Selective Memory

Moving in was fun and eventful, for those concerned. I missed the dorm. I get a lot of great fellowship here. And my roommate is one of my best beds, which helps.

Complete change of topic time.

I have tons of songs memorized. Lyrics, melody, all kinds of things. But recently I've realized that I hardly know any of the lyrics to all of my favorite songs. Mostly songs that I have only started listening to in the last year or so.

At first I thought this might be due to me just getting a weaker short-term memory or something. I was really paranoid for a while that I was growing stupid. I think the paranoia over that was more stupid than anything.

Then I realized that I remembered so many details about those songs that aren't lyrics.

I was in choir up until 10th grade. Singing was my big thing, and I was decent at it. I'm still a decent singer for a guy without any musical training. But my singing days were the same time period where I was learning all the songs I have the lyrics memorized for.

At this point in my life, I have probably spent more time studying guitar and music as a whole than I have singing, since I quit singing way back then. I've spent dedicated time practicing and training my ear and my skill for guitar. So that has become almost entirely what I focus on in music. It actually makes it harder to listen to non-guitar music just because I'm so used to listening to it and figuring out how to play it with my ears.

Because of this, I have to really concentrate to learn lyrics from songs and I naturally pick up the guitar and instrumentals in them. I could probably sing you the guitar solo of most songs I've listened to in the last year, but I could barely recite any of the lyrics, compared to the perfect memory I have of songs from way back when.
It's not better or worse, just different. I really do think it's interesting how much my ability to memorize songs has changed over the years.