Limes with Orange

I suppose this is sort of a follow up to my original Idea Sparks post (hence the title to this post, for those not paying attention... which apparently includes me, since I felt the need to repeat the obvious). Anyway, in that first post I revealed story ideas that I'd found in unexpected places, such as Jive Weekly (a publication that prides itself as being "mental floss for the masses") and The Stone (an incredibly addictive and challenging set of complex online puzzles).

Once again, courtesy of The Stone... this time a search for mood & music led me to a blurb about the fact that "listening to Mozart produced a brief but significant increase in performance of a spatial IQ task" (Music Research page at Unique Sounds). Not entirely new and surprising as a general concept, but I hadn't realized that research had been done showing that the increased ability "seems to be specific to some aspect of the Mozart piece rather than music per se or attending to a story." I wonder if they tested Mozart against Bach? (Which makes me think of the fabulous use of Bach that Douglas Adams made in Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency. By the way, I'm currently re-reading the sequel to that book: The Long Dark Tea Time of the Soul... even the title entertains me.)

So if you're not bored out of your mind at this point, you may be wondering where I'm finding a story idea in this. To be quite honest, I'm not sure. It's not one of those ideas that leaps out and says: "Here I am: Your Story. Write about me!" It's more of a: "Isn't the brain fascinating and maybe if I learn more about this aspect of it then the story that my intuition says is in there will stop being shy and gradually show itself." Not as flashy, but possibly more rewarding. Possibly.

Labels: music