melody/memory

an interesting thing is happening as i'm able to hold a pick and play guitar again, after 10 years of battle with the you-don't-want-it condition, focal dystonia. during the entire past ten years, along with losing control of the fine motor skills in my right hand, another curious neurological wipe occurred: that i was practically incapable of perceiving melody!! melodic continuity was just as scrambled as the kinetic instructions to my right hand! now, however, both activities are sprouting some exciting new growth...i believe the two go 'hand in hand'...

my 'amelodia' was almost the more frightening of the two conditions. picture a sampler with a memory of 4-5 seconds only able to reproduce a clipped mockingbird form of music. however much i tried i couldn't anticipate or perceive music, melody and/or meaning beyond the 4-5 sec. limit! it simply would be processed. i was stuck in a very short loop, indeed. my mind could only collage, rip a few words and paste them on a small surface and was denied the richness of original paragraphs and chapters. an ocd adhd rut.

it feels to me now that my body was experiencing [and still is, though to a much lesser extent] what our culture,  especially music, has experienced over the past 30 years. a self-fulfilling rut. imitations of imitations ad infinitum---the effects of total media saturation...the telephone game converting english into unintelligible chinese whispers....ooooh, and how horrible that feeling feels! another notion comes to me: that melody transmission is rooted in identifiable strains of culture [now reduced to 'genres' or 'styles']----not knowing the songs is not knowing the dances is....not knowing and not being able to participate in the culture in a meaningful way...melody is meaning...and losing melody is losing meaning, a huge chunk of language!

i welcome back melody and meaning in my life....and hope they stick around....its been lonely, fragmented and frankly nonsensical without them....