A thin ribbon of green viscosity slithers under a flautist’s door. It slides along walls and meets other slender ribbons – deep, glistening chestnut from the folk club, vivid scarlet from a classical concert in the town hall and vibrant, earthy umber from the mellow notes of Miles on a stereo. Together they dance solemnly, rising up, coiled together in a strange braid of colour and light, and then part to pursue their solitary tasks. They are creatures of great beauty and ingenuity.
Theirs is a moral mission, a kind of community service to enable hosts to reenact and re-appreciate music they had hardly been aware of having previously heard. Their methods are subtle and diverse, gaining strength from the righteousness of their cause and solidarity of their co-conspirators. They aren’t always welcomed by their hosts and need to bide their time before insinuating their sonorous forms into the heads of their hosts.
Success and satisfaction vary considerably between hosts. So many factors are in play that can never be calculated in advance: temperament of the host, musical memories and associations, tastes and appreciation. It is risky work and could so easily fail and annoy.
Examples from the Annals of Ear Wormery yield the following verbatim accounts of worm insinuations of the past:
Male host: ‘I’ve got this tune in my head and it just won’t go away. I think it was in an advert for cigars or something. Ages ago. You can’t advertise fags now. And I Can’t Get Rid of It‘. Hums tune
Woman friend: ‘Oh yeah, I think they used classical music to make the man smoking the cigar look relaxed. Was it Bolero? – no that was Torville and Dean. It might have been called tune on a g string? … Air On a G String. That’s it.’
The etherial, light blue worm in question moved on, after a suitable time, to inhabit another host. Job well done.
Inhabitations can vary in length, another extract from the Annals shows a longer and more productive engagement with a host:
Female Host: Do you know, I’ve got this song going round in my head and I don’t know where it’s come from. I can sing it, and even the words are familiar. But how did it get in my head? It’s driving me mad.
Woman friend: How does it go?
FH: sings song
WF: Oh I know that. ‘Coming Through the Rye’.
They sing together with appropriate harmony
FH: Great. But where did it come from? I’ve no memory of singing it before or even learning the words?
They come back to the song over several days and listen to it on YouTube before the ear worm is able to leave exhausted, but triumphant.
Let the record celebrate these intimate relationships which occur between selfless ear worm and host. Not all music can be rendered in this manner, but when an ear worm forms from a musical thread it can be an exquisite, sometimes almost painful experience for their hosts.
