... and you thought this was a natural phenomenon. I did so too - many a time I would wake up in the morning with a song playing in my head and it would stay with me throughout the day. I had written about this earlier here and here. I sing the same song the whole day long, hum the same tune and also "listen" to it being played in my mind again and again. Sometimes, it is one of those old golden melodies as I mentioned in my earlier posts, and sometimes it is something as inane as On the Roof, In the Rain or even worse something like 24 * 7 I think of you. I always thought this just happens - very naturally. You wake up in the morning - either this song is already in your head, having seeped into your sub-conscious mind very slowly while in your conscious mind you thought you were fast asleep; or this was the first song you listened to or started singing as soon as you got up. That's it - that is the reason you are stuck with it throughout the day.
But now they tell me there is more to this Song-stuck-in-your-head phenomenon. You probably have what they call a Ohrwurm, or in plain, good, old English - Earworm. No, there is no reason (at least not as yet) to get all worked up about it - this does not refer to "small maggot-like creatures crawling into your ear and laying eggs in your brain"; these are more like the computer viruses that latch on to a host (here, your brain) and work off your memory. No, there are no chances of you getting amnesiac either.
There are of course solutions - eraser tunes, for instance, "that have a mystical ability to eat any other earworms". Or if you are feeling extremely lonely in your "suffering" you can pass on these earworms to someone else - "sharing it certainly lightens things up", isn't it? Finally, of course, there is the age-old solution as it is with the common cold - "treated earworms go away in a day, untreated earworms in 24 hours".
Lest you get too anxious about this phenomenon, relax - "Some day scientists will be able to find a vaccine for earworm infections".
You think I am kidding? Of course not! Seriously, weird things people research about! Read more here.
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2 comments:
Hey Emma, can completely identify with 24*7. It's worse when at the end of the day I realise that I have been humming a Himesh Reshamiya song. I have nothing against him, but I guess we all have ghosts of tastefulness lurking within us :D
[apurv] I can so understand it - I think it is just the fact that we listen to these songs so much more these days that they tend to stay on in mind.
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