What’s stuck in your head right now?

It’s easy to get stuck on catchy or lousy songs. Once in a while, though, you run across the kind of earworm that doesn’t seem to have any special meaning or quality – but one which drives you crazy regardless.

I’ve always figured these were the modern audio equivalent of searching for omens. Some garbled Agarthan transmission, picking up a bit here and a piece there out of the ether, becoming encrusted with the barnacles of our shared language and half-formed collective subconscious.

That transmission was aimed directly between your ears, and when it hits, it buries itself like a meteor into the crater it’s made of your attention span. You’re no longer easily distracted, flitting from scene to scene, trying to make it through your day. Now there’s a silver nail keeping you transfixed and tuned into a single message.

So the next time you get a transmission stuck in your head – a tune without words, a song from your childhood, that stupid advertising jingle from the eighties – take some time to turn it over and reflect on it. Figure out what the monks at the navel of the world are trying to tell you, and then decide if it’s worth taking action on it.

For my part? It’s been two straight days of David Byrne wailing into my skull.

Everything is very quiet
Everyone has gone to sleep
I’m wide awake on memories …
These memories can’t wait.
Memories can’t … wait.