Remember?

Like many, I was saddened to hear about the death of David Crosby. His music was a big part of my personal soundtrack, having played his records (for you younger readers, big round things, black, sat on a turntable) again and again in my room, as well as listening on the radio (an over-the-air transmission of music programming where you had to turn a knob to pick a station. In a streaming world, both systems seem quaint.) 

As we were just about to get in the car for a two-hour drive home from a family visit, I asked Spotify to queue up a "best of" playlist of his songs. "Teach Your Children," "Helplessly Hoping," "Wooden Ships:" the list goes on and on, and easily filled the entire ride home. My wife was kind, not to let me enjoy the music as she did as well, but to not comment as I sang along to every song. As I went "doo-doo-doo-da-doo. DOO-doo-da-doo-doo-doo" ("Suite: Judy Blue Eyes" if you couldn't tell) two things struck me. First, what an amazing musical legacy he and his mates left behind. And second, despite the bulk of his most well-known material being 50 years or so old, I remembered every word, melody and rhythm like it was yesterday.

The question is why? While I love music, I am not a working musician and have no need to remember lyrics or melodies in my day-to-day life. So while it's nice (for me at least) to be able to sign along, there are other things that would probably be better served talking up the limited real estate in my head. I can't remember to write "milk" on the shopping list or how many scoops of coffee I added to the pot, but I can sing along at the top of my lungs with CSN&Y, confident that even if we don't have two cats in the yard we have a very, very, very fine house. Surely there's a better way to use my brain.

Maybe not. Scientists say they are different types of memory. Short term is our working buffer, enabling us to recall errands, when to stir the spaghetti sauce and where we left the car. Research has shown that as we get older, this buffer starts to erode, making it harder to remember where we put our keys or if we told our spouse we ran out of cereal. Note this is not to be confused with selective memory, where you choose not to remember that you forgot to take out the trash. 

Long term memory comes in a few different flavors. It can be episodic, which are memories of events, including locations and people involved. Things that fall into this bucket take a conscious effort to recall. There's semantic memory, which is all of your accumulated knowledge about the world. Like episodic items, you remember these things only if you take a moment and bring them to the surface. And last is procedural memory, such as tying your shoes, playing saxophone or simply walking. While you might get rusty if you haven't done it in a while, odds are the ability will come back quickly once you give it a go. In fact, years after you learn those skills through countless repetitions, you can likely do them with your eyes closed without thinking about the mechanics. And also falling into this category are song lyrics and melodies.

The reasons for this are several. First is the sheer repetition factor. Like riding a bike or typing, odds are you sang that tune hundreds of times, so it got grooved into your brain. And because it was exactly the same every time, the groove got that much deeper. Also, for many or many of us, music creates an emotional reaction, which further locks a song deep into your head. All of which helps to explain why I was able to give an impromptu concert all the way up the New Jersey Turnpike.

The thing is that procedural memory is not selective. Do anything often enough, and even if your tastes change it will stay lodged in your synapses. And so while I wish him nothing but good health, I hope I am alone in the car on the day that Barry Manilow dies. "Copacabana" anyone?

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Marc Wollin of Bedford's singing should rightfully be confined to the shower. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, The Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://www.glancingaskance.blogspot.com/, as well as via Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.