Tag Archives: Ze Uncategorized

Taking off

Rethinking our general purpose

As you may have noticed, there are less postings these days. Seems we are being distracted by life, and calling it a hiatus, until summer.

Apart from a rigorous teaching schedule at the start of 2011, the Mind Body Moderate is making a rather extended move to Los Angeles.

While making peace with our own statement that change is something we can always rely on, this doesn’t mean it’s easy.

It would be nice have an ideal sense of place in the world, but for some of us, it remains aloof. Which is better? : To live in St.Louis – home of gooey butter cake and 2 for 1 slabs of pasta, but with fresh air and an overall easy pace for living? Or to be in Los Angeles – land of gyms and healthy fare, but mired in pollution and traffic?

The best guess is somewhere in the middle. And it’s a middle that’s personally parted. So watch out LA. We’ll see your healthy food and raise you some toasted (meaning deep fried) ravioli and that classic Midwestern kindness (masking deeper cynicism). Until then.

There are people who strictly deprive themselves of each and every eatable, drinkable and smokable which has in any way acquired a shady reputation. They pay this price for health. And health is all they get for it. How strange it is. It is like paying out your whole fortune for a cow that has gone dry.
– Mark Twain’s Autobiography

Celebrating Spring, Movement, and Fashion

Spring fever is in the air in Vanessa Bruno’s 2010 Spring Collection video.  It’s a frolicking romantic piece, swelling with lightness that’s oh so French.

Featuring Jane Birkin’s daughter, Lou, whose character in the video celebrates not just the movement of the gorgeous clothes she wears, but the beauty of movement in general, as Spring awakens with new life. It makes me want to stomp in chalk and roll down hills in big dresses.

Here’s to Spring, the French, dreamy fashion, and the beauty of movement!

Do Vampires and the Economy Suck Together?

dracula-bela-lugosiYou’d think it would be pirates, but no, it’s all about romantic monster blood-lust. Vampires and a country sucked dry of money, pair well.

Nosferatu, 1922 – When Germany was dealing with a failing economy and war reparations form the Treaty of Versailles.

Dracula 1931 – Great Depression.

Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Buffy the Vampire Slayer 1992, Anne Rice novels and then Interview with the Vampire in 1994 – The economic recession of the nineties.

Even Shadow of the Vampire coincided with the Internet crash of 2000.

And now, in 2008/9 we have Twilight and New Moon, HBO’s True Blood, and coming soon is the next kid-friendly, yet definitely morbid, flick Cirque du Freak: The Vampire’s Assistant.

The Norwegians set sail on the coffin ship with Let the Right one In. And the Koreans have a 2009 Cannes nod for the vampire priest movie Thirst.

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There will always be exceptions to the rule. Movies that go beyond these limitations. Cult classics, comedies and sci-fi actions like: The Hunger 1983, Once Bitten 1985, Lost Boys 1987, and during the height of an economic upswing we even had Blade, 1998.

However, depression era Vampires tend to be epic and more dramatic than the others, appealing to darkest musings of the general population’s soul.

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So perhaps even the brightest financial minds of Wall Street are retreating to brood in dark corners with some melancholy Robert Smith and the Twilight book series to drain the blood from their brains…

Just a thought….

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UPDATE – Hardwired for Rhythm

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How fortuitous to make mention of the Music Instinct in yesterdays blog. Some of the best interviews in the documentary often came from the mouth and mind of Neurologist Oliver Sacks.

As it happened, Dr. Sacks made an appearance on, of all places, John Stewart’s the Daily Show last night. Glad to know John and I share similar interests…or at least the person who books his guests.

Promoting his Nova special Musical Minds, which airs TONIGHT on PBS. Check your local listings and set your DVR for a mind-blowing exploration on the plasticity of human brain and our instinctual connection to rhythm and music.

(Excerpt from pbs.org)

Can the power of music make the brain come alive? Throughout his career Dr. Oliver Sacks, neurologist and acclaimed author, whose book Awakenings was made into a Oscar-nominated feature film starring Robin Williams and Robert De Niro, has encountered myriad patients who are struggling to cope with debilitating medical conditions. While their ailments vary, many have one thing in common: an appreciation for the therapeutic effects of music. NOVA follows four individuals—two of whom are Sacks’s case studies—and even peers into Sacks’s own brain, to investigate music’s strange, surprising, and still unexplained power over the human mind.


Hardwired for Rhythm

Music is powerful.

We are all born with a certain level of instinct in regards to music, rhythm, dance. It would stand to reason why young children often move to music before they can speak or walk. But why? Scientists are still trying to understand. What they have discovered is the amazing power of music and dance to aid in healing movement, speech, and even memory. It is even possible to change the shape and use of one’s brain with music. The plasticity of the brain, is much more changeable than once believed, regardless of age.

A new documentary premiered on PBS this past weekend on this subject, “The Music Instinct: Science and Song”. Many of the topics, from the unified field theory of physics ,to human cognition and healthcare are explorable on the website. It is a documentary worth checking out. Music is weaved into our everyday lives much more than we realize.

According to research, your brain can create the same endorphin “high” listening to a favorite song, similar in scope to falling in love or taking certain drugs.

If nothing else today, do this for yourself: Crank up your favorite song, let go and dance around a bit. It doesn’t have to be “good”. Just jump around.

Your body and brain will thank you for the release!

If you are seeking new music inspiration,  I recommend checking out the song of the day here.

140.x600.dance.festival.open…And don’t forget to let go!