Anniversaries & Astronauts
When time is limited, you create when you can
This MIXTAPE is going to be short because I’m in the thick of training right now at Fidelity. In case you’re curious, I’ve been deliriously happy with everything so far, but that’s a topic for another newsletter. Today, I just want to celebrate two things because they represent new and old work I’m sharing with the world.
First, my newest album of original piano music, Postcards From The West Side, has been released. It drops on 8 August 2025. You can add it at all usual places where you stream your music on 08/08/2025. For example, on Spotify, it’ll be here:
You can also add the album now on Apple Music and Apple will automatically download the remaining tracks on release day. In the meantime, the instant gratification track, “Kissing You While You Sleep” is available to listen to in its entirety. It’s one of my favorite tracks and a perfect closer for the album. If you read my last MIXTAPE, then you know I wrote and recorded the songs in this album right before I started my current job. The tracks are tender, reflective, vulnerable, & introspective. The music is relaxing. The album is the quintessential LA piano book. It’s about living in the West Side of Los Angeles, getting a new dog, kissing my wife while she dreams, taking a picnic in the park, hiking in Runyon Canyon, watching the phases of the moon, flying to Matsuyama to visit my family’s ancestral grave, waking up early before everyone else, & missing people in my life. There’s even a song dedicated to Twin Peaks.
Second, my choose-your-own-adventure memoir, Dream Pop Origami, came out exactly there years to the day last Saturday and man do I feel old. But one of the patented comforts of being a published author is the knowledge that your work will outlive and outlast you. It’s a bit like having kids: immortality through genealogy. It’s a morbid but comforting thought. People may or may not remember you once you pass away and fifty years after you’re gone, your memory will disappear too, but as an author, your work will remain in the cultural (and if you’re lucky, popular) imagination forever. Maybe not in the forefront of the cultural imagination, but somewhere in the cultural preconscious mind. And there are worse places to be as a mixed-race artist and a Renaissance man.