Dorothea Lange: Disc used in corn fields in California.
It is drawn by seven horses. Tulare County, California (1938)

" … seems to be looking out for me."

My internal dialogue occurs on several seemingly concurrent channels, like SiriusXM Satellite Radio, which features dozens of channels, each carrying a specific type of program. I frequently listen to their Broadway channel, for instance, where I can usually access some big production numbers that lift my spirits, and their Sinatra channel, which plays The American Songbook. I mention this because my internal dialogue is not exclusively comprised of verbal interaction but also sometimes includes music, often with lyrics and sometimes without. Like with my Ruminating that I described in a recent story, my internal dialogue serves up more than conversation.

The musical channels fascinate me. They can be as entertaining as listening in to a physical broadcast and often carry much more meaning. Because my iAlogue music appears situationally, it often carries meaning beyond whatever the misremembered lyrics carry. It sometimes holds clues about what I'm doing when I don't think I'm doing very much of anything. For instance, I might catch myself ouging that old Jerome Kern and lyricist Otto Harbach tune Smoke Gets In Your Eyes which features the line, "When a lovely flame dies, Smoke Gets In Your Eyes." It's describing sadness. I might notice at that moment that I feel sad, too, but I hadn't noticed until that tune came floating into the foreground. These tunes tend to clue me in.

Music carries much symbolic meaning, aching for active interpretation. I find it alluring and cannot seem just to Let It Be. I feel compelled to follow its siren call and often find some informative meaning lurking just within some snippet of a half-remembered lyric. Often, these tunes provide my cadence, as if a drummer was setting my pace. Even when I'm not walking, the rhythm of my work seems easily influenced by some tune playing in close background in my iOlogue space. I rarely remember the entire lyric and often misremember even the part I hear playing in my head. However, the misremember usually carries some underlying symbolic meaning, twisting the original story into something better fitting the current conditions.

It seems I hold a DJ somewhere inside me, spinning platters expressly for my enlightenment. The DJ sometimes even plays songs that haven't been written yet, snippets of melody and lyrics that I, with some focused effort, have turned into tunes I claimed I wrote. That claim can only prove true if I accept that I and not some external spirit spin the platters in my head. I never knew how I knew enough to choose the perfect song to interpret into valuable, deeper meaning in some significant moment, but I somehow knew.

Part of the magic of iAlogue might lie in the fact that it doesn't seem to rely upon knowing to work. It helps discover but independent of anybody knowing and then sharing. It serves up symbolic signals that, when mindfully combined with situations, elicit significant insights. This occurs without volition or permission. I do not need to call upon it to inform me. I usually have no clue beforehand that I'm not fully clued in until I decode the symbolic message and understand. This facility seems reliable, though I never know when it's not there and not working. When I need inspiration or information, it serves something. That DJ seems always to be looking out for me.

©2024 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #iAlogue , #PureSchmaltz