Posted by Penelope on August 10, 2003, at 18:05:36
In reply to Re: can't stop the music, posted by Craig Allen on August 9, 2003, at 11:19:55
Craig and Kacy,
Thank-you for your responses. I'm very interested in hearing the experiences of others. Maybe we can reduce this all to some common demonimators. I see that many of the earlier posters on this subject mention they are also suffering from depression. Also many have mentioned they are taking meds for this or other complaints. Craig, are you taking any meds? Kacy, are you? And Kacy, you didn't mention depression. In your case is this a factor?
Craig, I know what you mean by a *loop*. My musicians frequently get stuck in a loop--a single song or just a refrain from a song that plays over and over and over sometimes for hours. Interestingly, however, this morning they were stuck in a loop from the hymn *Softly and Tenderly*, but they started taking off on it--like a jazz improvisation. They also added instruments and did rearrangements. As each loop repeated it got quite complex and very beautiful. I found myself just sitting and listening to it. I wondered what a church congregation would think to hear their beloved hymn being operated on to sound like a jazz jam session! Also they have added a piccolo to *America the Beautiful*, and it is delightful: a complex running part that plays and trills behind the melody throughout the song. These interludes of creativity are rare, however. Most of the music I hear is repetitive and boring. I find myself wishing they would just add to their repertoir.
Kacy, I was intrigued by your electrical equipment connection. When I first started hearing music I was at my PC, which is in a room that els with my kitchen. In this room is an extra refrigerator--an old one that makes quite a lot of noise. I am in the process of moving, and the only thing left in that room at that time was my PC workstation and that fridge. Also, the TV in the kitchen, which was almost always on, has been moved, so it is unusually quiet in that part of the house. I noticed that some of the humming that is done by the singers in my group seemed to resonate with the hum of that fridge. I have now cleaned out and disconnected the fridge, but it hasn't stopped the music. I have a vague notion, however, that somehow a combination of the almost empty house, the absent TV sounds, the hum of the fridge and the relative quiet when I am at my PC compared to the sensory input that was always there before have somehow triggered the music.
Another thought on the electrical theme: Many years ago I was keeping a parrot named Scratch for some friends who took an extended vacation in Alaska. They told me he used to talk quite a lot, but since they had their first child--who was then six--he had not talked at all.
One day while I was vacuuming in a room next to the room where Scratch resided, I could hear a hoarse voice speaking some words. I would turn the vacuum cleaner off, and the voice would abruptly stop. I would restart it, and the voice would resume. I finally made a connnection with the bird, so I left the vacuum on and went into the room where he was. Surely enough, Scratch was speaking. As the days went on, he continued to talk but only when the vacuum cleaner was on. But he was speaking more clearly now and putting words into phrases, and I started writing them down. When my friends called to tell me their return travel plans, I read them the list I had made. They were utterly amazed--they were all phrases Scratch had spoken in the past. By the time they got home, he had also learned some new ones from us and could mimic my voice and my husband's, and he started speaking spontaneously, without the assistance of the vacuum. I offer all this as an aside for whomever might be able to make sense of it. Something about the pitch of the vacuum cleaner inspired Scratch to remember and articulate his former vocabulary and even enabled him to learn new stuff. Also, parrots typically have a limited repertoir of phrases that they repeat endlessly and meaninglessly. Hmmmmm.... Have our tormented brains turned us into parrot heads?
poster:Penelope
thread:1295
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20030807/msgs/249871.html