I’m sure that today’s NY Times story, Neuron Network Goes Awry, and Brain Becomes an IPod must have been emailed all over the world countless times today. Don’t we all experience musical hallucinations in at least a low-grade way all the time? I mean, I certainly do. There are dominant, very insistently present songs. One very common one for me is Kabhi Aar Kabhi Par, a much remixed classic Bollywood tune that, once you’ve heard it, is dizzyingly unshakeable. Others:

Huss/ Fess by Rakasat Sout el Houb
Nokta by Rachid Taha
Bhanwara Bada Nadan as sung by Asha Bhosle

It’s hard at this moment to get Kabhi Aar Kabhi Par out of my head, or at least turned down, enough that I can think to write.

Who else has an inner-aural experience of one’s own poems, or favorite poems by others, as a well-worn groove of often-repeated, unwilled, heard lines? Or even just a simple collocation that comes back and back and back? Do you love it or does it drive you mad? Or both? The fundamental question is, why do our brains want to be so incantatory, anyway?