An early morning exercise, day two.

I allow a disc jockey to work turntables in my mind, playing unheard
music that is sweeter than heard music. My disc jockey can work more
than two turntables; she is an infinite turntablist.

For me, hearing music live is almost an annoyance. My ears samples a
musical performance, and it's work for at least an half hour, if it is
new music. It's not easy when it is music I've heard before because
it's rare when a musician plays their own songs according with my
official version, locked in my head. To all the musicians who have
written music I love. Thanks. But I own your song now when it comes to
the amphitheater between my ears. Yep, and that's why I usually turn
off the radio and begin to hum the tunes I love, tunes that have the
ability to juice adrenaline or oxytocin out of my neuroendocrinology.
And I have no idea what my inner dj is going to cue up.

I hear Karaoke is a powerful organizational development tool in Japan
and one sings it with ones work teams. That is, a fellow who wants to
deliver a message about another fellow's work performance can sing
just the right song to get the message across. My inner DJ is just as
clever. When a song drops onto the turntable and sings, I have taken
to writing down the lyrics. I'm getting musical telegrams from myself,
and those musical telegrams contain huge hints. But I'll let you read,
"Listening with the Third Ear", by Theodor Reik for yourself.

A song playing in my mind is clearly a message from my unconscious and
subconscious. This is how I know. If I fail to write down the song,
the inner DJ erases the play list and punishes me for an undelivered
message by with-holding it. It's the same punishment for failing to
write down a dream. The auteur in my mind gives me one or two chances
to write it down; if I dare to drive before I give the dream to pen
and ink, the dream hides forever behind the details of that drive.

I am a compulsive whistler. It annoys my co-workers. Yes, I whistle
while I work, but I'm not working in the lumber yard, but in a
department where business analysts and project managers engage in deep
thinking. I can't catch myself snoring at night and I whistle a few
refrains before I catch myself whistling at work. I bring in danish
from the Dutch Bakery a lot. A good compromise is the low whistle,
nothing more than the sound of pressed breath forced over my lips.
When I am jamming on the computer code I write, I am jamming on some
tune too and I'm barely aware of song or code. Pandora doesn't seem to
help, wanting to launch new songs on me all the time.

I wish I were as good as Mozart who composed and played pool
simultaneously, sinking bumper shots and humming requiems.

So when that music is stored on the vinyl discs kept in my brain, my
inner dj can cue it up. This morning, a tune from Moby, that song from
Play that goes, "Oh, Lordy, the trouble I find." Moby borrowed that
musical gem from a recording made by a musical folklorist called Alan
Lomax, who recorded folk musicians. I'm not sure the folk musician who
Lomax recorded singing this musical gem even has a headstone.

My inner dj also toys with the lyrics, and it's all the fault of MAD
Magazine. I'm only needing to explain to those who eschewed Alfred E.
Newman as vulgar. MAD had a brillant run of lyric re-writes for
musicals during the seventies. Google "Sing Along with MAD", and catch
up on this important cultural reference, will you? MAD Magazine made
it possible for "Weird Al" Yankovic to happen. MAD Magazine probably
made it possible for the Capitol Steps to happen too. Or maybe it was
Tom Lehrer who kicked off the trend towards humorous satirical lyrics?
Nah, this can be traced back to colonial days in American somehow, and
I'm thinking about early American campaign songs.

Listening with the Third Ear: http://bit.ly/aACGb9