3/7/09 - MINDSPEAK.COM was launched in 1998 as the central music and event site for Jeremy dePrisco. Over those 10 years, the site branched out considerably to incorporate everything from community events, essays, and travel journals to restaurant recommendations and CD/Book reviews. Eventually, more interactive web technologies such as blogs, RSS and wiki came along, making it almost impossible to keep up in a pure HTML-based environment. And while I have also remained computer savvy over the years and have made a living as a software developer, the time to maintain my own site began to eclipse the time I was spending creating content (musical or otherwise).

From a technical standpoint, it was time for a redesign. A change was needed to take advantage of some of the newer time-saving and content-rich tools. My current site does not take advantage of some of the new dynamic content technologies that are becoming more prevalent and more anticipated by web users.

Therefore, my musical content has moved to a new site: Shivasongster.com

Why Shivasongster?

For starters, the name Shivasongster is much more “musical.” That characteristic is something MINDSPEAK.COM lacked. Those that are familiar with the variety of my work should get the reference to the many arms of Shiva.

On a deeper level, Shiva has the role of the destroyer in Hinduism, but also the transformer. Shiva dances upon Maya, the demon of ignorance, something my musical work continues to do. Shiva is also depicted as both an ascetic yogin and as a householder - roles which are mutually exclusive in Hindu society, but have become integrated in my own life. I have constantly walked the fine line between a complete material existence and a less materially-attached life of spiritual study. Let me be clear – I am not comparing myself to a Hindu god. I am not a yogi. I am not Hindu. However, I am using the imagery and symbolism within Shiva as apt representations for the many directions that my creativity has taken over the years. I’m also heavily influenced by the work of Joseph Campbell and have thought about this carefully, so to those Hindus out there reading this, please understand this reference is being used with highest respect to Hinduism in general.

The graphic design for Shivasongster.com was done by Adam Lunger, of Elysburg, PA. He's done a great job turning my vision into reality. The web coding has been done by Andy Bishop of Argraff Design in Orangeville, PA. Andy has also done some excellent work, helping me turn my attention to the more creative side of things rather than the technical side. The choice to use local talent was a conscious one. I could easily have picked any number of design firms in Philly or out of state, but felt that it was important to enlist local artists. That decision was made long before the economic downturn. It just seems to make sense.

The "All News" section is much more dynamic and will feature local arts events and updates as soon as I find them. The focus is still going to be on Central PA, particularly intercultural events. This will eventually replace my text-based event listing sent via email, which takes a lot of additional time to prepare.

What's happening to MINDSPEAK.COM?
MINDSPEAK.COM will be up for a while longer as I transfer some of the more archaic musical stuff over to Shivasongster.com. Afterward, MINDSPEAK.COM will undergo a complete visual overhaul and be repurposed for my non-musical, rhetorical and socio-political content, much of which has been inspired by my classes at BU and events of the past several years. I feel the time is right to make this available, but it was necessary to separate it from my musical persona. Very often I am interested in topics that have little to nothing to do with my music and I didn’t want people to be confused about this any longer. The fact is that music is a great medium, and still a large part of my life, but it is not always the best medium to tackle certain subjects. It’s difficult to bring music out of its exploitive history and into a pure form of dialog. Many people see it as mere entertainment, and do not take it seriously. I wanted a medium that I could take a step further.
 
So at first, MINDSPEAK.COM will house my own commentaries on several topics that I am passionate about: Education, technology, spirituality, small business, and community. Eventually I will open this up for others to comment. Then we will see how things go from there. I do not want to make this like any other blog. I want it to be focused on the local community in some ways, but also tackle larger topics that go beyond our immediate area.

So enjoy the new site!

Find out about intercultural events in your backyard. This listing spreads the word about the great work people do will go a long way to ending the myth that "there's nothing to do."

Submission guidelines for MINDSPEAK.COM

If your organization wishes to submit something for this calendar, please follow these guidelines:

The focus here is diversity, music and theatre in Central PA.
Purely political events will not be given consideration
All events must have who, what, where, when (date, time, place).
A contact number, email and web site are helpful if available.
When submitting times, do not use punctuation.
Plain text only (no embedded hyperlinks or graphics - they won't pass, and I don't send attachments).

Submissions may be trimmed for space and checked for grammar, but I will not proofread dates as they are expected to be correct.