Pack Creek Ranch, San Juan County, Utah
February into March 2025
Mild winter weather at dawn, early spring weather by afternoon.
EAR WORMS
A friend – a university professor of clinical psychology – once asked me if I knew what an ear worm was and if I had ever experienced one.
(The technical term is involuntary musical cognition.)
I had not. But he had. Often enough to research the subject.
The rest of the story: (his, not mine.)
He recently passed through Moab, and I asked him if he was still affected by an ear worm.
No. How did he resolve the problem?
He taught a class that introduced graduate students to the process of group therapy. The students were asked to bring to class a personal concern to submit to the group. A tricky business – but the students needed to experience both the therapeutic process themselves as well as learn how to be an effective leader in the technique.
The professor began the course by setting a personal example. He shared his long attempt to cope with his ear worm. Despite his knowledge of the functioning of the brain, he had never been able to control the relentless tune that played in his mind for periods of time. He couldn’t explain it.
One of the older women students asked him what the tune was. Oddly enough, he admitted, no one had ever asked him that question.
It was The Tennessee Waltz.
The woman started softly singing the song – much to his surprise. She sang it all the way through – leaving him speechless, with tears streaming down his face.
Then the woman held out her hand and said,
“Dance with me – silently.”
And they did that – hearing only the music in their minds.
And then what happened?
The rest of the students applauded.
And so?
The ear worm never rose up involuntarily in his mind again. But once in a while he consciously recalled the vivid memory of dancing with that student.
The human brain remains the most complex and mysterious part of our Being. Using many strategies and sophisticated technologies, we can chart its activities and functions. But we can never know its contents. But sometimes – just sometimes – someone else seems to intuit what we are thinking and asks us to dance.
It’s not weird if it works.