unite under the values we all share.  This requires us to have some tough discussion, to be more accepting and to put aside our instinctual to fear of what is different.  But if we can do this it will bring us together which is the only way that we can make a better America for generations to come.

Follow Through by Gavin DeGraw

One of the most magical moments is hearing a song for the first time. It is an experience that can never be replicated but every once in a while that feeling of discovery is captured in a song and we can come close to reliving that moment.

I was looking for one of my favorite Genesis songs “Follow You, Follow Me” on iTunes library and accidentally selected “Follow Through.” I was immediately transported to the sitting in my dorm room and hearing this song for the first time years ago in college.



“Follow Through” opens with a beautiful description of discovering a new love. With conversational lyrics reminiscent of Elton John and soulful singing reminding us of a young Billy Joel, “Follow Through,” takes these two influences into a gently unfolding celebration of love combined with a life-assuring plea to follow through.

The idea of asking for commitment this early in a relationship may seems a little extreme, “our love have just begun to blossom and everything is great, by the way I need you to commit to me.” However, the way that he asks her to for her heart is heartwarming and expresses a sense of vulnerability.

It’s almost as if our protagonist has had his heart broken before, “build through this destruction” and he is just coming out of his shell with the courage to love again. As he asks for commitment he expresses a simple but heartwarming sentiment, “all I really want is you, you to stick around.”

What makes this song so effective is that DeGraw is capturing a specific moment in a relationship. It’s this small window of time right at the beginning when all you see is possibilities. The realities of life have yet to set in and there is magic in the future. It’s not real life-long love, maybe it’s more infatuation, but that doesn’t mean that this emotions, this feeling are any less meaningful or unforgettable.

This moment is fleeting and for those of us who are lucky enough, this moment of discovery develops into a deeper feeling a love. While I wouldn’t trade the way I feel about Diana, my wife, after being with her for 8 years for anything sometimes it’s nice to be reminded of that time at the beginning of our relationships. It was a time all I thought about was her, all I talked about was her and all I wanted to do in my life was spend time with her.

On second thought, maybe I'm stuck in that moment.  I still think about my wife all the time, I talk about her constantly and all I really want is for Diana to stick around so that I can see her every day.

Save My Love by Bruce Springsteen

On November 16th, Springsteen is releasing The Promise: Darkness On The Edge Of Town Story.  This set includes a DVD documentary, live concert footage, the original album and CD songs that didn't make the original album.  Below is one of these song.



Really Bruce, this song wasn't good enough to be included in "Darkness On The Edge Of Town"?!? Only with an albums as amazing as Darkness On The Edge Of Town would a song this great be rejected. 

Man it would be awesome if someone got this for me for for a early Thanksgiving present. . ..

The Cove & Why Through The Slaughter Of Dophins We Are Killing Ourselves

I love eating meat: beef, veal, lamb, chicken, fish, shellfish, duck, oh and of course pork! I have no reservations about having leather accessories or furs (except for the fact that it’s not really in fashion right now). I don’t really love animals all that much except for my dog and I don’t really think future generations will really mourn the loss of any species that become extinct in my lifetime. However I feel strongly that we desperately need to stop whaling.

Recently Animal Planet premiered the Academy Award Winning documentary The Cove. This film is about a filmmaker Louie Psihoyos’ journey in helping Ric O’Barry document the illegal slaughter of dolphin in Taiji, Japan.



The process of filming the slaughter has a secret ops feel which is exciting but what is really engaging is the story of Ric O’Barry. He takes responsibility for the popularity of bottle-nosed dolphins as the main trainer on the television show Flipper. After one of his whales dies in his arms, he decides to rectify what he has done and has spent the rest of his life trying to free whales. O’Barry is one of he most amazing inspiring examples of someone taking responsibility for their actions and trying to make the world a better place.

Animal Planet has been showing The Cove to lead in for their new show Blood Dolphins that continues to follow O’Barry’s battle in Taiji.



The argument of the intelligence and consciousness of dolphins didn’t effect me, what really got to me was how illogical and gratuitous were the actions of the fisherman. Dolphin meat has ridiculously high levels of mercury and the only way that it’s sold in Japan is if it’s mislabeled as whale meat, which isn’t even very popular in Japan anymore.

Look, I know that the chicken I ate for lunch was probably raised to be eaten and it’s death can only be considered “humane” by comparison to what we’ve done in the past, but we need to eat. Killing dolphins for meat is like collecting wild boar shooting them and trying to sell it as pork. The vast majority of the market would find the meat too gamy and anyways, there’s no need to kill those wild animals, we got plenty of farmed animals, why mess with the wild ones?

Yes, I think killing wild animals in general is crueler than killing farmed animals. Others of you may not make that distinction. What is important to consider is what we are doing to our souls when take life, any life.

If there’s a spider that you find on a table and you kill it when you could have just as slide it on to a piece of paper and let it go outside in the garden you are doing something to you soul and a little darkness creeps in. As a human race, we have so much darkness at the edges of our existence. Some of it is unavoidable but whatever is avoidable, we have to stop. We can’t afford any more blood on our hands.

Do the fisherman and Taiji have the right to fish off their shores and fish whatever they want to? Yes, but the rest of world has the right to draw attention to this atrocity make the Japanese government so embarrassed that they agree to stop their gratuitous cruelty.

The Purple Reaction-Year Three

The Purple reaction has been one of the greatest adventures I’ve embarked on.

When I first considered starting a blog in November 2008, it seems like a blogging was the most self-indulgent activity on the internet. Who I am to presume that my thoughts are SO important that people would actually care to read them?

I went ahead anyways, decided not to dwell on other’s perceptions of my blog as an ego exercise and jumped in. I wanted to create a look at music combining the academic analysis that is usually reserved to classical music to popular music. Most of all I wanted to create a source of positivity on the internet, a celebration of the art in our lives and the world we live in.

This blog has always been personal from describing being dumped in my first post (“Since U Been Gone”), to my mother (“The Best Day”) and of course my wife (“The Luckiest”). I did this for myself as a way to document my thoughts and feelings but also in an attempt to help all of you relate music to your own lives.

It hasn’t been all about music though. I couldn’t resist writing about my encouter with deep friend bacon as my first non-music blog post. There’s been other subjects like TV Shows (Jon & Kate Plus 8  and Teen Mom), politics (What It Means To Talk About Politics) and of course Buffy my dog. (which are regularly my most read posts).

I haven’t gotten to my original plan of turning this blog into a newspaper column and while this is something I’m interested in the future, I’ve love the freedom and the format of writing a blog. Some of it is simply my love of writing, but it’s also the connections I get to make with readers. Whether it’s in person, e-mails or comments.  I feel blessed to have readers and it blows my mind to think that there are people who actual enjoy what I’m doing.

That all being said, there are some changes coming to this blog. This Fall I’m starting a new job at a fantastic school and this blog will not be able to take up as large part of my life and it has for the past two years. Instead of three posts a week I will scale down to two posts on Monday and Friday. Instead of a full post on Wednesday I will post a clip of something for you to enjoy, a music video, interesting speech or a movie trailer.

I hope you will continue to join me as I continue to explore the wonder and beauty of this beautiful world we share. Thank you for reading my blog whether it’s every post or once a month.

It means the world to me to share what I love with all of you.