Read Online You Are the Music: How Music Reveals What it Means to be Human by Victoria Williamson - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Victoria Williamson
Ads: Link
earworms.
But the prevalence of modern music can’t be the whole story; we know that earworms were a well-known phenomenon long before the modern age of ubiquitous recorded music. In 1876 Mark Twain wrote a short story entitled ‘A Literary Nightmare’, in which he describes a jingle getting stuck in his head and disrupting his concentration level so much that he is forced to pass it on to someone else in order to get rid of the experience.
Another common trigger of earworms, one that has nothing to do with hearing music, is the activity of involuntary memory. To give an example, one of the people in my study described seeing a licence plate that reminded her of the title of a Michael Jackson song (‘PYT’), and for the rest of the day that tune was stuck in her head, even though she had not heard it for a long time.
We are a long way from understanding why memory ‘pops’ in this way between thoughts 41 – between things we see and hear in the world and related images or sounds in our minds. 42 From findings like the Michael Jackson story above, however, we can see that mind popping is a strong trigger for earworms. Short of sitting in a dark room with nothing to see or hear, there is little we can do to control this type of mental activity. Mind popping appears to be a natural consequence of the way our memories operate, and as long as music is held in our memory then there is a chance that it will be triggered by a random encounter with something that reminds us of its contents.
It is also possible that emotional conditioned responses may be behind some of our earworm experiences. In my survey, some respondents reported that they always experienced the same earworm in response to certain moods or circumstances. In my case, when I am happy I often have Doris Day singing a lively rendition of ‘The Deadwood Stage’ in my head. It always makes me smile.
Future research will help us untangle other possible causesof earworms, including the prospect that some earworms may help to modify our state of attention or mood for the task at hand. It is a nice thought that the mind may be selecting tunes from our mental jukebox in order to support our activities in the same way that we ourselves might select a tune to boost our confidence before a night out or calm us down after an argument.
One thing we have little idea about as yet is the repeating, looping component of earworms. Why do they get stuck? Again, earworms are not the only type of thought to loop in the mind. Worries or rumination can also be cyclic, especially in times of stress. I have often heard people speak about other types of repeating sounds, such as words from poems, prayers or even jokes. The great thing about earworms is that because they are so regular and common compared to these other kinds of mental activity, they are a useful research tool that may help us better understand other types of repeating thoughts in the future.
Memory is so much more than a collection of stories, skills and ideas. As we have seen in this chapter, memory is vital to learning, whether we are training as a musician or simply learning about the music of our culture through everyday listening. It is an essential component of our experience of consciousness that keeps us connected to our past and future on the thin sliver of time that we think of as the present moment. Memory can also be involuntary, it can ‘pop’ and repeat on us for reasons we do not yet fully understand.
In all these three guises, ‘the star’, ‘the survivor’ and ‘the miscreant’, musical memory has shown itself to be crucial to our understanding of our musical world and also to our understanding of what we believe, what we have been through in our life, and how we came to be who we are today.
In the next chapter we will see how musical memory is also an important ingredient in the potential of music to provide comfort and to support healing in times of illness and injury. In the final
But the prevalence of modern music can’t be the whole story; we know that earworms were a well-known phenomenon long before the modern age of ubiquitous recorded music. In 1876 Mark Twain wrote a short story entitled ‘A Literary Nightmare’, in which he describes a jingle getting stuck in his head and disrupting his concentration level so much that he is forced to pass it on to someone else in order to get rid of the experience.
Another common trigger of earworms, one that has nothing to do with hearing music, is the activity of involuntary memory. To give an example, one of the people in my study described seeing a licence plate that reminded her of the title of a Michael Jackson song (‘PYT’), and for the rest of the day that tune was stuck in her head, even though she had not heard it for a long time.
We are a long way from understanding why memory ‘pops’ in this way between thoughts 41 – between things we see and hear in the world and related images or sounds in our minds. 42 From findings like the Michael Jackson story above, however, we can see that mind popping is a strong trigger for earworms. Short of sitting in a dark room with nothing to see or hear, there is little we can do to control this type of mental activity. Mind popping appears to be a natural consequence of the way our memories operate, and as long as music is held in our memory then there is a chance that it will be triggered by a random encounter with something that reminds us of its contents.
It is also possible that emotional conditioned responses may be behind some of our earworm experiences. In my survey, some respondents reported that they always experienced the same earworm in response to certain moods or circumstances. In my case, when I am happy I often have Doris Day singing a lively rendition of ‘The Deadwood Stage’ in my head. It always makes me smile.
Future research will help us untangle other possible causesof earworms, including the prospect that some earworms may help to modify our state of attention or mood for the task at hand. It is a nice thought that the mind may be selecting tunes from our mental jukebox in order to support our activities in the same way that we ourselves might select a tune to boost our confidence before a night out or calm us down after an argument.
One thing we have little idea about as yet is the repeating, looping component of earworms. Why do they get stuck? Again, earworms are not the only type of thought to loop in the mind. Worries or rumination can also be cyclic, especially in times of stress. I have often heard people speak about other types of repeating sounds, such as words from poems, prayers or even jokes. The great thing about earworms is that because they are so regular and common compared to these other kinds of mental activity, they are a useful research tool that may help us better understand other types of repeating thoughts in the future.
Memory is so much more than a collection of stories, skills and ideas. As we have seen in this chapter, memory is vital to learning, whether we are training as a musician or simply learning about the music of our culture through everyday listening. It is an essential component of our experience of consciousness that keeps us connected to our past and future on the thin sliver of time that we think of as the present moment. Memory can also be involuntary, it can ‘pop’ and repeat on us for reasons we do not yet fully understand.
In all these three guises, ‘the star’, ‘the survivor’ and ‘the miscreant’, musical memory has shown itself to be crucial to our understanding of our musical world and also to our understanding of what we believe, what we have been through in our life, and how we came to be who we are today.
In the next chapter we will see how musical memory is also an important ingredient in the potential of music to provide comfort and to support healing in times of illness and injury. In the final
Similar Books
