I am sitting in the morning at the diner on the corner
The New Leaf #51
I once had an earworm so bad it took me going all the way to India to get rid of it. An earworm – a song that gets stuck in your head and threatens to drive you over a cliff with frustration – usually lasts some hours or maybe a few days. But this one had stayed with me for weeks, and I was getting desperate. It had entered my mind at a moment of weakness, as I’d made the mistake of wandering into the labyrinthine Boots at Liverpool Street station while fresh from the dentist and loaded up on valium. I can only assume my altered state meant my defences were down because when this low rent millennium dance track came on, it entered my body and possessed me, possibly having gained entry under the fingernails (like the fox demons at the Fushimi Inari shrine in Kyoto). Days became weeks as the earworm looped, celebrating my descent into madness. The beast only let go after I'd landed in India, where my brain so flooded with constant overwhelm that nothing else could possibly survive. This happened 13 years ago but I'm still hesitant to think about it too hard, in case my brain recalls the song and the whole thing starts over. I live in constant fear that some GenZ'er will discover the damn thing and make an ironic TikTok dance, and I will have no choice but to quit the Internet.
92% of people get earworms, according to an article in Scientific American where writer Harriet Brown describes it as "benign rumination" before going on to profess to having had an earworm for over 30 goddamn years, "a series of nine notes from a tune I have never been able to name". The horror! The BBC cites some research on the phenomena, speculating it may be related to how we used to pass on information through song – we like a rhythm and have evolved to remember it. But there's also research suggesting that earworms may be related to stress – if you hear a song in a difficult moment, you could find yourself recalling the same song whenever you're in a similar tough spot in the future, which is interesting I guess, if brutal – to think that whenever something bad happens, my brain is free associating through my personal history of stress, setting it all to the score of this one song from a kids TV show I watched when I was six.
But the science seems to conclude that most of the time, earworms are random. My personal theory is that they're a mental tick or stim, like a brain equivalent to biting your nails or absentmindedly peeling labels off drinks bottles.
The cure for an earworm is usually to go do or listen to something else, ideally something that your restless brain will find even more delicious. And that something, my friends, is the DNA mix of Tom's Diner, Suzanne Vega's timeless 80s bop – it will flush your brain of the pest within minutes, leaving no trace of itself as it restores you to peace and sanity.
I came upon the earworm cure many years ago, deep in some Twitter thread where someone asserted that the way to get an annoying song out of your brain was to play Tom's Diner. A new Twitter search shows that Tom's Diner is indeed often mentioned in relation to earworms, but with the caveat that while it may eradicate your problem, it may also take its place. I guess you'll have to consider what's the worse fate – risking an invasion of Tom's Diner, or being stuck with Grace Kelly by Mika for weeks, like I was in the autumn of 2012. Bloody Mika! It's a fate I wouldn't wish on anybody.
Vega wrote that song in 1981 while attending university near Tom's Restaurant on the corner of Broadway and West 112nd Street in Manhattan – meaning Tom's Diner is in fact also the Seinfeld diner. This is a coincidence that feels like it should mean more than it probably does, like most coincidences do. I wish I could say that an earworm can be a message – you're being plagued by this song because it has some meaning for you to discover – but most of the time it's just your brain tapping its foot. So go on and flush your noggin of the stuff that doesn't serve you, and choose the things you want to put in there instead.
Writings
Fish and chips: The immigrant roots of Britain's national dish – Eaten
Fish and chips are as British as the Beatles and the royal family, but once upon a time it started out as "fish fried in the Jewish fashion", keeping working class people going in the East End of London. For Eaten, the food history magazine, I wrote about the remarkable journey of what Churchill called "the good companions", as fish and chips went from immigrant food to everyman food – because there's nothing better than a perfect chip. Eaten's summer issue, The Sea, is out now.
Before SunÂrise and the ultiÂmate intimacy – Little White Lies
On 16th June it was 30 years since Jesse and Céline met in VienÂna with no phones, no phoÂtos, and no future – and Before Sunrise’s intense attenÂtion has nevÂer looked more attractive. For Little White Lies I wrote about my personal Roman Empire – why it got me then, and why it continues to get me every time 🌅
How a second passport became the key to European freedom for Brits – The Independent
In the decade after Brexit, hundreds of thousands of Brits – young and old – have faced up to heavy bureaucracy to regain their European rights. But what starts out as a practical project, to become a UK-EU dual citizen through ancestry, tends to turn into an emotional journey. I've usually written about citizenship from the European immigrant perspective, and it was interesting to see it from the other side in this story for The Independent – so many Brits still feel European. The Independent ran a follow-up story highlighting some of the best stories from the comments.
Readings
For this month's article recommendations from around the internet, head over to Reading List, Intellectual Freebird edition.