Musical Loops

I have a tendency to fixate on songs, listening to them over and over again for weeks at a time before slowly letting them fade into the background of my life, an ever increasing part of my encyclopedic musical library. I’ve had several people point out this behavior as abnormal to me. And, perhaps it is. But I figure it’s still probably healthier than a lot of alternative behaviors some people do obsessively. Like eating glass or Chap Stick…

While I choose songs that I believe have a catchy melody, I’ll gladly admit the main reason for my fixation is due to lyrics. You see, I’m a word person. I love them—words that is. I think up elaborate and flowery sentences, only to squander them when my mouth gets a sentence or two behind my brain and everything comes out a jumbled mess (perhaps just one of the reasons I tend to stay quiet in social situations). My -perhaps- compulsive obsession about words feeds into my putting songs on endless loops. I break the words down, line by line, stanza by… you get it. I analyze possible meanings as deeply as any English professor would ever hope for in an essay, and then I start to wondering how that message applies to my life, be it in a lesson I need to take to heart, or simply a refrain to which I feel a great deal of attachment and  empathy.

I develop a strange connection to these songs, as if they’re a secret message coded for me that if I can only figure out I can use to unlock whatever problems face me at the moment. I suppose I’m not too dissimilar from other people in that regard. Music is deeply engrained in human culture and has been shown to have a variety of interesting effects on brain activity. Still, I never cease to be fascinated by the way in which I actively choose to let music into my life.

Sorry, this little piece has no big discoveries or interesting, life-changing paradigm shifts, it simply has some observations and provides a somewhat illogical satisfaction to my compulsive need to write something late at night.Oh, and I've listened to Linkin Park's "Castle of Glass" about sixteen times in a row now... Last night it was Imagine Dragon's "Radioactive."