I have an excellent musical memory. I forget everything else, but music stays. Music plays in my head 24/7, and has my whole life. I can remember entire symphonies my sister would spin on our record player, although I have no idea what their names are, or the names of their composers, let alone conductors or orchestras. Names are the weakest part or my memory by far. Music is the strongest.
Musical memory evolved to preserve epic poetry and precious human culture, to bind the tribe and pass on important wisdom to future generations. Yet mine is full of commercial jingles from the 1970’s onward, and crappy Christmas music I never wanted to hear in the first place, and musical “product” engineered for popularity and sales by copyright industries. And now it’s hooked on AI-generated songs, not even human voices or instruments. My amazing musical memory, the strongest part of my crumbling mind, designed for binding humans together: occupied by venal, commercial, exploitative, and now not-even-human patterns, forever. God must be rolling in His grave.
I feel grateful nonetheless, not least because most of those AI songs in my head were generated at the behest of my friend Cori, so I associate them with our friendship. Cori even generated (directed? prompted? pushed a button requesting?) a commercial for “Nina’s Art Gloves” which he inserted into the latest episode of our Heterodorx podcast. It is hilarious.
Do you compose your own music? It afflicts me so bad that sometimes I can’t think straight. But usually, it’s someone else’s earworm. The worst it ever got was a day in 2012, Tom Jones in my head singing “She’s a lady! Whoa-whoa-whoa, she’s a lady!”