Music Part II (because I still have more to say)

I have a somewhat involuntary physical response to music. Be it singing or dancing along, I can't help myself. This is particularly problematic when I'm walking around campus listening to my iPod because random people will see me bopping along to whatever I'm listening to, so I try to keep it to a hand twitch, but sometimes I get caught and it's really embarrassing.

The thing that puzzles me about music is its power. I wrote before about how it can bring me back into a moment, but it also creates a new moment every time I listen to it. And my memory for lyrics amazes me. I can hear a song a handful of times, read the lyrics once, and then I'll remember it for years. Singing along has always been something I've done and enjoyed. This started when I found the booklet of lyrics with my Beauty and the Beast CD after deciding that I wanted to be able to sing Belle's solo "Home" (from the musical, not the movie). I still look at lyrics when I get a CD, or I look them up online. Ask me today what the lyrics to a musical theater song are, and I probably will remember it if I have the soundtrack. Because I memorize. And that's my thing.

I'm a sucker for clever or poetic lyrics. I have a friend who does sound design, and I instantly fell in love with a song he played for speaker check when I heard the words "bucolic agrarian compound." Major vocab points for that one. That's just an example, but it only takes one word/phrase to make the lyrics clever.

I also find that I seem to have a soundtrack in my head, just of songs that fit a moment. Small sounds or a word can trigger the memory of a song and that becomes my background music. For example, the Ministry of Magic song "Snape vs. Snape" starts with a sort of chime pattern that I recalled when I heard the resonance pattern of the tent poles at DM. I kept expecting to hear the song after something knocked into them >.<

Basically, music is ubiquitous in my life. I respond to it physically, mentally, and, emotionally. There is nothing like it, and nothing can replace its significance in my life. I still probably have more to say on the subject, but that's all I can think of right now.

Today is awesome because I saw a friend I haven't seen for 3 months and I almost finished season four of Doctor Who.