Sensory Epiphany

Okay. This is going to be super short. That's right. Super short. I have something planned for a full-length post, but I haven't finished all my research. To tie anyone over, I made a new discovery quite recently. In the past I'd been exposed to film and album synchronicity. For instance, Fantasia syncs up perfectly with Smashing Pumpkin's Siamese Dream and Yellow Submarine (film) syncs up with Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon.

The reason for this fitting has never been explained to me. I don't choose to question it, because I'm sure there are thousands of disputed and debated opinions on the subject. All I know is that it works and it's absolutely mesmerizing.


I used to try and see if some albums would sync up with certain films, usually by finding an album that I felt complimented the film in a certain way, as if I could have imagined the album as the film's actual soundtrack. That was unsuccessful. I then remembered that Fantasia does not exactly remind me of Smashing Pumpkins at all.

Recently, I was playing Waking Life on the television in my room. I had just pushed play about five minutes before I had fragments from a Radiohead song stuck in my head. It was one of those scenarios in which I knew I had heard the song plenty of times before, but I couldn't focus on what I was partially hearing in my head. At first, I couldn't recall what album it was on because I was only hearing fragments of it. I went to my iPod, which has every Radiohead song that I'm aware of being in recorded existence and, as I looked through the album titles, I immediately remembered that it was on their latest album, In Rainbows. It wasn't that I had remembered more of the song or I was hearing more fragments than I primarily had. I just intuitively knew that it was on that album. There was something about the newness of the sounds I was hearing that was convincing me of that. I was right. I realized it was the song, Reckoner. I had my iPod on my iHome in my iRoom on top of my iDesk. (I apologize. I didn't want anyone to think I was unaware of the globalization of the "i" before everything)

As I was listening to this song, Waking Life was still playing on my TV, but since I have it so that my sound plays through my iHome, the audio from the film was off. As I glanced at the screen, I realized that the scene in the movie and the song I had selected went together perfectly. I had, in the past, spent hours trying to discover even a minute of film/album synchronicity. I began to wonder 'Why had fragments of this song started playing at the exact time which led everything to happen so that the song I was thinking of would play at its sync place in a movie I had just put in?' I don't have an answer to this, but I like it.
If you have access to Radiohead's In Rainbows and Richard Linklater's film, Waking Life, start the song, Reckoner, at the very beginning of the second chapter of Waking Life. It is a very enjoyable experience. I'm not only enthused about the discovery of this sync, but I'm also bewildered by all the variables that this whole discovery process entailed and how it seemed to be so coincidental but so meaningful. The oddest thing is that I got the same sort of impulse to play each of these media forms, as if they had wanted for me to play them.

If anyone finds similar discoveries, please feel free to let me know at DaveCB@optonline.net