Art is never finished, only abandoned. – Leonardo da Vinci
Greetings!
Feeling a bit dysregulated?
Neuroscience Says Music Is an Emotion Regulation Machine. Here’s What to Play for Happiness, Productivity, or Deep Thinking: Neuroscience shows music has big effects on our productivity, performance, and state of mind. Use that to your advantage.
What kind of headspace do you want to be in today?
Focused and productive as you tick through routine to-do list items?
Dreamy and creative? Happy and social? Contemplative? Analytical?
Whatever mood you’re aiming for, neuroscience says music can help.
The purpose of life is to give it away.”- Pablo Picasso
Want some live music, in an arts and culture context, with 250 featured artists, 4 live music stages, interactive art and free trolly tickets for the first 3,000 that use their phones to sign up?
Yes, Kids and Dogs will have a blast too…
Its Mission Fed ArtWalk 2025!
17 years of us serving as title sponsors for the largest arts and longest running (41 years) arts experience on the West Coast, this coming weekend Sat April 26 and Sun April 27th in Little Italy. Come enjoy a day immersed in art, and if you are yearning for some live music, join us on Saturday April 26th from 3:30 to 4:30p as Strange Crew plays on the Main Stage in the Piazza della Famiglia followed by my son Arman’s band Tone Deaf from 5-6p, with me sitting in on percussion on both sets.
And here is a CloudCast media podcast with Jacob from ArtWalk and me talking about the Mission Fed ArtWalk experience and its importance for San Diego:
The ArtWalk San Diego interview “Spotlight on the Community” Show:
Why it’s time to rethink what happiness really means: Explaining exactly what’s going on in our brains when we experience joy or pleasure remains frustratingly out of reach this year once again saw the publication of the annual World Happiness Report. The latest international rankings put Finland at number one and several other Nordic countries dominating the top 10.
Jeneba Kanneh-Mason stuns with blistering take on Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody No.2 A masterpiece of 19th-century piano repertoire, forever linked with the joy of Tom and Jerry…
Here is my first foray, conducting this very same piece as an elementary school kid in Bombay, India at around age 11:
Cathedral School, Bombay, India
Elbow turn Manchester crowd into 23,500-strong choir in spine-tingling harmony: The most life-affirming sound you’ll ever hear: a crowd of thousands of music lovers, lifting their voices in glorious harmony.
Steven Tyler’s Unusual Response To A Disabled Fan Went Viral – Here’s What He Said: Anthony Yorfido, a young man from Niagara Falls, ran into Steven Tyler, the frontman of Aerosmith. What began as a chance encounter at a medical supplies store soon became a moment that would change Anthony’s life forever. Read on to see what amazing things Tyler did for this kind fan.
Why Do We Sing? New Analysis of Folk Songs Finds Similarities around the World: Across the globe, singing traditions are vast and varied. Their commonalities may help explain how music evolved
Dance and percussion group puts on a show for travelers at San Diego International Airport: If you’re headed out of San Diego International Airport over the next week, you may encounter some unexpected sights and sounds that could bring your travel experience to life in a whole new way.
Believe it or not, I turn 64 on 3/29 (today) so I am considering the 3/30 show my “birthday show”, whether the band likes it or not, and for my birthday I want to make memories, doing what I love with those I love. 😊
If you are free, swing by for some classic jams with some spring frivolity and camaraderie!
You can reserve tables at Coomber’s if you are so inclined, call (760) 231-8022 for more info…
More gigs later in the month with both
Drivin the Bus and Strange Crew– (Phil’s birthday bash) and deets to follow.
No Speciesism-
Crows Perform Yet Another Skill Once Thought Distinctively Human Crows are some of the smartest creatures in the animal kingdom. They are capable of making rule-guided decisions and of creating and using tools. They also appear to show an innate sense of what numbers are. Researchers now report that these clever birds are able to understand recursion—the process of embedding structures in other, similar structures—which was long thought to be a uniquely human ability.
These mega-smart crows are cleaning cigarette butts off city streets — and saving millions of dollars in the process: Cigarette butts alone make up a whopping 62% of all street litter in Sweden. You’ve heard of cleanup crews, but what about … cleanup crows? As part of a new anti-litter initiative, the Swedish city of Södertälje is using some fine-feathered friends to help clean cigarette butts off of its streets. The startup behind the mass crow-bilization is called Corvid Cleaning, in honor of the crow family’s scientific name, Corvidae.
