I’m thinkin’ that I may have worms.
Now, now, you can stop planning to boil the cushions on the sofa where I last sat at your house. I’m talking about “earworms”, you know, those tunes that get stuck in your brain and won’t go away, even if you don’t really like the music, it’s just there and repeating, and repeating and,….you get the idea. Also referred to as “brainworms’, “sticky music” (Does that one create an interesting picture in the brain or what?), “stuck song syndrome”, or (This one is ‘science-speak’) IMI (Involuntary Musical Imagery)–NOT palinacousis, which is caused by damage to the temporal lobe of the brain and connected to auditory hallucinations…NOT that, just some tune that becomes a semi-permanent soundtrack in your head, until it about drives you nuts. Then it disappears, only to be replaced by another little ditty which is equally annoying.
And why do I think that I am thus afflicted? Because when I am walking around town, early or late, leisurely or “hell-bent for leather” to get someplace, I find myself repeating these fragments over and over, without rhyme or reason–sometimes, I even sing out loud, more’s the pity. Apologies to anyone within earshot.
Now, luckily, a pretty high percentage of these infernal tunes have their origins in the United Methodist hymnal or whatever the anthem was last Sunday, or even something that we sang in the girls’ vocal ensembles that I participated in at school from seventh grade onward…oldies but goodies. Depending upon how many of us could carry a tune in a bucket (pretty big buckets), they were girls’ sextets or so-called triple trios (There being three standard parts for female vocalist ensembles–soprano, second soprano and alto. Trios were not big…unless you were the Andrews Sisters, of course…or Lawrence Welk’s Lennon Sisters). Aanywaay, I can sing all of the parts when I’m out by myself. This does not mean that I can remember all of the words, of course, so orphan phrases keep coming back until I can come up with something new and even more repetitive. Occasionally, something from the radio will pop up, mostly Golden Oldie stuff, with a range that I can comfortably manage–the Everly Brothers come to mind. Researchers–who comes up with all of these projects anyway?–indicate that somewhere around 98% of all people get them once in a while, women more than men and more annoyed by them (the earworms, not the men, although that could call for more research). It also seems to be the case that actively engaging in other distractions, such as doing puzzles, may break the cycle. Mark Twain advocated transferring the tune to somebody else; Arthur C. Clark and SpongeBob Squarepants have also chimed in on the phenomenon.
Sometimes the distraction, another song, for instance, becomes the worm itself. Show tunes are good at this, especially from shows that I was in or directed or just assisted with. “There Is Nothin’ Like A Dame” fits into that category; so does the whole list of the Children of Israel from “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat”(‘Reuben was the eldest of the Children of Israel, with Simeon and Levi the next in line…. ‘)I can do a whole raft of verses–some of which I made up myself–to “She’ll Be Comin’ ‘Round the Mountain”. Just for variety, every so often, “Does your Chewing Gum Lose Its Flavor on the Bedpost Overnight?” (If your mother says don’t chew it, do you swallow it in spite? Can you catch it on your tonsils and heave it left and right? Does your chewing gum lose its flavor on the bedpost overnight?”) gets into the playlist.
Once in a while there’s a new wrinkle, as when this week something malfunctioned in the timing mechanism of the carillon apparatus of the Garrettsville United Methodist Church on Park Ave. Instead of playing at noon and six o’clock in the evening, they were ringing out at six A.M. and midnight…to the delight of the neighbors, I’m sure. I heard them on my usual route in the early dark hours and spent much of the rest of my walk trying to remember all of the verses of “Sweet Hour of Prayer”; not sure what the other tune was, I was heading away from the sound at that point. I don’t imagine that prayer or sweetness was what was in the thoughts or the vocabulary of the folks in the area who were hearing the bells pealing away in the dark. Sunday brought some consultation about bringing the situation back to where it should be; nobody really knows what caused the ?ante meridian ?music mis-step. I’m still humming.
