The Song Remains The Same

            Ever get a song stuck in your head?

            Ever get a song that you loathe stuck in your head?

            Why the hell I woke up Thursday morning singing “Karma Chameleon” is a cruel mystery to me. I never liked like song, and I did not ever think that Culture Club or the freak Boy George were remotely pleasing….so I don’t know why I would even be familiar with the words! And honestly, to wake up from what I thought was a restful sleep with that horrible tune circulating in my brain? Quite upsetting. What the heck was I dreaming about? The 80”s? Haven’t I had enough of that bizarre era?

            I tried to shake it…(the tune and the image of that weirdo) from my head, but the more I tried to not think about it, the more I found that I actually was thinking about it. So then I had the groovy idea that if I started concentrating on another song, the obnoxious and tedious tune that was seemingly on a loop in my brain, would fade into the background. I tried, “You are my Sunshine”…as for some strange reason it was the first one that surfaced……“You Are My Sunshine”? A song from the 1940’s? I don’t even think there was a drum track on that tune. How would that trump the insidious 80’s noise? (Maybe it was the first song I ever learned and so during my conscious retrieval of music, my brain organized all songs, and that one took a priority position…sound reasonable?) In any case, as sweet a song as it is, chirping ♪“you make me happy when skies are grey….”♪ did nothing to lessen my pain and “Karma Chameleon” kept coming back.

            ♪“…you come and go…you come and goooo-o…”♪

            Next, I thought singing out loud might purge the nuisance from my system, so at 6:15 a.m., while walking down the hall, I crooned ♪“Every day is like survival…..You’re my lover, not my r-i-val.”♪ That didn’t work…and just about made me sick, so I started doing the Boy George dance thing too, supposing that a full exorcism might require some physical pain as well, in order to be effective. Imagine me in am oversized wrinkled housecoat with my hair askew, shuffling down the dark hallway singing a really dreadful song….off tune. Not pretty. Thank god I was the only one up at that time.

            After a cup of coffee and getting the kids to the bus, my brain was still direct-wired to 1983, so after seriously thinking that a lobotomy might be the only solution to my problem, I went back to bed with the thought that I might be able to reboot if I could only disconnect… Able to endure only a few more minutes of hell however, I got up with new resolve and did what anyone else would have done in this horrible and frustrating situation: I Googled it. 114,000,000 results popped up for ‘how to get a song out of your head’…….so I started at the top. One article told me to do exactly what I had already done (sing out loud, sign another song), one told me to drink a bunch of water (think they got mixed up with hiccups), and one told me that I probably had some spiritual connection to the song, singer, or time in which the song was originally heard, and that I should acknowledge the connection and meditate. Do people actually believe that stuff? Was that a joke? They were obviously not talking about me. Just in case, I contemplated stabbing an ice pick into my frontal lobe….

            Friday morning, I woke up with Johnny Cash’s “Ring of Fire” monopolizing my mind. Much better! That tune I gladly welcomed with enthusiasm and was voluntarily and happily dancing and singing in the kitchen while getting my son ready for school. At one point, he even joined in and we paraded down the hall singing our duet…on our way to the car…. Today would be a good day, I thought, as I practiced my best low Johnny Cash voice. Thank god my brain got it right that time.

            So, how do these songs get stuck in our heads…especially the ones we wake up with? Or is it only me?! Does anyone else wake up beleaguered by a song? Do I have a Crooning Condition? A Ditty Disorder? A Melody Malady?

            These music mind moments have been happening to me since I was a child, and although they didn’t happen all that frequently, on the occasions they did, I used to think it was pretty cool. At first I thought it was my brain’s way of setting the tone of the day, and I’d go along with it - articulating the selected number as long as it was circulating, but as I got older and more inquisitive, I began to search for rationalizations, explanations and solutions for my tuneful troubles.

            When I had braces on my teeth, I adopted the supposition that the radio could somehow be intercepted by the metal in my mouth, the waves conducted through the wires and songs played from within. Several authorities denied the validity of that belief, but how else would a naive and gullible teenager explain music in her brain as she woke up? I thought that maybe the radio had played that song and it stayed in my head because it originally was in my head…. I remember opening my mouth near my friend’s ear and asking her if she could hear it too. Bending close, and trying not to breathe for fear that the sound of my breath would mute the presumed station; I leaned forward and opened my mouth wide. After about five attempts of standing just centimeters away from her ear with my jaw extended to the maximum, we abandoned the experiment, as she heard nothing but the gurgling sounds in the back of my throat, and my jaw ached terribly. Only a certain degree of torture a person can tolerate. So much for that theory.

            My next ridiculous hypothesis came during my ‘occult’ phase (didn’t everyone have one?), when I believed that hearing music in my head meant dead people were trying to contact me: Dead people that apparently had a message to relay in songs such as “Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head” and “Every Breath You Take” (?). I guess I thought that the veil between worlds must be thinnest when there was music streaming…providing a seamless avenue in which different planes could connect. Whoa. Embarrassing phase.

            More recent song speculation came during the Bush administration when I mulled over the scary possibility that the government was manipulating my thoughts….. It made sense at the time, with the increase in constitutional-breaking and freedom-bashing surveillance operations….and the new and unusual beeping noises on my phone. Of course the fact that no one in my family suppressed their views of disgust and contempt regarding our pathetic leaders…and that the immoral and corrupt Vice President lived just down the street, also made me a little wary. But when songs like “Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue” filled my head, my suspicions grew….until one day I woke up singing Sam Cooke’s “What a Wonderful World”

           

            ♪“Don't know much about history

            Don't know much biology

            Don't know much about a science book

            Don't know much about the French I took” ♪

and I knew it must be ‘W’ talking to me…

            Besides, who’s to say that the “Matrix” type of movies weren’t based on some privileged and hidden ‘top secret’ facts? Even in the 1800’s Lord Byron acknowledged and understood “….truth is always strange; stranger than fiction.”

            So what about now? What about my latest melody mania? I haven’t a clue…and I’m tired of trying to figure it out. Someone told me that the phenomenon is called ‘earworms’ and it affects everyone to some degree or another. Apparently it’s even propelled some people to musical stardom…simply because they couldn’t get the tune out of their head and started composing. So, did Mozart have earworms? John Lennon? Mick Jagger? Is this a sign of a new vocation for me? Regardless, the thought of worms in my head, whether parasites or not, is a little unsettling. On the other hand…..maybe I should have paid more attention to the Doobie Brother’s when they sang ♪“Oh, oh…listen to the music…” ♪. Maybe my calling is something entirely different.....

           Just in case, I'll be all ears.

           Stay tuned.