Doppler

by Erlend Loe

I spend a whole day enthusiastically humming a melody I can’t place. I’m feeling on top of the world as I cheerfully chip away at the bark on the totem pole. Bits fly off into the forest as I work my way round the trunk, lost in my own world, humming and whistling all the while. Snatches of the lyrics begin to emerge by the evening, and I sing them uncritically for quite a time before I realise, in a cold sweat, that what I’m churning out is the signature tune to an Australian TV show, Bananas in Pyjamas. Not even out here in the forest am I spared the poisoned darts of children’s culture. It’s like a disease. You contract it through hearing. Even mild exposure to the source is sufficient to allow the virus to attack the brain without mercy. It can lie there quietly incubating for months while you go about your own business, not bothering anyone, and then suddenly it rears its ugly head.