finstergrrrl | (no subject)

someone should probably ask me "so what have you been doing for x amount of time since we spoke last?" because i keep meaning to update. but the only things that make me update seem to be little random yet specific thoughts. so here's my random yet specific thing for tonight, and i think i've mentioned it before, but it gets its own post today: i have music in my head ALL THE TIME. i mean it is playing when i wake up in the morning. it plays all day in my head. it is playing when i go to sleep. i was on meds once and the music stopped and i didn't know, and then one day i went off them and it started again and that's when i realized it stopped.

the music generally plays exactly as i heard it, sometimes in full, sometimes in a loop or snatches. it's pretty much always in the correct key and i can hear all the guitar and all that stuff (more if i've paid attention to a part, so i can't always tell you much about the drums, for example). i don't always have lyrics but i have a sense of the cadence of the vocal. often i do have full lyrics. and it's ALWAYS there. someone will comment on how quiet a room is and i won't have noticed because i've had my head on shuffle or something.

do any of you have this? what do you do about it? do you do anything? do you like it? dislike it? does it ever get in your way? does it ever feel heavy or frustrating? ever get a headache from it? ever feel relieved when one song kicks another one out of the way? ever feel even more relieved when you hear actual music and it drowns out what's in your head? if you're listening to one piece of music and trying to recall another one, do you have to turn off what you're hearing in the room before you can hear what's in your head? ever have multiple pieces playing at once? can you listen to them simultaneously at all, even for a few seconds at a time, even if not quite at the same level for both/all?

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yes to all of it. i've had this my whole life, so much so that i barely even notice it anymore. occasionally i'll realize that i'm humming out loud, or someone will ask what i'm humming - thereby making me realize i've been vocalizing part of the constant symphony in my head. ha.

the only way i turn it off is by putting in a CD and listening to actual music; that, yes, usually drowns out the music in my head.

sometimes it's annoying as hell. i don't always enjoy the crap that gets stuck in my head. this morning i had about five measures from a haydn symphony playing on repeat in my brain, over and over and over again, and i finally had to blast some pj harvey to get that shit to stop. :)

heh, i definitely relate to that :) one of the components i wish i'd mentioned in my post is that i get very strong emotional attachment to music. i mean, i think everyone probably does to a degree, but right now i'm listening to radiohead's "there there" and it's almost...it's as though it's *allowing* me to feel, it's a conduit somehow. i don't really know how to describe it any better than that. i get depths and heights that i just don't get most of the day. there are other stimuli - great photography, being out west, being fully immersed in something *real*, i dunno. the music is what makes everything real and keeps it surreal at the same time. now i'm rambling ;p

on a related note, how are your guitar lessons with pamela going?

ha. i get it. i'm not really bothered about it though.
this answer is kind of unhelpful, isn't it? anyway, what have you been doing?

lol no, not unhelpful :) sometimes i really have no clue whether people share my experience or not. i was talking to my friend geoff at work about music and he's totally mystified by me - he doesn't collect music in the same way at all. he really wouldn't own music, i think, on his own - as it is, what little he has, he stole from his brother - he mostly listens to the radio. which is cool, i mean, the radio is sometimes a relief from my head :) but i have to be able to listen to whatever is going on with me emotionally, y'know? i need to have it at my fingertips. apparently if i'm in a car listening to music and it gets turned off, i physically start shaking! i had to be told. i didn't know.

what have i been doing! it's a good question :) and i just started to answer and the answer became really long, so i'm making a post just for you!

This happens pretty much all the time. Right now I'm listening to Blue Stone's Worlds Apart. Except I'm not. But I did for real last night.

It's usually, but not always, a replay (and a re-replay and so on) of whatever I last listened to. I'm not bothered by it either.

I sometimes hear people complain about having an annoying tv commercial jingle stuck in their heads, so I guess It's fortunate that I watch very little tv. And that I only listen to music I like!

lol about the jingle. yep, i'm the same way. what little tv i do watch gets looped just as you're saying. i tend to get in my head the last *full* song i listened to; so if i finished a song, started the next one, and turned off the radio, i'll get the finished song in my head.