February 23rd, 2009 Newsletter

Monday, February 23, 2009

February 23rd, 2009 Newsletter




Common Rotation and The Dust Bowl Cavaliers
Saturday, February, 28th 2009
The Hotel Cafe
1623 1/2 N. Cahuenga Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90028
10:00pm



A Job is a Thing You Can Get Fired From

Doris Kearns Goodwin grew up in Rockville Centre, Long Island, around the corner from The Prime Cuts Music Emporium, where my three brothers and I all worked in some capacity during our respective childhoods. As a graduate student at Harvard University she took a seminar with the great German psychologist Erik Erikson. She recently shared, with an audience at The TED Conference, the most important lesson he taught her. It was that the richest and fullest lives attempt to achieve an inner balance between three realms: work, play and love. That to pursue one realm at the disregard to the others is to open oneself to ultimate sadness at an older age. But to pursue all three with equal dedication is to make possible a life filled with achievement and serenity.

Let's put it another way. At the very same conference last year, Ben Zander said that there is no such thing as 'tone deaf.' If you can hear the gears in you car shift or if you can tell the difference between a Long Island and a Texas accent then you can sing. If you can tell what mood your mother is in from the sound of her voice, if you can hear how high in pitch your friends voice gets when he is talking on the phone to his girlfriend, then surely you can carry a tune. He spoke of smiling eyes and of judging your worth by how many are around you.

On Saturday, February 28th, at The Hotel Café in Hollywood, California, Common Rotation and The Dust Bowl Cavaliers will perform an experiment. Except it's not really an experiment when you know the outcome. The result is as inevitable as it is unavoidable. Together as a SuperGroup with Super Ears making Super Sounds, we will all be the conductor. It's okay if you're shy. The conductor doesn't have to make a sound even though he can. He depends, for his power, on his ability to make other people powerful. To awaken possibility in other people.

"Who are we being?" Ben Zander asks, "Who am I being?" Together, we will all work, we will all play and we will all love. We are all responsible. If we sink, everyone goes down with the ship. But if we sail, the sea will be ours. Along with the ocean of smiling eyes around us.