Fenster writes:

I am not sure I fully buy the notion of memes as self-replicating counterparts of self-interested genes.  At least I would want to understand better the means by which those presumably selfish little idea critters hop from host to host looking for an angry fix.

If there is a kind of idea out there that persuades me there is something to the meme meme, it is the earworm idea.  You know, those songs, or snippets of songs, or hooks, or phrases, or whatever that get lodged in your head.  And you can’t seem to get “them” out.

Now I may not always have a song in my heart but I always, always have one rattling around in my brain.  And they most often take the form of earworms, little pieces of music picked up somewhere along the way that just come and go as they please.

The more we understand the brain, the more it appears that the unconscious parts of our brain make a lot more of our decisions than we think.  Relevant synapses flash not when we decide in favor of the Philly Cheesesteak, but, suspiciously, right before.  Memes, you say?

So with earworms.  The things I think I like may never make the playlist.

What does gets stuck there?  Well, here’s a recent example.

Aaarrrgghhh!  I object!  I  hate Debbie Boone, and I despise that sappy song.  Yet ever since her commercials for Lifestyle Lift, You Light Up My Life wafts in and out of my mind whenever it damn well wants, and “it” seems to want to be there a lot recently.

So does this mean “I” really like Debbie Boone?  Or maybe that a rogue Boone-meme has taken up shop in my brain and is barking out orders?

And then Scheherazade snuck in somehow.  That Rimsky-Korsakov chestnut was one of the first classical pieces I listened to, and I’ll grant it is nothing if not memorable.  But if Strauss referred to himself as a first-rate second rate composer, my conscious mind has always thought of Scheherezade as second-rate second-rate music.

There’s theme one:

And theme two:

And theme three:

All introduced in the first three minutes, all recycled endlessly endlessly in every possible variation in tone, over and over.  If nothing else, it is sticky.  I guess I must actually love it, deep down?

It’s not always this bad.  Actually, much of the time I end up liking what makes the playlist.

For instance, this wah-wahish lick from Steely Dan recently took up residence for several weeks.  Not the whole song, just the lick.  My conscious mind approves.

Or this sprightly introduction to Belbeukus, by the somewhat obscure 60s band Rhinoceros.  Aw, heck, the whole song is less than two and a half minutes–if you’ve gotten this far, listen to the whole thing.

http://youtu.be/TCD5Al9vb0E

My conscious mind approves.  Another area of agreement between my meme master and me.

My apologies for any meme spreading.