You know the drill when a song gets stuck in your head and certain parts of it play over and over and over, driving you nearly mad? It might be a song you love or one you hate, or maybe even one that you love to hate, and sometimes (but not always) its sudden appearance in your mind is triggered by something someone says or perhaps a TV commercial or a fleeting memory. Or it could just be completely random. In any situation, it drives me nuts, and the only method I’ve found for releasing it is to lean in. I search out the offensive song on Spotify and actually play it. Singing it loudly seems to help as well, and then I can get on with my life.

This phenomenon is widely known as an “earworm,” and research suggests that as many as 98% of people have experienced it, though it’s rarely considered to be a serious condition. 

An earworm is not the same as a brain worm, which is a far more daunting phenomenon in which a weak human brain becomes invaded by a parasite that eats the lobe associated with common sense, leading to conspiracy theory-driven psychosis that prompts the afflicted to seek a government leadership position so that they can eliminate longstanding, important public health policies in favor of nonsensical theories, such as rendered beef fat possibly being more beneficial than monounsaturated plant oils or the notion that vaccines are more dangerous than the diseases they aim to prevent, or that food dyes in soda are a greater enemy than childhood cancer. But I digress.

For some reason, the songs that become earworms in my head are generally tunes that annoy me— that damn “Piña Colada Song” from 1979, for example, or the repetitive hook that’s currently making the rounds on social media, actually creating the very anxiety it speaks of. Or (dare I suggest) “Pink Pony Club.” And there are occasionally good earworms that I actually enjoy— one of them being an old Schoolhouse Rock ditty, and I frequently bust out the chorus these days, easily recalling from my Gen-X childhood every single word of the Preamble to the Constitution. Again, I digress.

My latest earworm, however, is not musical. It is more an obsession with color and possibility, and it was re-triggered after an activity my husband, Les, and I enjoyed last weekend when we visited the Van Gogh Immersive Experience (speaking of people crippled by persistent thoughts). This was a multimedia adventure, filled with detail about the artist’s life, work, death and legacy, and we concluded our visit with a virtual-reality experience that was by far the coolest part of the exhibit. Since then, visions of sunflowers and starry night scenes have been swirling in my mind, and I’m not exactly fighting them. I’m leaning in, allowing the visions to swirl, and trying to immerse myself in them. For years, my muse has been challenging me to produce two specific, highly creative things from my culinary bucket list that are directly connected to Van Gogh’s art. I’ve accepted the challenge, and I’ll tell (and show) you how it goes.

Until we get there, please enjoy this quick recap of the Van Gogh Immersive Experience, along with one of Les’s very favorite ear worms.