Music and Dreams

 

December 26, 2023, NH: no socks, but leg warmers and Lynxie in the distance

I’m not a musician, but I always have music running in my head. I asked The Husband, who is a musician, if he always has music running through his head, and he said no.

“Really?” I asked him. “Your mind is quiet when you aren’t thinking about something?”

“Except for the humming noise that’s always there,” he said.

“That’s in your ears,” I told him. “It’s because you’ve become an Old Fart, and you can’t hear most of what I say to you.”

“Yeah, well, you mumble and besides that, you’re weird,” he replied.

Amazing how they always hear that kind of thing. My deaf grandfather could hear a whisper from two rooms away, if it was about him.

But I do have music always in my head, and The Husband’s right, it’s partly pathological. Often the music is just a phrase, that I may have made up, because I don’t recognize it; and sometimes it’s a line or two of a song I’ve heard; and most often it changes every few minutes, all through the day, unless I’m concentrating on something else, like writing this essay; and I don’t much pay attention to it. But when I’m doing something mundane – like walking down the hall or grocery shopping – I often find myself humming or singing or even whistling whatever bit is currently circulating, and I don’t usually notice that I’m doing it.

It was pointed out to me years ago by the chiropractor whose office was next to mine in the clinic space we shared. “I like that you’re always whistling or humming,” he said, by way of nothing, one day. “That way I always know where you are.”

Hmm.

The other day, a total stranger in the Co-op parking lot came up to me, as I was pushing my laden cart out to my car. I must have been singing out loud.

 “Are you learning that piece for a performance,” she asked, kindly, “or are you just self-comforting?”

Huh.  Now there’s a new concept.

I had to think about that awhile: what is this concept of “self-comforting”, anyway? Was she making a New-Agey kind of comment, or was what I was doing actually comforting me? If so, why did I need comforting --- oh, never mind: who doesn’t need pretty much constant comforting in this current world of ours, anyway?

I don’t know the answer; but I started to notice how I feel when I notice I’m doing the music out loud. I have to admit that if it’s out loud, I do feel lightened emotions, and sometimes I actually will consciously up the volume and sing loudly and on purpose and feel kind of elated when doing so. And what’s maybe more telling – I always hum when Rasta Furian and I are having a love-up. He thinks it’s the human way of purring, and we both enjoy it. Rasta has a very extensive repertoire of purring noises, so maybe…maybe he’s actually singing?

Same day!

However, I also have a pathological music thing: I have what the late Oliver Sacks, in one of whose books I discovered the name of the pathology, calls musicophilia.  I dread, dread, dread the periods when I’m sunk into a musicophilia time, because during those times, there will be one – just one – musical phrase, usually part of a song I’ve heard sometime in the past 3 weeks (it rarely happens immediately), and it will play incessantly over and over and over in my head, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, for weeks, and sometimes for months. My latest bout happened this summer, and started soon after I got back from F-FL, and it was there for 7 months before I finally got rid of it. I don’t dare even tell you what the phrase was from, because as soon as I let myself start to think it about it even in this off-hand way, I can feel – literally feel it, it’s a sensation in my spine and brain – that it could catch me again in a flash.

There are ways to stop that kind of pathology (some of you might think of it as an “ear worm,” and you’ve probably all experienced a limited version of what I’m talking about at some point in your life).  The cure, a psychiatrist who was a long-time t’ai chi student of mine, one day explained to me when I was bitching about my then current repetitive song agony during class, is to sing – either out loud or in your head – the nonsense song that’s called something like “Mairzey Doates and Dozey Doates” or some such thing – does anyone actually know? – which no one really knows or understands the words to - every time you notice the offending music, over  and over until it stops. So it takes time and persistence and attention, and it’s exhausting, and the longer you wait to do it, the longer it takes to be effective. But, blessedly, it does work, and that weird little ditty, for some reason, doesn’t get stuck and replace the one you’re trying to kill off.

My 7-month problem took so long to eliminate because the piece that got stuck was from some music I actually like very much, so for too long I was sort of enjoying it, until I wasn’t. And then the irritation had to get big enough for me to remember the cure and apply it.

So: how, you might wonder, can even the ear worm of ear worms be present 24-hours a day? Because I have another strange mental thing – not a pathology, really, but relatively rare (which I also learned about from Oliver Sacks’s writing – someday I’ll maybe also tell you about tasting colors, which he also illuminated for me and that I had no understanding of until I found my symptoms described in his books. That’s called synesthesia, and I have a very mild case).

But to my point: I’m also a lucid dreamer.

Lucid dreamers are aware they’re dreaming – I don’t know how it is for all lucid dreamers, but in my case, my normal-consciousness mind always actively observes the dream I’m having, and often either makes commentary, or can stop the dream if I don’t like where it’s going, and redirect the action, sort of like the director of a play. I’ve several times actually said to my dream characters, “Ok, let’s change this. You say this other thing, instead of what you just said, and you do this thing instead of that thing in response, and let’s see where that goes.” And then I resume the dream again.

I find lucid dreaming quite useful – I never have nightmares, because dreaming, for me, is more like watching a play or a movie: one of my favorites was the dream in which I, and some dream-friends, were battling vampires who were attacking our castle from the skies, and we could fly, and shoot arrows, and, of course, we won. Or at least I assume we did, because I wouldn’t have it any other way, though I don’t remember the end of it – it was one I continued for several nights because I was enjoying it so much.

I also can restart a dream I had one night, if I enjoyed it, the next night. And I consciously recognize repetitive dreams while I’m dreaming them. I often think to myself, “Oh, it’s that dream again!” and can make little changes or decisions – do I want to walk or ride a bike this time, do I want to take that path or go the other way, and so on. Because I find that repetitive dreams usually have messages: i.e., they’re usually something I should pay attention to because my mind uses them to work something or other out, or warn me about something. I remember them (being a lucid dreamer doesn’t mean I remember my dreams for any length of time any more often than other people do - only the really good ones), recognize them, and experience them from the normal-conscious part of my mind in an observing and decoding way, sort of like a math problem I’m working on as it happens.

But lucid dreaming also means that the part of my brain that has the musicophilia pathology is still present while I’m dreaming, and I’m aware of the music playing over and over incessantly. It doesn’t become background music to the dream; it’s just always there and always playing in the normal-conscious part of my mind. Two or three different parts of the mind must be involved, because, while the music doesn’t interfere with or become part of the dream, neither am I any more able to stop it playing while I’m dreaming than I am able to in an awake state.

It’s maddening.

Speaking of which, senile dementia seems to run in my family. One of my waking nightmares, as I grow older, is that at some point I’ll be taken by it; and some kind-meaning soul who doesn’t know me, or doesn’t remember about the musicophilia, decides to play music for me, because music seems to soothe people with dementia and Alzheimers.  What’s most likely to set my musicophilia off is music with words. So if, in such a circumstance, you see me trying to stab myself in the brain or rip my ears off, assume the musicophilia is driving me insane, and sing for me the Mairzy Doates ditty, over and over, into my ear, for however many hours and days it takes until I calm down.

And don’t turn the music back on!

 

For the blog: herondragonwrites.blogspot.com

23 December 2023

Photos by Deb Marshall, help with one...

For the record: I was out reading for almost 2 hours!