Songs In My Head

It's one of those phenomena that makes me wonder about what goes on inside our brains when left unattended. Let's call it the "mental jukebox". Surely this is something that everyone experiences.  It really can't just be me ... really, it can't.

I would swear that there is a jukebox in my mind - and it seems there are times that I have absolutely no control over it. Before you think that I have lost my mind, let me explain.

I have always been a music lover. More often than not, there is some kind of tune, melody, guitar riff, or song running through my head. I know for certain that the roots of this go back a long time. I can remember it being a bit of a joke with my friends in high school. When they were all busy singing the lyrics to a lame '80s tune, I was probably recollecting the guitar solo - note for note.

You have to admit, there was a lot of good rock music in the '70s and '80s ... with a lot of great guitar riffs!! I could whistle them note for note - I know, strange skill indeed. But cut me some slack - it was high school (ok ok I can still do that to this day, but I digress).

This extended into my days of song writing and guitar playing. I can remember times when I just had to sit down and pick up the guitar to get some riff or chord structure that was floating around in the back of my head committed to audio. I just wanted to catch it before it was lost in the day's thoughts or todo list. There were many late nights translating those mental arpeggios to audio.

This evolved into what I now experience - the jukebox that I wake up with first thing in the morning. I would fully understand it if I woke up singing something that I'd been singing the day before ... or perhaps something that I even truly enjoyed back in my college days. But there are days when, somehow, some piece of music buries itself in my subliminal mind. Every so often, it's a song from yesteryear, something that is memorable.Recently, I even had a day when I woke up humming a song that I'd written more than 20 years ago - but at least that one I can explain as I was resurrecting it for use in a podcast just days earlier!

Music can have such a strong relationship to some of our deepest memories. I find it fascinating how hearing a song from year's past can take you right back to yesteryear, right back to a moment or an event or something simply memorable, personal, emotional.

But then there are times when, well, somehow, someway, some piece of drivel has managed to bury itself deep in my neuronal structure. Argh. How the ?%$#$ did a Brittny Spears song end up there? Or Kanye West? They don't reside on my iPod, nor in my car CD player. And nowadays, I certainly don't listen to much Top 40 radio. So how on earth do I explain waking up to "womanizer womanizer womanizer" or "gold digger" going through my head? Help me - please!

I really need to figure out who puts that jukebox on overnight. If those are the songs making an appearance these days, the jukebox operator must be one evil spirit!

But then I will have a morning when I wake up with the strains of Led Zeppelin resonating deep in my mind - and I know that everything is just fine, indeed - and the universe is in harmony once again.