rinue | Anatomy of an Earworm

Thursday was the 75th anniversary of the bomb drop on Hiroshima, so the editor of the magazine Foreign Policy, James Palmer, tweeted a link to a novella-length 1997 essay by Lee Sandlin called "Losing the War," which I read. The essay briefly mentions a piece of chamber music written in a POW camp for the instruments of the musicians who happened to be there, "Quartet for the End of Time," by Olivier Messiaen. I found a recording by the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 1972, which I've been listening to in a disjointed way when I can get people to leave me alone for a second (sometimes 30 seconds in a go).

This morning, I hit a bit about 10 minutes in where a sequence of four notes sounded familiar, and I kept repeating them in my head until I could get words to show up. Those words were "from the inside." I searched the lyrics "from the inside" and came up with a Linkin Park song of the same name which I'm sure I've never heard. No. I came up with another word I thought might come before that sequence, which was love. This was also fruitless.

Then it clicked into place as I went about my day that the next bit after that sequence of "from the inside" notes is "in your eyes."

Since then, I have had a Peter Gabriel song stuck in my head.

I dig the music video. It's no "Sledgehammer," but that's a high bar.