Muscle memory

Waits for renewed acquaintance

Disparate circuits.

OK, where am I going with this one?

Here's the thing, I think I've

tripped upon an interesting phenomenon

in brain behavior. Or at least in my

brain's behavior. I'm going to call this

new discovery Synapses Reacquaintance,

mainly because I like the word "synapses".

My discovery relates strictly to

language acquisition and goes something

like this: As one acquires a new language,

be it speaking or musical, the brain, leaving

its zone of familiarity will quickly

grab onto the next most familiar place, its

place of muscle memory. It makes no

difference when the muscle memory was

laid down, the brain will sift through

memory to find something familiar that

makes some sense. I've experienced this

phenomena two times recently. The first

happened when I was attempting to learn

Spanish. I immersed myself in Spanish

for three weeks at a language school and

quickly discovered that I had to beat back

the French that I took over 40 years ago.

It kept bubbling to the surface; vocabulary

I didn't even know I had any longer, entire

sentences. Suddenly, my French seemed

fairly acute and it was intruding on my

Espanol. Mon Dieu, I mean Mi Dios.

I found myself tongue-tied. The second

occurrence of Synapses Reacquaintance

came when I started taking guitar lessons, a

year ago. Again, my brain latched onto my

limited piano knowledge from childhood

and longed for keyboards over frets. I just

couldn't get the black and white key pattern

 out of my head and wanted to wring the guitar's

fretful little neck. Well, the good news is if

you stick with it, be vigilant, beat it back,

you can actually lay down a new set of

memories that, temporarily at least, can

turn into a beautiful friendship. That is

until the next time you screw with the

synapses.