Hearing Things What Aren't There?

I've been trying to repaint the interior of my house, and last night my daughter and I tackled the bathroom. Now, it had this awful dark checkered pattern and when the kids were younger had splashed toothpaste? or something on it that had bleached out areas. Not wanting to repaper, I opted for painting it. So how to do it? First, we have to use a shellac or oil based paint and then use a texture paint over that. The bathroom is long and narrow, and though we had the fan on and the window open, the fumes from the "odorless" shellac about affixiated us.

I felt as though when I went in to put on a third coat, I was breathing in 100 proof alcohol. But earlier while we were painting together, I kept hearing the prettiest music in the background.

"Are you playing some music in your room?" I asked my daughter.

"Nope. I don't hear anything." She narrowed her eyes at me. "That's not good, Mom."

The music would vanish, and I wouldn't hear anything for quite a while, then a different tune would play, very softly, very far away, but always pleasant and I wanted to know what the instrumental songs were.

"Maybe, someone's playing music next door...outside," I said.

But they weren't.

"Okay, this reminds me of the great composers," I said, trying to make the most of my ghostly music experience, or the hallucinations caused by the shellac, "some would hear the entire pieces of music they composed in their heads before they wrote them down. Just like authors who visualize whole scenes for their stories before they write them." I smiled at her.

She shook her head at me. "Not good, Mom."

So I hear music that isn't really playing. What's wrong with that? Music helps to make the job go more quickly. Even if it's really not there.

Terry Spear, Heart of the Wolf, The Vampire...In My Dreams

www.terryspear.com