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The Music in Your Head
Conspiracy researcher Jeff Wells has been on an interesting train of thought lately. He’s been writing a lot about the possibility that the human brain doesn’t actually generate ideas from scratch, but rather tunes into ideas that are floating around in the ether. The nervous system, in this world view, acts as a sort of radio receiver which may pick up all kinds of strange signals.
At my Traces from Beyond website, a contributor named Jenny recently shared a phenomenon she experiences from time to time, which she calls musical premonition.
I think of a song, or rather, I hear it playing in my head just or shortly before I turn on the radio. This can happen when I’m getting into the car - I always turn on the radio after a while - or when I get home and need some music. As soon as I turn the radio on, that exact song is playing (and roughly in the same place as it was in my mind).
There are a variety of mundane explanations which we could apply to Jenny’s experiences, but something makes me wonder if this isn’t an extremely concrete and literal example of the mind acting as an electromagnetic receiver. Maybe radio waves are just one small segment of a much wider spectrum that intrudes into our minds.
What do you think? Has this ever happened to you?
May 3rd, 2006 at 11:03 pm
This idea was mentioned in the movie Waking Life - where one person comes up with an invention and a few minutes later, someone else in the other part of the world comes up with the same thing.
May 3rd, 2006 at 11:27 pm
[…] While we’re fiddling around with radio analogies in our on-going quest to understand the mind and human experiences, I wanted to share another idea that’s been bouncing back and forth inside mine. I haven’t actually had the time to develop this into a full-fledge post, but I thought I’d put the idea out there and see where it took us. Let’s start with the second chapter of the Book of Acts, which describes the origin of the Christian holiday of the Pentecost: When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues[a] as the Spirit enabled them. […]
May 4th, 2006 at 3:16 am
I know EXACTLY what your contributor means about musical premonition. The same thing happens to me all the time (and not just in musical form) and has done for years.
May 4th, 2006 at 3:35 am
Only all of the time.
May 4th, 2006 at 8:14 am
With total humility, I can 100% relate to this experience.
Another very common experience of similar nature happens when I’m in the same room with someone. I’ll thinkof “the next thing I’m gonna say,” toss the idea/wording/thoughts around in my head for a few moments, and then BAM — just when I open my mouth to say it, they beat me to it.
These instnaces remind me of what Rupert Sheldrake calls “morphic resonance” — which is the exact same phenomenon described in Waking Life (first comment posted).
My personal interpretation, perhaps borrowed from Sheldrake’s idea, has to do with these “ideas” existing in (what I think SHeldrake calls) “the field” — from where we pull these thoughts/ideas, consciously or unconsiously.
I like how this can work on a small level (two people talking) or a huge level (an entire society/culture). In Stephen Pressfield’s book “The War of Art,” he describes how the Muses are whispering in all of our ears all the time. The ideas they whisper may often be the same… but for the most part none of us are consciously able to “hear.” Here is the excerpt:
May 4th, 2006 at 10:22 am
Sometimes I’ll even make a game of it. Radio predictions. Seems like I’m far from being the only one experiencing this kind of thing. Very interesting!
One thing to note, as I realize how little I actually listen to the ‘radio’ anymore - this happens a lot when I’m listening to my mp3 collection on shuffle, so the radio signal idea - though it makes sense and could be part of what’s happening - doesn’t account for all cases.
May 4th, 2006 at 11:50 am
If you believe in telepathy, then the song on the radio you could be picking up telepathically from someone who is listening to the same station.
Dottie’s comment: that is like Jung’s theory of collective conscious (I think that’s what it was called), also reminds me a bit of the 100th Monkey Phenomenon. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundredth_Monkey
May 4th, 2006 at 12:06 pm
I not only believe in it, I’ve experienced it.
I hate when people bring up Occam’s razor, but which one is a simpler explanation - that you’re brain can interpret radio waves directly, or that your brain can pick up other people’s brains who are hearing those radio waves converted by a radio?
May 4th, 2006 at 12:21 pm
That’s a great quote Skip. Here’s an older post of mine that’s totally relevant to this as well:
http://www.timboucher.com/journal/2006/02/12/music/
May 4th, 2006 at 3:36 pm
“I not only believe in it, I’ve experienced it.”
Please, do tell…
May 4th, 2006 at 3:48 pm
I think I posted about it someplace, but basically I was really stoned with an ex-girlfriend and we had a five minute conversation without speaking. Afterwards we talked about what had happened and verified what had been said. It was pretty wild.
May 4th, 2006 at 5:17 pm
Thanks.
Semi interesting up to the moment story on this radio topic
- as I was driving home, I was thinking about a couple of the blog topics, which started off on this chain with the Neil Young post.
Sure nuff, Neil came on the radio. (Rockin in the Free World fyi..)
May 4th, 2006 at 5:50 pm
*wo dude* I got “sweet emotion” in my head
*click* turn on radio
“HOLY SHIT!!! It’s on three stations at once!”
-tc
May 5th, 2006 at 12:20 am
There’s a certain irony involved in the idea that only Beethoven could hear the Muse’s whispering, I must say.