I tend to get songs stuck in my head. They play on repeat for a while, then another slots in from some other genre.
I recently got a fragment of a jazz song stuck and I could neither place it nor get rid of it. It was instrumental – so no words to look up – and I couldn’t “sing” it well enough for anyone else to figure it out.
I assumed it was something I had heard from a Peanuts TV special and I poured through hours of soundtracks to try and find a match.
I had pretty much given up and the song faded a bit, popping up in my head at odd moments, before – randomly – I saw a reference to Dave Brubek’s Take Five. It wasn’t just any jazz song in my head, it was arguably one of the best known. And once I heard it, the song slotted neatly back into my memory.
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More recently, I was listening to a late 90’s/early 2000’s playlist and I was reminded of another song from that era. I remembered a female singer who belted out the refrain. British, maybe. Part of a band. But that was all I had.
I put some effort into recalling the song and over a few days I could finally get the refrain looping in my head. The music and the intensity – but no words yet.
Then, a few days ago, I finally recalled enough to bring up part of the phrase she kept repeating: “______as I am” and I thought the band started with an “S”.
Not enough yet, so I let that simmer in my head as my unconscious mind tried to slot every word I knew into that title.
Finally, while I was driving and stopped at a light, it clicked.
“Weak as I am” was the line. And the song was called “Weak”. As the light changed to green, the band popped into my head – “Skunk Anasie”.
Satisfied, I drove on and listened to it when I got home. Good song, but maybe not one I want add to a playlist.
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I’ve been writing haikus for long enough that my memories in Facebook are littered with them. Since there’s one for every day, patterns begin to emerge over the years.
This morning, the steps and ramp out the back door were so ice covered that the dogs – and I – kept slipping. Once they were safely inside I went back out to chip away at the thick ice with a small hammer. It was hard work and I had to stop a few times to rest. I didn’t get it all cleared and instead looked up Pet Safe Ice Melt. While I was online I got a notice about memories on facebook and opened it up. Sure enough, on the same day 4 years ago, I had written a haiku about chipping away at the ice to reach the patio.
I’m not just a creature of habit. I’m a documented creature of habit.
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And now, here in 2026, we have another kind of ICE to worry about. I’m not going to go into it – there’s enough media and rhetoric for a lifetime of blog posts – but it does remind me of my central problem with the history classes I took in school.
We, as a people, don’t learn anything from the past.
It doesn’t matter how many dates of wars we memorize or the names of eras and decades we decide on, we keep making the same mistakes of the past. I always found that frustrating and pointless in school. If we aren’t learning and aren’t getting better at avoiding past mistakes, what’s the point?
Hence, environments where the worst of humanity rise again and again.
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So, I muddle back through my personal memories that are unreliable, but inconsequential, and wonder if humans will get anything useful out of our own history.