Valerie Day Sings

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)