Just click on the arrow below to see some of the images from Brain Chemistry For Lovers created by Jim Blashfield.
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My son Malcolm thinks I’ve become a science nerd. He teases me because I can’t stop reading books about the brain and I talk about neuroscience all the time. But I can’t help it! Because of the research I’ve done for the Brain Chemistry For Lovers show, I’ve fallen down the rabbit hole into the rapidly evolving world of neuroscience.
And what a world it is! Because of the latest advances in brain scanning technology, scientists can now look inside the brain and get a more complete picture of who we are and what makes us tick. Discoveries are being made every day that help to answer some of the questions that we humans have been asking for centuries. Questions like…
Who are we? Why are we the same yet different? Is it nature or nurture that ultimately shapes us as humans? And then there are the more pressing questions like….why doesn’t he ever put the toilet seat down? Why does she always nag about the dishes? and…why oh why can’t he find stuff in the refrigerator when it’s staring him in the face?
Ok - maybe those last few questions aren’t exactly earth shattering, but they do end up leading us to THE all encompassing question…what makes women and men so different from each other?
One book that helped to answer some of those questions for me (and that I still think about when faced with that open toilet seat) is called:
The Female Brain
by Louann Brizendine, M.D.
Peace On Earth 2009 (photo by Tasha Miller)
Happy Holidays and best wishes for a New Year filled with Peace, Love and Hope…..
A couple of weeks ago, Darrell Grant and I took Brain Chemistry For Lovers to Wilf’s for a preview show. We were joined for the first time by the “Brain Chemistry Band” - the professors of jazz - Kevin Deitz on bass, Gary Hobbs on drums, and Mike Horsfall on vibes. Also appearing for the first time was the video part of the show created by filmmaker Jim Blashfield. In it, our imaginary lovers, Alice and Bob, come to life, and our “science guy” (and real life science advisor for the script), Dr. Larry Sherman, converses with us through the miracle of modern technology about the science of Romantic Love.
I was insanely nervous. Darrell and I had been “workshopping” the show for a little over a year at Wilf’s - reading from the latest version of the script - trying out new songs or a new order of existing songs. We felt like this was the perfect setting to try out the video, launch the band, and to make an attempt at doing the show from memory. Before we knew it, our little home turf “preview” (read rehearsal in front of live audience) had morphed into a performance in front of OPB’s Art Beat crew, VH1 (who had come to town to videotape an interview with John and I about NU SHOOZ for a show to air March 09), and Marty Hughley from the Oregonian. Continue reading ‘Brain Chemistry For Lovers - the Oregonian Review’
Of all the books I have read while doing research for the Brain Chemistry For Lovers show, my absolute hands down favorite is “A General Theory of Love” by Thomas Lewis, M.D., Fari Amini, M.D., and Richard Lannon, M.D. I don’t know how these three M.D.’s managed it, but somehow they were able to collaborate and come up with a book that turns scientific prose into poetry.
Here’s a paragraph from the forward:
“From birth to death, love is not just the focus of human experience but also the life force of the mind, determining our moods, stabilizing our bodily rhythms, and changing the structure of our brains. The body’s physiology ensures that relationships determine and fix our identities. Love makes us who we are, and who we can become. In these pages we explain how and why this is so.”
Continue reading ‘“A General Theory of Love”’
Creating the Brain Chemistry For Lovers show continued….
So….where to begin? I had the idea for the show, now I needed to get busy and do some research. I began by going back to the National Geographic article that started it all to see if it would give me some leads.
The author, Lauren Slater, had interviewed an anthropologist named Helen Fisher. The “doyenne of desire” as Lauren calls her, has spent a great deal of her career studying and writing books about Romantic Love. In Dr. Fisher’s most recent book “Why We Love: The Nature and Chemistry of Romantic Love”, she writes about an experiment that she and her colleagues performed using an fMRI (or functional magnetic resonance imaging machine – the same type of machine that doctors use to look inside the brain to diagnose disease) to take a look at the brain in love.
Back in 2006 I found an article in National Geographic Magazine written by Lauren Slater about the neuroscience of love. She begins by writing “In the Western world we have for centuries concocted poems and stories and plays about the cycles of love, the way it morphs and changes over time, the way passion grabs us by our flung-back throats and then leaves us for something saner.” I thought to myself as I was reading that we have been writing SONGS about love for centuries as well.
The article continues….”We have relied on stories to explain the complexities of love, tales of jealous gods and arrows. Now, however, these stories—so much a part of every civilization—may be changing as science steps in to explain what we have always felt to be myth, to be magic. For the first time, new research has begun to illuminate where love lies in the brain, the particulars of its chemical components.”
As I read this, a little light bulb went on in my head. What a great idea for a show! You could take the different stages of love that we humans go through, show what’s happening in the brain in each stage, and then connect the audience to the feelings they experience in these stages through some of the greatest love songs ever written….and that’s how “Brain Chemistry For Lovers” began.
Being an optimistic pessimist who for some reason ends up believing that if you can dream it you can do it, I started. First, more research was required….this is always the fun part for me!
(to be continued)
(above photo by Pablo Corral Vega)
Of course, there would be no me without that special sperm to meet up with that special egg McMuffin. The other half of me is my dad - Dr. F.D. Day. Also possessing an amazing voice, he is the left brain to my mother’s right. In the Myers Briggs Personality Test, my father is an ISTJ - exactly opposite of my mother’s ENFP. They divorced in 1978. I have to say I saw it coming from a mile away. They are SO different. But at one time, they were very much in love. They met, got married, and had me. And I am grateful for both of their perspectives, as that right brain left brain split wove itself together and made me who I am - an INFJ!
One of the projects I’m working on is called BRAIN CHEMISTRY FOR LOVERS. I am more excited about this show than almost anything I’ve ever done (except for the NU SHOOZ Orchestra project that I’m working on concurrently - but more about that later). There is a lot of stuff to tell, but I think that without the influence of my parents - my father’s more clinical mind and my mother’s more artistic temperament, neither I or this project would have been born.
For a really great explanation of right brain/left brain functioning, check out this TED Lecture given by Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor….
This is my first attempt at blogging. Yes, my very first one. It’s an interesting thing this blogging world and I’m actually looking forward to being a part of it. Problem is, I have so many thoughts to share, I have no idea where to start. So I thought I’d start at the very beginning….no, not the embryo stage of me, but the singer to be stage of me. Well I guess in my case that is the embryo stage!
You see, once upon a time, a medical student met an opera singer in Portland OR. They fell in love and had me. Butt first I came into the world (I was a breech baby). My mom sang all the time when I was in utero. My theory is that I didn’t know that there would be lovely sounds outside the womb too, so I was a little hesitant to come out. Turns out the loverly sounds continued outside of that warm wonderful womb. Not only did my mother sing, but my father did too! And such beautiful music they made together too….
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