What Don't I Know?

   When someone asks me what I like to do for fun,  it would be easy just to say that I love to read, go sailing or do woodwork but I also think that sounds relatively uninteresting. It would be much more fun to hear about some of the other than normal things people like to do like hunting tarantula with a black light and scissors ( I had a friend who actually did this). So, I started thinking about things that I do which may be unusual. One thing that leaps to mind is that I am never bored if left alone with my own mind. It often has entertained me for hours. I am not sure whether this is unusual or not since I have no idea how other peoples' minds work.  As a child, I was quite surprised at the things I did within my mind. I began to wonder if these things were normal. Can eveybody do this, or is it just me? I did not know how to answer this question so I just kept the subject to myself.
   I have always been blessed with a very active and inventive mind. This certainly helped in my career as an engineer. I also have a memory which is more than just partially photographic. These, I believe, are the main ingredients in what I describe below. 

   I have always loved music, all music from all but the top extremes of opera to all but the extremities of modern popular music. In between is much of opera, classical music, military music, show music,old time and modern jazz to rock and roll and all the constantly changing spectrum of the modern scene in music.
  I cannot read music, nor play an instrument, I certainly cannot sing and I know nothing about the technicalities of music. Yet, since a child, I have known the names and the appearance of and the sounds made by all the individual instruments of the symphony orchestra. Ever since early schooldays, I constantly had music running through my head. During my early teen years, I developed an intense interest in show music both from the Broadway and London stage and the big Hollywood musicals of those days. I read up on the lives of Jerome Kern, Cole Porter, Irving Berlin, Richard Rodgers and others. I listened intently to the orchestrations of their music by the big bands and orchestras of the day. When I was not actually listening to music, these orchestrations used to run through my head and I began to find myself mentally changing some of them and then running them back through my mind. I started designing new orchestrations in my mind.
  I discovered about this time that I could mentally track multiple instruments at the same time and I could "hear" them individually. I could also track multiple melodies and variations on them. I might design an arrangement wherein the strings would play the main melody while the brass were playing some variation  on that melody and all this was loud and clear within my mind. Then, I might go in and make changes until I was happy with the result.
  These tricks I was playing within my mind were what had worried me about the normality of what I was going on inside my head. I began to wonder whether the things that I did in my mind were perfectly normal and maybe everybody could do them or was there something wrong with me and was I stretching something to bursting point. It could well be that any brain can do this but most people just do not choose to do it unless they have some specific interest in mind. This whole subject really worried me for a long time.
  As an aid to what I was doing, I began to carry an orchestra around in my head. Different arrangements required different sounds. For a particular arrangement, I might need to add another woodwind or maybe a couple of violas so, over a period of time, the orchestra grew to 74 pieces. I knew how many of each instrument there were and where all the sections of the orchestra were seated for a concert. When I was alone in the house, I used to stand and conduct the orchestra while it played my latest arrangement. One day, I think I must have been  about nine or ten, I was doing just this when my mother walked into the room, I had not heard her come back from the shops. She asked what I thought I was doing, so I told her and, since I was obviously entering a losing streak, I told her about how I could orchestrate music in my head.  My mother was apparently quite an accomplished musician although I had never heard her play. But, I must admit, her response that day totally deflated me. She said I was talking utter nonsense as I knew nothing about music. End of discussion! She had a very definitive way of ending a conversation.
   I took this very badly and began to have thoughts about the fact that I might be going crazy. I stopped even thinking about music for quite some time. But, it eventually crept back in. A few years after this, I told my best friend about the way my mind worked. He also had a passionate interest in show music and modern jazz and, in our college days, we spent many hours together listening to the likes of Stan Kenton and Shorty Rogers. He said that he certainly could not do what I had described and had never heard of it before, but he found it very interesting. I have never discussed this with anyone else, until now.

   When I started to work for a living, this whole scenario began to be phased out, probably because my mind was too busy. But, in my head, the music is still there and, sometimes, such as when I am driving alone for a long period, I may think up a new arrangement.
   I sometimes wonder what I don't know about this. Do other people do this? Can other people do this? Is it important? Is it stupid? Does anybody care? Am I crazy?? I don't know and I'm not sure I really want to know now. But, one thing I do know is that this capability gave me many hours of pleasure in my younger years.

   Another thing my mind likes to do is design things. This, of course, should be inherent in an engineer and I was  much less worried about the normality of things in this context. I have always particularly liked designing houses. I did the original design on the house my sister and her family lived in while the children were growing up. My design was given to an architect who rehashed the whole thing but the basic floorplan remained essentially the same. There were also three or four features that I thought were innovative and these were incorporated into the house. The architect later told me that he had also included some of them in later designs.
   I find that, if I am sitting in somebody's house and not much is going on, I may start to redesign parts of the house in my mind. Of course, I never mention this as most people don't want their house redesigned.
   I have, however, spent many hours sitting in the family room of my daughter's house while she and my wife were at Costco or somewhere. Over the months and years, I have developed a complete detailed redesign of one section of their house. For example, the downstairs bedroom becomes a suite with its own bathroom and walk-in closet. The family room is lengthened and windows are added to look out onto the side yard. Double glass doors then lead out of the family room into a new lobby from which the bedroom suite is accessed, rather than from the hall as it is now. This access also has a double door feature such that the bathroom may be entered from the lobby or the suite depending on whether the suite is in use. The  lobby also gives access to the new deck which wraps around the house to the existing rear deck. The whole thing is in my mind as a package.
   As I have said above, I have a photographic memory in many respects. This design package also exists in my memory as a series of sketches of all the new elements, furnished and painted, not just in white, but as I imagine them. If only I could stick a USB cable in my ear and download it all to a printer, I'd have it made. Incidentally, I have never discussed this design with the family so it might come as a shock to them if and when they read this.

   Of course, some of the same questions apply here as with the music. Do other people do this? Can other people..............Does any of it matter? Once again, I don't know. Maybe I would like to know. Maybe,........... but then........
  Regardless, this is the way my mind works and, personally, I like it. I think I'll keep it.