We all get earworms. I do too. But this is rather different to having the equivalent of a radio program in your head. I feel I’ve had my own invisible iPod all my life because I have always had music starting up in my head, including to the degree it got in the way of learning or processing external sounds… or perhaps it filled that gap because I couldn’t.
This spontaneous ‘music in my head thing’ has been this way all my life, since at least age 2 or 3, because I remember singing to myself from that age and I wasn’t remembering music, I was hearing it. I was simply singing along, compelled to. And this is also part of how I became a singer-songwriter and musician. When I’m on my own or walking, cooking, even reading. When its happening I can’t hear the traffic or people talking but if I consciously tune back in to the external world I hear all the sounds out there.

I had ear infections and glue ear every year until I was around ten, some years I was partially deaf, and I was 90% meaning deaf until I was 9-11 years old. I was also severely faceblind and saw my world visually bit by bit which made me largely object blind and context blind (meaning blind), to which I eventually adapted through using other means of recognition until I got visual cohesion through therapeutic tints in my late twenties. So when it comes to cognitive deprivation, if not perceived sensory deprivation, I feel there were plenty of gaps for my brain to go ahead and fill. I am certain my brain did this to ‘keep me company’, ‘keep me connected’… that it was a deprivation thing. I would say I ‘heard music in my head’ maybe 80-90% of the time when I was 3-9 years old and these days I’d say its around 20% of my time. I also lived in an extremely challenged family where abuse and violence were rife, which would only have helped me identify with this particular ‘disability’ as ego syntonic – part of ‘self‘.

It often causes me to break into whistling, but I used to hum and in grade prep, one and two I was constantly singing to myself. This ‘disability’ taught me a lot of music and songs, including the ones that composed themselves! I was diagnosed as autistic when I was 2 years old. So how much do I feel this Musical Ear Syndrome played a part in that?

I’d say it both contributed to my autism in terms of an ongoing distraction from tuning in to the external world and it was also part of my autism in that it is a very ‘aut-istic’ phenomena continually dominating my orientation toward ‘my own world’. I’d say it qualifies as part of my ‘autism fruit salad’.

Donna Williams, BA Hons, Dip Ed.
Author, artist, singer-songwriter, screenwriter.
Autism consultant and public speaker.
http://www.donnawilliams.net

I acknowledge Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people as the Traditional Owners of this country throughout Australia, and their connection to land and community.