Help! There's a Song in my Head
I have this problem. It started about three months ago, when I woke up one morning with a song stuck in my head, and it wouldn’t go away, no matter what I tried. I can’t remember which song it was, but I know how it got there. It got there when I was eight years old, listening to 50s pop radio in Westfield, New Jersey, where I grew up. No, wait. Oh no. Here it comes again! Something about a Honeycomb, I think it was called. It went: It’s a darn good life and it’s kinda funny how the Lord made the bee and the bee made the honey and the honey bee lookin’, for a home, and they called it a honeycomb. By a country western artist named Jimmy Rogers. Why do I remember this? It really, truly beats the hell out of me.
By no stretch of the imagination should I be carrying this song around in my head, let alone here, now, in the 21rst Century, let alone using it for my six o’clock wake up call. I mean, I know lots of songs. Some of them I’m quite fond of, like Yesterday. And You Are My Sunshine, which my students in China also enjoyed singing on occasion. This one, I wasn’t fond of, still am not, never liked, and hadn’t heard for fifty one years, as far as I know. Until that morning three months ago inside my head.
It’s gotten worse. Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini has now made itself known. Or reknown. Even worse, Candy Girl! Then along came The Money Tree. Out of nowhere. Why couldn’t it happen to you instead of me? These horrors, and a dozen or more other songs I have not listened to, or wanted to, in half a century, are now perambulating around inside my head like an old juke box and they own it.
Maybe it’s my punishment for joining the Napster Rebellion a few years back, when my books were all out of print and I admittedly had nothing better to do. So I downloaded every song I ever knew. Or so I’d thought at the time. This lot now occupying my head like an invading army had been willfully, deliberately, and maliciously excluded at the time. So now, it seems, they are exacting revenge. I had no trouble justifying Napster, I quickly want to add. After all, I’d bought those songs at some time in my life: every one of them. Except this bunch now taking over. Many of them more than once. The really old ones, like Sail Along Silvery Moon and Green Onions I’d bought as 45 rpm singles. Then others, like Night Train and Harlem Nocturne I’d bought as record albums. LP’s, they were called in those days. And each time I bought a record album, it had been for one song, one cut. I had to buy the other ten or so along with it, whether I wanted to or not. Those were the rules (and sometimes the other songs won me over, but often did not). Some albums, as time went by, I really loved in their entirety. Like the early Beatles albums. So I played them until they were scratchy and worn out, then bought them again.
This continued through college, and the British Invasion, and Folk Rock and the Acid Rock Revolution. LPs came, and songs were played, and played again, and discarded, and replaced. Then came 8 tracks. Those were great, or so we thought. You could play them in cars! Never mind their annoying habit of stopping in the middle of a cut to change tracks, then like as not missing a beat or ten. If not a track or two. Or backing up a few bars. So, I went to Sam Goody’s and bought them all over again. As far as I’m concerned, the heir to this media empire, Time Warner, owes me for those alone. Ditto cassettes, when they came along soon after. Good for about three plays and then pfft. By now I’d probably bought Revolver for the fourth or fifth time. Just to hear In My Life. And so it went. Beatles. Doors. Stones. Airplane. Mamas and Papas. Youngbloods. Then, later on Pink Floyd, and Dire Straits, and REM. And whatever happened to those amazing one hit wonders, the Zombies? But never, never, in any moment of altered-state delirium, did it ever occur to me, did I ever consider buying, or wish, want, or would have been willing, even if twisted by the ear or bent in a rack, to buy Honeycomb, by Jimmy Rogers. Let alone twice. Ditto Hello Muddah, also squatting happily now, in my brain pan. What to do, what to do?
Luckily, some of the more recent arrivals throwing all-night parties in my head aren’t so bad, like Moondance, and Get Together. But Jimmy, Jimmy Coco Pop? Where did that come from? And what about He’s So Fine, and My Boyfriend’s Back? Who’s responsible for these travesties, anyway? I hated both of those in high school, and haven't gotten any fonder of them since. And don’t tell me it’s some kind of emerging Manchurian Candidate mind control thing, even though I did, as it happens, recently spend three years inside the former Manchuria (see my book A Billion to One for details.) In fact, the Chinese wouldn’t touch those songs with a ten foot chopstick, not even to implant them in my brain. And why would they? Let me think...
Not that the Chinese are the paragons of good taste, or anything like that, other than food-wise. At least not since Mao leveled the place. It’s just that they aren’t capable of comprehending anything quite that bad. Besides, they liked me there. Why would they choose to torment me, their “beloved foreign teacher” (as the leaders loved to call me) in such a hideous way? If they wanted state secrets, no problem. I know exactly where Texas, for example, is located. I can show them on a map. They can have it. They want the formula to Cheese Doodles? They can have it, too. Ditto Colonel Sander’s Secret Recipe. No wait, they already have that. Copy my books? No problem! No one else was reading them.
So, no, I don’t think I can blame the Chinese for this subsequent turn of events inside my head. It’s something about my childhood coming back, I think. Sort of like seeing my life pass before my eyes, except in slow motion. Or hearing it, like a slow passing freight train. Come to think of it, I just got a craving for Cheez Whiz. I used to love Cheez Whiz! Especially smeared on Triscuits. Now where did that memory come from? It just waltzed in out of the globally warmed smog, without so much as a knock on the door. What’s going on here? Hu Jintao, is that you? How did you find out about the Cheez Whiz? I’ve been hiding that secret for decades, and not even Dick Cheney could have tortured that one out of me.
