Last night I was on the phone for about 2 hours with a friend just talking about whatever and at one point we started talking about 80s movies and what ones we saw as a kid in the theater. We also talked a little about toys, clothing, and whatever. It was funny to remember lines from Pee Wee or some other movie. Of course you know my life revolves around Ghostbusters and who knows how many times I’ve watched it – but I can’t recite a single line. It’s as if my mind just chose to not remember things like that. Yet, I can remember lines of poetry, song lyrics, and other things.

I have a friend in North Carolina who works with people who have autism and she had recently come to NYC for a few days. During that time we talked about the kids and adults that she works with and how some of them learn to talk and express themselves through music. She is a music therapist and has used some techniques such as asking a question while beating a drum to give it a rhythm and the child answers back to that rhythm.

I wonder if in some way I retain information or quotes better in my brain if I can associate it to a beat or pulse. When I was in high school I could never memorize things – but then when I started taking poetry classes in college, I could recall lines, phrases, and then deconstruct and interpret their meanings. I even ended up taking a graduate level english course my senior year because I had time, and it was a poetry course.

I’m not in any way saying I’m autistic but I know there are ways the brain develops in people and helps them learn, understand, and also compensate for a weaker part – like idiot souvants or such. So I wonder if my little brain likes musical things and remembers it better than a speech, book, or movie. I do tend to remember conversations but I think of conversations as verses to song. The thing is, I’m not that musically inclined. I can’t play music by ear, my aural skills weren’t good enough to be a sound recording major, I am not able to play many instruments, and I struggle to read music if it is not in a key of C. I never learned how to really read music, only whatever basic things I was taught in grammar school — you know, FACE, EGBDF – that stuff. So jumping to another key takes me a few minutes to transpose the notes.

Well – the point of this is:

I may never ever be able to recite a sonnet but I bet I could tell you every word to “It’s The End of the World” by R.E.M.