I'm sure this is true for all of us. You know what I mean. You are walking along, driving along, riding a horse, using a pogo stick on Bay St, and suddenly there is this song in your head. You weren't necessarily thinking of the song but bang, there it is.
Where the hell did that come from?
Sometimes it's easy to explain. Perhaps you heard the song yesterday, or last week; on the radio or as the soundtrack of some show you're watching or even a TV commercial. Something catchy, rhythmic, simple, glued to the sticky stuff on the inside of your brain along with the face of the actor whose name you never quite recall and the smell of your best friend's Dodge Coronet in high school Given a little time you can identify the music and its origin
We know that there is a causal connection between music and memory but it's usually the music that inspires the memory. That's nostalgia, a piece of art that brings you back to some very specific event of the past, or even the emotional impact of that event. To this day when I listen to CCR's Run Through the Jungle I remember that night huddled in a foxhole in the rain at Khe Sanh as Charlie pelted us all through the night ... ok, that's not my memory but it's probably somebody's
Sometimes it even works the other way around. You think of some specific event from your past and it brings some piece of music to your mind. When I think of a powwow I attended in The Pas Manitoba in 1978 I instantly hear the chorus of Can't You See by The Marshall Tucker Band in my head It was playing on a portable cassette deck as we sat around a bonfire so high and so hot we could barely feel the rain that was pouring down from the northern prairie sky. It brings back the heat of that fire and the smell of the rain and the taste of Club Ale drank out of brown glass stubby bottles.
This all memory of course. Connections. Associations
But how do you explain those tunes that seem to bubble up into your brain and you can't make the connection to where that song came from, there is no strong association attached to it. It comes down to how much you can actually remember, and how much of that you can actually recall
There is something called "working memory" which essentially is the amount of stored information that we can manage and manipulate. It is the part of our short term memory that we can currently access. Phone numbers for example, or names of people who you've recently met. Some studies suggest that the working memory can only process and work with four such memories at a time
I think I can do about one and a half. But we all know that I ain't normal
Working memories are short term. That's their function. It's why it may take a few listens to remember a song's lyrics properly. Working memory is why "young girls they do get wooly" for instance. Reinforcement, or reputation, is how long-term memories are created. Hear that song enough, you'll finally be able to recall the lyrics
Some studies suggest that we are better at long-storing (yeh I just made up that term, deal with it) lyrics than melody. At first I found that surprising. I thought that our brains may be partial to remembering rhythm and they are, but we are much more adept and long-storing lyrics.
Association again, and repitition
So the songs that just seem to pop into your head without an association, perhaps it's because we remember the tune but not the event/memory from which the song comes. Fair enough
But I think, I feel, that I actually have music playing in my mind all the time and like that radio station, I just tune into it from time to time. I have a tendency to bing play songs and albums. I connect with some songs so strongly that I play them over and over and over
We've established that I'm annoying, right?
I think Red Rider's early album Neruda is constantly playing in my head. I first bought it on cassette tape and I literally wore that damn thing. I almost wore out the CD. At any given time lyrics from Napoleon Sheds His Skin can weave their way into my thoughts at any given time
The streets are covered in chalk
The shops are boarded up
The bodies are carried down from the square
He begins to wonder
If it always was this hot
Or is it just the clothes
That he now wears
Heady stuff and that song, the entire album, had a great affect on my when I first listened to it back in the 80's. I don't have a particular association to go with the music, no powerful single memory. It was just a work of art that made me look at my own art differently, in a new way. It's important to me I suppose
Maybe that's it. Music is important. It's important to culture, to history but more significantly it's important to us, to our lives. Whether it helps us recall in crystal detail some scene from our past or whether it has helped us grow as humans, music is important. A part of our lives
So the music is there. In there somewhere. All the time. I don't want to think about that too much, I really don't need to know why. I just need to know that the music will always be there. And when I want it, when I need it, I can just turn it up
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