Musicophilia
That’s the name of a worthwhile new book by Oliver Sacks. Do you hear music in your mind, even when you don’t choose to? I do, all the time, and so does Dr. Sacks. He’s wondering why:
I see my room, my furniture every day, but they do not re-present themselves as ‘pictures in the mind.’ Nor do I hear imaginary dog barks or traffic noises in the background of my mind, or smell aromas of imaginary meals cooking, even through I am exposed to such perceptions every day. I do have fragments of poetry and sudden phrases darting into my mind, but with nothing like the richness and range of my spontaneous musical imagery. Perhaps it is not just the nervous system, but music itself that has something very peculiar about it — its beat, its melodic contours, so different from those of speech, and its peculiarly direct connection to the emotions…..[Aliens landing on Earth would be] stupefied [if] they realized that, even in the absence of external sources, most of us are incessantly playing music in our heads.
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I hear music in my mind all the time… but then again I hear sound in my mind all the time, replaying or imagining conversations, and writing is like transcribing the internal monologue. (I only wish I could transcribe the original music in my mind as well as I hear it…)