This is a concept that I may have some difficulty explaining but, all the same, I find it to be an interesting aspect of being and of mind and of, well, me self. I'm sure there are others who are similarly inclined.
I often have some sort of song playing in my head (as they say), sometimes way in the background, sometimes more up front. It seems that I've always been accompanied by music, often like a soundtrack to my life.
As for content, the 'now mentally playing' tune can vary quite a bit. It might be the hook from some popular song, or even one of those annoying commercial jingles. Often though it is something dredged up from my personal collection, and also often a benevolent soundtrack, providing counterpoint to what is happening, how I am feeling, or what I am doing. Rarely is it the entire melody. Normally it's comprised of just a fragment of the whole, often playing over and over again in a loop, sometimes to the point of distraction (in the most annoying of cases). Upon occasion I've had to attempt to drown out or white out or pink out a particularly annoying tune by concentrating on some decidedly nasty piece of soundscape ('One Red Nightmare' by King Crimson often has a suitable blanking effect). The source, however, can range from the symphonic (I'm particularly attached to Rimsky-Korsakov's 'Sheherazade' in that realm) to the ridiculous, Yellow Ribbons vie with Kraft Dinners for control of radio station Cloin, the end is listless. I mean the list is endless.
The triggers for what song plays when are interesting too. There are those songs that are artifacts, like an uninvited lingerer or leftover, one of those songs that stays in your head after you've heard it, whether consciously or not. I get a lot of that, from, as an example, the grocery stores and elevators I've been in. I think I'm not as sensitive as I once was to this type of material (because I don't always now remember all the songs that were playing in a store while I was there shopping) but I'm still sensitive there, I get hooked by many tunes that way. And end up having them on an internal play loop until I can dislodge or replace them with something else.
There a word in german, ohrwurm, or literally ear worm, that nicely describes it (those damn Germans have a word for just about everything).
The other type of trigger that I find most often happening is caused not by music itself but by language; an idea, thought, or phrase that somehow has become linked with a particular tune. Some triggers, naturally, are the direct correlations, I'll hear a phrase, a title, or a line from a lyric that immediately cues the mental recording (I heard it through the grapevine might be a good example), others are less forthright. These later ones I'll often do a kind of mental exercise and attempt to trace it back to the original impulse. That can be fun.
And then sometimes too I find that I'm haunted by a particular song. It keeps following me around, often for extended periods of time, days in fact. I had a run with the Rimsky-Korsakov like that, for three days.
Then there are songs that rise from where they've been slumbering in your subconscious.
Like the other day. It was one of those blue funk days (cue a minor flourish of 'Funk 49'), where I knew I should be doing something but couldn't get my feces collectivized enough to do anything constructive, deep in ennui, part of it depression I think. I found myself playing a song in my head, one that I haven't thought of or heard for years and years. The name of this particular song is '20 Million Things To Do'.
This song I had mentally associated with a band that I have liked for many years, the band called Little Feat. I have most of their 'older' albums somewhere in my collection and on my computer. But when I searched for this particular tune it turned out that I didn't have it, which was momentarily confusing for me. With a little bit of research (and wow, isn't the internet handy for that) I found out that that particular song wasn't one recorded by the band. It was actually from the solo album of one of the main members of the band, a fella by the name of Lowell George (guitarist, vocalist, composer) who died not long after the release of the album ' Thank's I'll Eat It Here'.
Back in the olde days, when vinyl was king, I used to own this album as well as a few others (I can still remember needing 12 liquor store cartons for the records when I had to move). After doing this for a number of years and during one particular move I found that I was tired of carting them around. I did a purge, took them right off the tailgate of my brother's pick-up truck that I had borrowed for this particular move, and turned them in to one of those used record and book stores. I used the money I got from the sale to purchase a futon, which I needed. I now miss much of the music I once had. I've reacquired some small part of it, but not all (and I don't think you'd be able to find it all now). That was how I ended up not having the album. At least until recently.
So I sourced it on iTunes and I bought it...
...and then my computer died before I could listen to it. I couldn't listen to the song for another 3 days, until I got my computer back from service. It was really annoying because, by now, it felt like I needed to listen to it to complete myself somehow, like having to play the last note of a song, to complete the musical thought. Shave and a haircut, two...
Sigh...
There are also a few songs that I find I'm very sentimental about. I don't know if you could say that they speak to my soul but they do something. I have found that these are not necessarily the most popular of songs from a particular artist. I have on more than one occasion purchased 'best of' or 'retrospective' albums by artists (in small or in large part looking for these songs) and not found them on the collections, and not be able to find the original, here are two examples:
One of these lost songs was, or rather is, on Leon Russell's 'Carney' album. I did a little research and found out the title of the track, which I hadn't known until now. The track is 'Manhattan Island Serenade'. I don't have the song, iTunes doesn't offer either the album it was taken from or the song itself. There is just something about it that I really like, a wonderfully moody and thoughtful tone, very atmospheric. Part of the lyric of the song is, if I remember, "Sittin' by the highway in a broken van, thinking of you again". Another of these haunting songs was done by Sandy Denny and called, I believe, 'The Quiet Joys of Brotherhood'. I don't have that one either.
Just a note, one of the reasons that I like the band Little Feat so much, besides the musicianship, is that they have a number of tunes that help to define moments, like Trouble, Easy To Slip, and more. I still have times when I need Little Feat accompaniment. It's good to drive with too, often an excuse for exercising vocal chords while barreling down the road.
I have a driving song, I believe the song is called 'Marie', which is an artifact of my father and why it has come to be associated with driving I'll never know. I'll often also have a windshield wiper song, which one dependent on the cycle of the wipers, in beat to the rhythm of the blades as they clean the windows.
So as you can see the music is all around me, even when I'm not actively playing anything.
