Could you hum a few bars?

When you're feelig down, blue, or otherwise overwhelmed by the tasks of life and all the sad trappings that go along with being an US citizen these days, there's nothing like throwing back your head and belting out a robust and rousing chorus of your own personal theme song.

Having a personal theme song can help you deal with a number of different conundrums. For example, it can help you choose between frozen corn and frozen peas in the freezer section of your local grocery store; it can help you make it to the end of the block on an especially difficult morning shuffle (see previous post, "Run run as fast as you can," for details about this use of the theme song); it can help you affirm that it is a beautiful day in the neighborhood when you're just not convinced; it can inspire you to find the perfect end words for your current sestina; and humming a few bars can help your partner find you in a crowd.

If you are a song writer, you may choose to write your own theme song, though don't expect others to join in when you sing it in the park. Otherwise, you'll need to adopt a song from someone else. My current theme song is Veruca Salt's rigorously awesome "Seether". You just can't stop the seether. If you hear me singing, don't join in. This one's mine, mine, mine.

Miss Dickinson obviously had a number of theme songs. Today's Dickinsonian oracle offers up the following ditty:

She dealt her pretty words like Blades -
How glittering they shone -
And every One unbared a Nerve
Or wantoned with a Bone -

She never deemed - she hurt -
That - is not Steel's Affair -
A vulgar grimace in the Flesh -
How ill the Creatures bear -

To Ache is human - not polite -
The Film upon the eye
Mortality's old Custom -
Just locking up - to Die -
(E. Dickinson, 458)