Ear-worms, Redux

I often wake up in the morning with music in my head. I don't always notice it right away.  I can go for hours with music on replay in my head before I realize what I'm doing.  Sometimes I also realize I can't identify what I've been hearing and let me tell you, that drives me nuts.

You would think that if it's a Led Zeppelin song - which it generally is - that I would immediately recognize it. But sometimes it's just a short musical phrase that's become an ear-worm through repetition. Sometimes there are no lyrics involved and I just cannot for the life of me pinpoint which song it's from. Not that lyrics would help.

I've said it before: I'm not into lyrics (I'm not into poetry either and I don't apologize for it). Not only do I not pay attention to the words of a song, I usually don't even understand them when I do pay attention. When it comes to music, words are simply musical sounds, like the notes of a guitar. This means that even if what I'm hearing in my head over and over and over has got a vocal line, I still don't always know what the words are.

I know, craziness. But truly, I hear the words as musical sounds, and I just can't put meaning to the words unless I really work to reconstruct them.

It would be so much easier if I could carry a tune. I've tried singing the melodic streams out loud. The dogs howl. The horses flee. Heck, I don't want to listen to that noise. 

I don't really care, anyway. There just doesn't seem to be a cross-over for me between music and words. Music communicates in a different way than words do. These ear-worms really bring home to me how the two come from different places in the brain - and the soul.

Meanwhile, when I stopped fretting over it the name of the song popped right into my head.

Ten Years Gone
Jimmy Page and The Black Crowes, Live at the Greek