Help! I’m trapped in darkest Seattle with Hello Mudder stuck in my head, and images of Cheez Whiz! Who’s doing this to me? Is it the Chinese? Ni zher tamen? What did I ever do to you? Other than write that book. No, wait! Oh no, not The Lion Sleeps at Night! I refuse to say another word.
By no stretch of the imagination should I be carrying this song around in my head, let alone here, now, in the 21rst Century, let alone using it for my six o’clock wake up call. I mean, I know lots of songs. Some of them I’m quite fond of, like Yesterday. And You Are My Sunshine, which my students in China also enjoyed singing on occasion. This one, I wasn’t fond of, still am not, never liked, and hadn’t heard for fifty one years, as far as I know. Until that morning three months ago inside my head.
It’s gotten worse. Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini has now made itself known. Or reknown. Even worse, Candy Girl! Then along came The Money Tree. Out of nowhere. Why couldn’t it happen to you instead of me? These horrors, and a dozen or more other songs I have not listened to, or wanted to, in half a century, are now perambulating around inside my head like an old juke box and they own it.
Maybe it’s my punishment for joining the Napster Rebellion a few years back, when my books were all out of print and I admittedly had nothing better to do. So I downloaded every song I ever knew. Or so I’d thought at the time. This lot now occupying my head like an invading army had been willfully, deliberately, and maliciously excluded at the time. So now, it seems, they are exacting revenge. I had no trouble justifying Napster, I quickly want to add. After all, I’d bought those songs at some time in my life: every one of them. Except this bunch now taking over. Many of them more than once. The really old ones, like Sail Along Silvery Moon and Green Onions I’d bought as 45 rpm singles. Then others, like Night Train and Harlem Nocturne I’d bought as record albums. LP’s, they were called in those days. And each time I bought a record album, it had been for one song, one cut. I had to buy the other ten or so along with it, whether I wanted to or not. Those were the rules (and sometimes the other songs won me over, but often did not). Some albums, as time went by, I really loved in their entirety. Like the early Beatles albums. So I played them until they were scratchy and worn out, then bought them again.
This continued through college, and the British Invasion, and Folk Rock and the Acid Rock Revolution. LPs came, and songs were played, and played again, and discarded, and replaced. Then came 8 tracks. Those were great, or so we thought. You could play them in cars! Never mind their annoying habit of stopping in the middle of a cut to change tracks, then like as not missing a beat or ten. If not a track or two. Or backing up a few bars. So, I went to Sam Goody’s and bought them all over again. As far as I’m concerned, the heir to this media empire, Time Warner, owes me for those alone. Ditto cassettes, when they came along soon after. Good for about three plays and then pfft. By now I’d probably bought Revolver for the fourth or fifth time. Just to hear In My Life. And so it went. Beatles. Doors. Stones. Airplane. Mamas and Papas. Youngbloods. Then, later on Pink Floyd, and Dire Straits, and REM. And whatever happened to those amazing one hit wonders, the Zombies? But never, never, in any moment of altered-state delirium, did it ever occur to me, did I ever consider buying, or wish, want, or would have been willing, even if twisted by the ear or bent in a rack, to buy Honeycomb, by Jimmy Rogers. Let alone twice. Ditto Hello Muddah, also squatting happily now, in my brain pan. What to do, what to do?
Luckily, some of the more recent arrivals throwing all-night parties in my head aren’t so bad, like Moondance, and Get Together. But Jimmy, Jimmy Coco Pop? Where did that come from? And what about He’s So Fine, and My Boyfriend’s Back? Who’s responsible for these travesties, anyway? I hated both of those in high school, and haven't gotten any fonder of them since. And don’t tell me it’s some kind of emerging Manchurian Candidate mind control thing, even though I did, as it happens, recently spend three years inside the former Manchuria (see my book A Billion to One for details.) In fact, the Chinese wouldn’t touch those songs with a ten foot chopstick, not even to implant them in my brain. And why would they? Let me think...
Not that the Chinese are the paragons of good taste, or anything like that, other than food-wise. At least not since Mao leveled the place. It’s just that they aren’t capable of comprehending anything quite that bad. Besides, they liked me there. Why would they choose to torment me, their “beloved foreign teacher” (as the leaders loved to call me) in such a hideous way? If they wanted state secrets, no problem. I know exactly where Texas, for example, is located. I can show them on a map. They can have it. They want the formula to Cheese Doodles? They can have it, too. Ditto Colonel Sander’s Secret Recipe. No wait, they already have that. Copy my books? No problem! No one else was reading them.
So, no, I don’t think I can blame the Chinese for this subsequent turn of events inside my head. It’s something about my childhood coming back, I think. Sort of like seeing my life pass before my eyes, except in slow motion. Or hearing it, like a slow passing freight train. Come to think of it, I just got a craving for Cheez Whiz. I used to love Cheez Whiz! Especially smeared on Triscuits. Now where did that memory come from? It just waltzed in out of the globally warmed smog, without so much as a knock on the door. What’s going on here? Hu Jintao, is that you? How did you find out about the Cheez Whiz? I’ve been hiding that secret for decades, and not even Dick Cheney could have tortured that one out of me.
Help! I’m trapped in darkest Seattle with Hello Mudder stuck in my head, and images of Cheez Whiz! Who’s doing this to me? Is it the Chinese? Ni zher tamen? What did I ever do to you? Other than write that book. No, wait! Oh no, not The Lion Sleeps at Night! I refuse to say another word.
Comments
Post a Comment