October 29, 2003

• Strange Aural Memories

  Sunday while driving to work I couldn't get a song out of my mind. It was a song I hadn't heard for decades, the theme song to a movie I had seen just once. I had heard the song on radio several times during its brief period of popularity but hadn't thought about it for many, many years. It was particularly inappropriate to the conditions I was driving through, Barbra Streisand's rendition of "On a Clear Day You Can See Forever".

  On a clear day
  Rise and look around you
  And you'll see forever more.
  On a clear day
  How it will astound you ...

  This was echoing through the empty chambers of my mind as I drove through the curtains of smoke, almost alone on the freeway, on my way to work.

  This morning the wind was blowing the other way. It was a breeze from the sea that had blown the smoke away so I could see the sky again. Once more a song sprang to my mind:

  Happy days are here again,
  The skies above are clear again ...

  This was a little more appropriate, being a song of the Depression.

  If you are right-handed, then the left side of your brain is in charge most of the time while the right side of your brain quietly sits there doing analysis. Every once in a while the right side of the brain will send a message to the left side. Sometimes the message takes the form of a visual image, sometimes a voice or other audible illusion. Lately I've been getting the message in music.

  It's rather nice.

  • 14:58
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