When I was in college I often wondered how it was possible that someone who could memorize dozens of lines of song lyrics on only a few hearings could not memorize the relevant dates of paintings in art history or anything having to do with physics.
To this day, song lyrics still come easily and much of my day has a soundtrack in the moments when I'm not directly engaged in conversation or specific activity. There's always a song in my head as I walk from the train station to my office, or when I'm in the car by myself, and that ever active brain seems to call up the words that mirror what's pre-occupying me at any given moment, or an image in front of me, and spill out those thoughts in the form of a showtune, standard or folksong of one sort or another.
There's been a lot of Joni Mitchell lately, mixed in with a healthy dose of Coope, Boyes & Simpson, and some Irene Kral for sides.
Does this happen to you? What's on your soundtrack these days?
4 comments:
Dance tunes mostly. And when I haven't danced for 3 weeks or more, it gets incessant! The current tune is a jig that I don't remember the name of.
For songs, they're triggered by a feeling or by a WORD, that then pulls lyrics with the same word up out of the depths. Since I rarely sing or listen to music anymore, they tend to be very out-of-date. It always surprises me how many lyrics with tunes reside in the database of my small brain.
Jenny
All. The. Time. Mostly wordless these days, often just snippets of folk tunes, even, not even the whole thing, as some phrase or other catches on the needle of the phonograph of my mind... This morning I've gone through an English dance tune (one of the early Playford types, which one?), a nameless-to-me Anglo-American reel probably leftover from my noodling at tunes for Scottish Weekend last night, and part of a nyckelharpa tune by Olof Johansson. Which reminds me, I wanted to put on a different nyckelharpa CD--maybe it will drive out the fragment.
I'm afraid that the current one is Sean Paul's "Get Busy" (Shake that thing, Miss kella kella shake that thing miss annabella..sexy lady got to get it on, got to get it on, etc. etc. etc.) because it's on my gym dance mix, and it was playing when I went dancing with folks the other night at a local nightclub. In fact it creates such thing-shaking enthusiasm that I just almost blacked out after getting off the arc trainer. Not good. Another favorite is the techno version of Ibrahim Tatlises's "Agri Dagi" (Mt. Ararat), for the same reason. I am not actually recommending either of these songs--although I do have a soft spot for Ibo--but they get stuck in your head,you know? And then you can't get them to go away no matter how annoying they are...
--SA
Most mornings as I wait for the subway I have one of the following in my head: "Something's Coming" from West Side Story ("Could it be?/Yes it could!/Something's coming/something good/if I can wait...") or my own variation of Suzanne Vega's "Tom's Diner" ("I am standing on the platform/I am waiting for the C train/and it doesn't seem to notice/I'm already running late")
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