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I have something called musical memory.

 

It’s exactly what it sounds like—I remember music the way someone with eidetic memory can recall images, with nearly perfect precision (though the mind is bound to take some liberties, imposing occasionally erroneous variation to keep us guessing . . . from dying of eventual boredom.)

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Due to this condition, rising and falling intonations, instrumental nuance, and the subtle shifts inherent in a melody swim around in the ductwork of my brain as if a record is spinning just behind my eyelids.

 

It’s kind of like a jukebox someone carved in my skull.

 In other words, I never had a pressing need for an iPod. 

  

At the moment, for example, I’m hearing Lovely Day

by Bill Withers in all its melodic grandeur.

 

It’s always on my mind during these routine perambulations around the perimeter,

I think because it was my father’s favorite song not of the classical persuasion.

I remember it always filling the house when I was kid but only early in the morning.

 

Other parts of the day were strictly reserved for Rachmaninov, Puccini, Mozart, and Copland. Except for the night.

 

Night belonged to Shostakovich and Chopin.

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