The other day, Matt sent me a link. It turned into a movie of a heavyset guy singing and dancing... sort of... along to some electro-pop song. Well, one assumes he was singing; you couldn't hear him, which is probably for the best.

Everyone sings in the shower, or wiggles in their chair when a particularly bouncy beat comes on over the headphones, right? Lots of people, anyway. I'm sure most everyone even has a favorite song or two for which they've put together little chair-dancing routines. So this little movie was fascinating in a, "there but for a webcam and the sense not to post embarrassing shit to the Internet, go I" kind of way. I must have watched it at least four times before I realized it was on a loop and forced myself to close it.

(If you want the link, you'll have to ask Matt for it. I don't have it.)

When Matt got home, he grinned at me manically. "Is the song stuck in your head yet?" he demanded.

"Well, no. I couldn't understand any of the lyrics."

"It's Romanian."

"Well, there you go."

"But just phonetically?"

No and no. I don't accept audio input very well, and it's kind of funny that Matt needs to be reminded of this, because my lack of skill at parsing sounds has driven him totally crazy on many an occasion.

And it is a skill, I believe, rather than an actual physical lack. When I get hearing tests, I perform well within the range of normal - but hearing tests typically involve headphones blocking out all other sounds, and a fairly high degree of concentration on my part. I have yet to encounter a hearing test where there's a TV or radio going on in the background, or one where I'm buried in a book. If I had, I'd probably have been rated totally deaf.

I've never liked parties with background music, because inevitably someone would try to talk to me, and I'd either spend the whole conversation shouting, "What? Huh?" or I'd just smile and nod and completely miss it.

I have a fairly loud speaking voice, and Matt's commented often that I have a tendency (which I don't notice at all, but I certainly believe him) to talk even louder when I'm on the phone. I suspect it's a subconscious effort to get the person on the other end to talk louder, themselves, because on the phone I don't get any visual cues from lipreading or body language.

When K.T. and I were working on the novel, we'd be sitting in the living room and all of a sudden she would jump up and run back to the computer room to answer her cell phone. I have no idea how she could have heard it. (Process that, if you would: My hearing - or at least, my processing of audio information - is worse than that of someone with tinnitus.)

So what that boils down to, with music, is that it's really rare for me to like a song the first time I hear it, because it usually takes me three or four run-throughs to understand enough of the lyrics to let it settle into my brain. And that's for songs sung in English. If it's in another language, I have to hear something literally hundreds of times before I begin to pick up even bits of it.

That, or I need to see it written out, where I can follow along. Once I've seen the words, I understand them much better when I hear them. That's probably one of the very best things, for me, to come out of the internet: Dozens and dozens of lyrics websites. All I need is the title, or even just a single line from the song, and access to Google, and I can get the rest of the song. My appreciation for current pop music has soared since I've been able to google the lyrics.

In my whole life, I've learned exactly one - one - non-English song entirely phonetically.

And the upside to all this? Music doesn't get stuck in my brain if I can't repeat it back to myself. So while Matt's been wandering around the house randomly warbling, "Ma-da-heeee, ma-da-hooooo!" my mind has been blissfully quiet.

Now, if only I could so easily forget the sight.

--Liz