Life With a Soundtrack

I've always wanted a soundtrack to my life, he said.

That's kind of what I have, I replied.

That was the first time it dawned on me that having music playing more
or less incessantly may not be the norm for all modern humans. For me
it is background music; I don't really listen to it most of the time.
Sometimes I'll notice, sometimes I'll even sing along or tap out the
rhythm. But usually not. It is simply a part of being conscious.

I think maybe sometimes I even go without music for brief periods of
time, but if I think about it the soundtrack will start up again.

I probably should have realized this is not the universal experience
when there was some discussion about "getting a song stuck in your
head" and I thought, "How is that different from all the rest of the
time?" I think I usually have more of a playlist than just one song,
but as I said before I usually don't pay much attention.

I do know that in some cases a single phrase plays over and over
because I don't know or can't remember the whole song. Eventually it
is replaced by some other song, or phrase.

Now that I've come to think about this, I wonder how, when, and why
this phenomenon ever began. I'm not exceptionally musical, or at
least I've never exhibited any exceptionalism in that realm. I have
no memory of the music starting up at some point in life, nor do I
have any specific memory of a time without a background soundtrack.
But of course I don't pay enough attention so that I would form an
explicit memory. I recall that my mother sometimes had music in the
house, whether playing the piano or playing a record, but she didn't
find it necessary to have noise all the time as some people seem to.
My father started playing the radio in his wood shop as he worked, but
that didn't happen until after I was grown up. So I don't think this
is something that was trained into me.

Perhaps it should be understood as simply a gift. Or a curse. Someone
may have left me with the wish, "May you always have music!" If that
is so, I didn't notice. And my mother told me that I didn't have any
fairy godparents.

The next obvious question is how this difference in experience may
affect my perception of reality or my interactions with others. And
I haven't the foggiest idea. One really would need to compare my
reality with that of someone else. But how do you compare a noumenon
with a vacuity? How would we even find a common language to discuss
the impact?


                                                January 2017