We finally know why live music makes us so emotional: Hearing live music tugs at our heartstrings more than a recording, probably because it increases activity in an emotion-processing region in our brain
Filmmaker Bao Nguyen on His Triumphant ‘The Greatest Night in Pop’ We asked, “The Greatest Night in Pop” director Bao Nguyen everything you would want to know about “We are the World.”
Classical musicians got stuck in traffic with their instruments, and there was only one thing to do: A blocked motorway becomes a concert hall, as a classical violinist and musician friends take out their instruments to help entertain stationary drivers.
Over the next couple of weeks, I am going to try a digital detox, so I will catch you on the flip side.
Meanwhile do know you are enough, beware of compassion fatigue, enjoy the poem and humor, and consider unsubscribing from everything that doesn’t feed your soul.
Joy is non-negotiable!
Love,
Neville
“Enough” by Andrea Gibson:
Last night I painted a purple tree on my bedroom wall
I woke up this morning in a pile of leaves
The color of a million different faces
Thinking of that hand
That planted the seed
Of the family tree
That grew us all
And how each one of us
Will one day fall back to the ground
This morning
I was listening to my heart pound
Knowing with every single beat
That a thousand other hearts
Were falling asleep forever
On a day they never thought they would
And I know there are tribes of aborigines
That decide how and when they’ll die
After a hundred years or so
They walk into the desert alone
Offer up their breath
And within two minutes
Soar into a death
As beautiful as their life
And I was thinking I
Will probably never be enlightened enough
To decide how I want to die
So this morning
I decided how I want to live
What I want to give
What kind of song I want to sing
Now I’m no longer
Looking at my days like they’re a cup
Calling them half empty or half full
When they’ve always been enough
They’ll always be enough
To fill me up
If I stop thinking so much
And start drinking them up
Until I get so drunk and high on my days
I’ll be walking up to strangers and saying things like
“Hey, I know Jesus was born in a manger
But I woke at dawn today
To watch the earth’s horizon
Give birth to true rising sun of God
And I can’t stop singing hallelujah”
Can you believe we’re here?
Can you believe there are gods somewhere praying to us?
I want to be that nut on a bus
Who’s really a prophet
Telling everybody
“Smoking is bad
Stop it
You might be an opera singer some day
And how are you gonna hit the high notes?”
I wanna live like those high notes
That rise from the throats of old ladies
When they see little babies
Riding in shopping carts
I wanna start somebody’s heart like that
Taking ninety years back
So you’ll have sworn
You weren’t born
Until you saw me
Planting roses
In all the sidewalk cracks
So when you trip
You’ll fall in love
With someone you thought you hated
And now look at what that love has created
Look
There’s a sky
On her faded blue jeans
With a flock of birds
About to fly to my words
And my next line’s
Gonna rhyme with her eyes
And she’ll wink
And I’ll think I’m as beautiful as him
I wanna live my life
Like it’s a little league game
I don’t care if I win
Just wanna watch some little girl
Get her very first hit
Watch her father cheer so hard
He spills his beer
And decides to quit
I wanna split some woman’s
Tired eyes open
Wake her with her own sunrise
So she knows
There’s reason to be hoping
She’ll say
“There are stingers in my heart
But I’m sure that I’m a queen”
And that night
She’ll vow to swarm
Until every angry car horn
Is reborn a song
Of let there be light
Every angry war cry reborn
A song of let there be life
I wanna build the timid teenage boy
A microphone that will
Echo his rhymes
The same way
They echo in his shower
When he’s home alone
I wanna write poems
In the tone
Of your mother’s eyes
When she whispered your name
For the very first time
Poems that will make you go home
Pick up the phone
And call her
While I call mine to say
“You know those lines
On the kitchen wall
Where I grew
Taller and taller and taller
Put a couple more there won’t you?
Cause I’m growing up here”
No longer looking at my days
Like they’re a cup
Calling them enough
From now on
They’ll be overflowing
Since now I’m knowing
It’s up to me
To fill them up
The big idea: is compassion fatigue real? Can we really maintain our levels of empathy in the face of an increasingly brutal news cycle?
Unsubcribe from everything to start controlling the tech in your life:
Does the number of unread messages in your inbox leave you lightheaded? Do your thumbs ache from tiny-keyboard typing? Have you forgotten what your real-life friends look like without an Instagram filter? It’s time for an intervention:
Happy Soul Food Friday! 