One of my favorite places in Austin is in the Long Center. You can usually get in as a student, and you can usually get pretty decent seats. Doesn’t matter though–go all the way to the top balcony. On that top foyer, you can look out into the night sky. Usually the several minutes that anticipate Peter Bay’s initial downbeat display a night sky that looks like shades of blue are creeping over the buildings, dark enough to ensure tranquility for a night’s rest but light enough that the pink, blushing clouds still bump and compete for their place in the sky.

All of the buildings in the skyline are appealing; but from this angle you realize just why the Frost Tower is so iconic. It is from this angle, several stories above the green lawns of Auditorium Shores, that this building stands out in such a way that the same clouds which competed with the night sky steer clear. The lights beam just enough into the sky, but its majestic presence is made known in the reflection in the water below.

Suddenly, the lights are not from the sky above, but from the water so nearby. The reflections sing out back to the beholder. A smorgasbord of colors begin to satiate the eyes. Without doubt, it is the perfect aperitif to prepare one’s self for the next manipulation of the senses: the ears and the symphony itself.

And without undue superfluity, my mixtape plays on:

No. 8: “Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain”—Willie Nelson

I didn’t grow up with country music, so Willie Nelson was pretty new to me my freshman year. Willie’s huge here in Austin, and if you’ve ever listened to his album Red Headed Stranger, you can truly appreciate his minimalist style of play. His simple guitar picking is like listening to a sun rise above the horizon and all the nature waking up with it; then he’ll completely turn it around with a crazy, swinging, riled-up honkey tonk song. “Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain” is not the quintessential Willie Nelson song, but it is what a Hudspeth County judge allegedly asked him to play to escape possession charges about a year ago.

No. 9: “Mamas, Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to be Cowboys”—Waylon Jennings

You can’t have Willie without Waylon, and it’s not uncommon for these two to sing this song together. I think this song screams to the genre of “outlaw.” Also, although I’m neither a doctor or lawyer, I’m sure that accountant falls under “such.” Continue reading MPA is a Mixtape (cont.) →

It’s finally the time of year when you leave your apartment around eight in the evening or so and can still see a few shades of orange and red peeping from behind the tower and surrounding foliage. Clouds of purple come down to bid farewell to the sun for the day’s work and the dark, blue night creeps behind you.

I always try to look at Austin as if I’m looking at it for the first time all over again. I remember driving up Mopac with my family for the first time and noting how great the rolling hills looked. And yet, it barely sank in today while at work that I really am leaving. As much as I planned for it and knew it was going to happen, the finality of it never really occurred to me.

Sometimes, it is hard to put  into words everything one feels (no matter what the articles my psychology friends send me say). Fortunately, while the English language fails me, I still have music that is able to convey how I feel when words cannot. So, Austin, Texas MPA, here we go: Continue reading MPA is a Mixtape →