Earworms

I've been reading Musicophilia by Oliver Sacks recently. He's a famous neurologist who writes books about some of the more interesting cases he's run into it (One of his books is called The Man who Mistook His Wife for a Hat. You get the idea.). This book was about the complicated relationship between music and the brain. The first case he recounts is about an ordinary guy who gets struck by lightning (seriously) and becomes suddenly obsessed with music. It completely changes his life: he hears it all the time, becomes obsessed with certain composers, starts taking piano lessons. His wife actually ends up divorcing him because she can't understand what's going on with him, and he ends up becoming a composer. Really pretty interesting.

Anyway, this post isn't a book review. A section of the book talks about what he calls "earworms," those songs that you just cannot get out of your head. I hate his choice of word for this phenomena, (It reminds me of those centipede-like aliens from Star Trek II: Wrath of Khan, you know the ones that crawl in the crew's ears and take over their brains. At least that's what I think they do. My mind is kinda fuzzy on the plot, but those things I remember.) but I knew exactly what he was talking about. I think anyone with children has been stuck with various children's songs in their head, some worst than others, "John Jacob Jingleheimer Smith" anybody?

Elise absolutely loves listening to songs and this is her new favorite and it's my current earworm. I actually really like it too. It's a singer named Feist and she adapted one of her songs for Sesame Street and I've heard this version so much now I think I like it better than the original. Elise acts out the entire music video. I made her her own number 4 to carry around too.

So if you need a good song to have in your head all day, push play and enjoy!