Neural Pathways

I was trying to remember a song a couple of days ago. I couldn't remember it, but it got me to wondering just how the brain works. Or, more to the point, why it works the way it does. Or doesn't.

There's this bit of information that I'm searching for. I know it's in there and I know I will eventually find it. But I really have to work for it. I think and think and think. I don't know what's going on up there, but I feel like I'm getting close. I start getting scraps of information that seem to be just out of reach. I'm getting closer. I could remember the gist of the song - the basic idea or message. I just couldn't remember the exact words, or the tune, or the singer.

Two days later I'm lying in bed and there it suddenly is - the song - the words, the tune, the singer. Where was it two days ago? Why couldn't I think of it when I was working to think of it? What had to happen in my brain to get the exact information from wherever it was stored to where I wanted it to be? And why did it take so long? Is there a little nano-creature in my brain that goes looking through dusty boxes and drawers, a creature that continues to look even when I've stopped thinking about the information - even when I'm asleep? And when that nano-creature finds the information, no matter when, it flings it to the part of my brain that then says "Ah Ha! That's it!"

I don't have a good wrap-up for this post. No lessons learned or anything like that. I suppose there are scientists and researchers out there trying to figure out the same thing. Except they're getting paid for it! I wonder if they've gotten any farther than I have.

By the way, the song I was trying to think of was by Huey Lewis and the News, Heart and Soul.

Did I Ever Tell You

My dad wrote a song. Well, he wrote the lyrics to a song, "Did I Ever Tell You." I found out about this song after he died. I was going through some of his things and found the correspondence between him and someone who was helping him get the song published. I don't have the lyrics or the song, so I decided to try to find it.

I contacted the Library of Congress (LoC), where they found a copy of the lyrics and music. But they won't send me a copy without the permission of the copyright holder. To find the copyright holder I have to commission a copyright search by someone at the LoC. This copyright search will cost me $150 per hour. They have estimated that the search will take two hours or less.

Well, I just don't have $300 to pay for a copyright search when I don't know if the copyright holder will even give permission for the LoC to send me a copy. Someday I might have. But not today.

The song was recorded by someone named Annette Warren circa 1940. When I google that name all I get is hits on Annette Benning and Warren Beatty. No luck finding other people mentioned in the correspondence, either.

I'll keep trying, and if I come up with an extra $300, I'll commission that search. But until then I'm sort of stuck.

So I may or may not ever get to hear or read the words to the published song that my dad wrote.