Virtual Victrola

...my internal iPod...

It annoys my spouse, I'm sure, and perhaps anyone else who's close enough to me to notice. I suppose I just Jones out once in a while, expressionless, maybe smiling. Sometimes I'm sure I hum...

Here's the thing. I always have music going in my head.

It's not like a voice in my head (though there are vocalists, so I guess...). It's not like I'm making things up, though I can take a tune, even a very complicated one, and twist and turn it around to recombobulate it, change the syncopation or the dynamics or the words or the instruments or...you get the idea.

At times I can get just a snippet of a tune I know, then I'm good for hours. Unlike my brother, the Rainman, I cannot tell you about artists, albums, eras--he can accurately recount all that for you. I cannot always recall lyrics with any shade of assurance. I can, most of the time, pull enough of a tune out that it keeps me occupied for a long while.

This is complicated by Jingles, which have more power over me than any other form of advertising, obviously. I can hear a Jingle once, and then be stuck with it all day. I can "accidentally" hear some song over a store's speakers, even elevator music, then find myself replaying it over and over, like it or not. I have to consciously rethink the tunes, change the mental playlist consciously, to over-ride the tune of the moment.

My music is also complicated by radio/channel changing friends/family. It hearkens back to Max Headroom's BlipVert issue. If someone is scanning through channels and I get just a clip of this, then that, then the other--eeesh. I may end up with a mash-up of it all going in my head. I can sometimes pick which one gets pulled to the front, or I can sometimes shut them all out with something more "popular" or well-known in my head, but other times I am simply overwhelmed.

Fortunately, that does not happen often. If I can attune myself to something else when the channel flipping is happening, then I'm okay.

I actually enjoy this bizarre "gift" of mine, most of the time. It allows me to wile away the hours and never be without a song in my heart. I worry, however, about getting older and losing more control of my head. I worry that songs may crowd out essentials (unless, perhaps, there is nothing more essential than a song in one's heart?). I agonize that I may get stuck on a Jingle, indefinitely. I wonder, more and more, if it's obvious to others that I'm listening to some soundtrack at the same time they are talking to me, that I'm having to consciously attend to them or let them be drown out my my music.

I worry, perhaps most of all, that I'm alone in this whole musical madness.