When I clear away all of my thoughts, push away all the noise and chaos of my thoughts, there's always a song playing underneath it all--like I've got a 24 hour dee jay on duty in my head spinning records at all times. Sometimes the song stays with me for days, but other times, the dee jay will lift the needle mid-lyric and put on something else. Something random. Right now, inexplicably, that song is "Angry Young Man" by Styx, but when I woke up this morning, it was Gloria Estefan's "Words Get in the Way."

I don't know what this is all about. It's not like I even those songs. I don't remember hearing them recently, though I can imagine that maybe "Words Get in the Way" was playing at the grocery store while I was shopping for kitty litter and cheese ravioli and it evilly worked its way into my subconscious.

It's not like I am fanatic about music, either. It's good to dance to, and it's necessary for road trips, and when I was a teenager, I listened to it a lot more than I do now. These days I like quiet. I need silence. There are times when even the sound of the cat purring can irritate me. Or the jingle-jangle of the pug's tags can drive me to distraction.

My students and I have talked about the idea of a soundtrack-in-your-head. Some of them know exactly what I'm talking about while others say they don't have one. I wonder why that is and what it's all about.