Thanks to various circumstances in the course of my life, I have mastered the ability to block out all noises around me in the physical world and get completely and irrevocably lost in my own head. Once, in my sophomore history class, I actually fell asleep and had an engaging dream about the first movement of Dvorak's American quartet (second theme)...and I "woke up" to find that my eyes were open the whole time. After this discovery, I spent many an hour in Econ class perfecting my newfound skill...it takes time and practice, but if I so wish, I now can close my mind to my surroundings and transport myself to Jenniferland. I used to think this was really fun and useful--and it is, because let's say you're in a mind-numbingly useless lecture...well, if you can block it out, you can then proceed to think about and deal with more pressing/interesting issues in your head. But, it's getting to the point where "Brain to Jenniferland" is my default mode when I enter class. Without realizing it, I'll sit down, get out my books/pen etc. and BAM 45 minutes later I jerk to my senses, discussion topics (none of which I can recall or understand) whizzing around my ears, impossible for me to grasp.
Come to think of it, this may be a reason memorization is usually my biggest worry in music. I get lost in a distracting whirl of thoughts, music-related or not, and muscle memory can only take me so far.
On the one hand, it's my own restless brain--too lazy to concentrate on things that don't interest me--causing me to gradually shorten my attention span. BUT on the other hand, while cleaning out my room on the last day of break, I re-unearthed an evaluation report from Challenger preschool days. Going through my preschool binder always makes me laugh really hard. There are the hilarious self-portraits (all of which display me in purple clothes) and even more hilarious short stories (most of which feature as protagonist a bunny, creatively named Bunny). And then the evaluations, which are quite revealing. For all the math and verbal stuff, like Arithmetic, Sentence Construction, Reading Skills etc. there are a string of 99th percentiles, and at first I was quite proud, like "Hey, not bad, little Jennifer was actually a pretty smart kid!" But then I keep looking down, and there, next to Listening, is a very sad-looking 53. (Social Interaction was not much higher.)
So...maybe I was this way all along.
