Unginspired

Host of Unginspired

I’m Baramay Ung — a Cambodian-American guitarist, composer, and educator turned photographer and storyteller. I started Unginspired to give voice to the kinds of stories we don’t always hear: the struggles underneath the surface, quiet resilience, and the everyday moments that shape us.

This project started in Peru in July 2023, when I tried plant medicine for the first time. I asked the medicine: What should I do with my life? I burned out from my music career, and I somehow ended up spending the pandemic running massive Covid operations, but that job was ending. I wasn’t sure what direction to go in.

The answer I got was simple: “There’s a reason you brought your camera here to Peru, and not your guitar.” And that was all I needed to hear. I started thinking about what I could do with this camera — the people I could photograph, the stories I could tell, the issues I could highlight. The most pressing one that came to mind was my friend, Danny Cocke, who was going through Stage 4 colon cancer.

When I got back home, I asked Danny if I could document his journey. He enthusiastically said yes, but only after seeing my photos from Peru :) But when we sat down to talk — about everything he’d been through with cancer, the healthcare system, plant medicine, and his music career — I thought: this should be an interview. So that’s what we did.

That first interview was a turning point. I am so proud of that interview, and I wanted to keep going. Over time, it’s turned into something bigger: a way to explore what it means to experience pain, learn from it, and find growth on the other side. If there’s one thing this project has taught me, it’s that love and pain are two sides of the same coin.

I hope you'll be able to see that for yourself, in these interviews and in yourself. Everyone has a story and everyone's story matters. Let's create space for reflection, empathy, and light in a complicated and often dark world.