Dance. Dare. Move. Soar.

Here's my latest Photoshop project. I'm especially proud of how it turned out.

It's based on a tutorial that I found here.

[I've been getting so into Photoshop lately that I've been neglecting to do my homework. This reminds me of high school, when I'd regularly experience these transient obsessions (including calculus, computer programming, and playwrighting) that would literally make me forget the world around me. I don't know what to make of this habit of mine: on one hand, there's the exhiliration of discovery, the joy of passion, and it's truly a wonderful experience; but on the other hand, it's caused me too much guilt and too many unnecessarily sleepless nights...If only I could choose what my homework was based on my mood.]

Foray into Photoshop

I've recently started to work on learning Adobe Photoshop. It's intimidatingly powerful software, which is why I've been reluctant to get into it before, but now I see it in a different light because I focus more on the amazing potential that this array of features has to offer me. Even after a couple tutorials I'm inspired to further explore a neglected creative side of me. Here are some of my first projects:

No rights reserved. Feel free to use them as you wish. This is not a political statement in any way—I'm just really excited to share what I've made.

The Berkeley Blog

Dear Reader,

Here's another tool to help you in your lifelong quest for knowledge—The Berkeley Blog, a compilation of blogs from UC Berkeley professors:

http://blogs.berkeley.edu/

You can read up on a vast array of topics, from the humanities, to politics and economics, to science and technology, to health and medicine.

Enjoy!
Kunal

Why do we have music?

I was listening to NPR today and heard a piece on Christoph Eschenbach, currently the conductor of the National Symphony Orchestra (pictured right). Indirectly, he gave what I found to be a very cogent answer to this question:

"Music can invade you totally, and can speak all the languages of emotion to you. You can express all the language of emotion with that music."

We writers often complain about not being able to fully trasmit our emotions. Music, it seems, can fill this gap which writing cannot. To say that writing is just the language of the intellect and music is just the language of emotions sets up a false dichotomy, but it also gives a good sense of their respective strengths.

Update (2hrs later): When I wrote this post, I didn't consider poetry, arguably the most emotional form of writing. Even still, I feel music has a superior fidelity for emotions. Music doesn't rely on words, or even concepts, and that allows it to speak to us from a place in our minds before words or concepts even form.