Delusions of grandeur and listening to music.

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Depends on the song.

Learning to Fly by Pink Floyd - I imagine myself floating in space like a native Shaman
Pagan Poetry by Bjork - I imagine myself in a mystical trance
Angel of Mine by Monica - I think of my mother

I like the phrase "Ecstatic spasm", it's something I can relate to about listening to music! Often music has such a powerful effect on me that I get what feels like a surge of muscular energy. Like some sort of stim, it's an energy that has nowhere to go. My neck tenses up and I wring my hands. But it's a good thing. Music also works on a visual and imaginative way for me.

Does anyone else get this sort of very physical response? I've tried not doing this in response to music and find it hard. It makes me realise that I'm not sure what effect music actually has on most people.

Yes. That's what dancing is for. It's a place for that energy to go. I dance when that's possible, to release the enrgy. When it's not possible, I sway, tap my fingers, or- if it's very close quarters like an airplane and I'm listening to an ipod- flex my calf muscles. I don't much enjoy classical music concerts because the urge to swing my arms just like the conductor does is inappropriate (it would whack somebody in the face) so I spend the whole concert suppressing this urge. Thank goodness that other musical forms allow and frequently encourage more physical listening.

Around Christmas the song. Oh Holy Night comes on the radio quite often. I like to close my eyes, let my mind wander and imagine that I'm Jesus.

I can see that angle, but the impulse I get is very different to the impulse to dance. I don't have a great sense of rhythm, and I'm a hopeless dancer.

It's like a strong aesthetic response, and I get it from music that you couldn't possibly dance to, like Wagner and Ligeti. It's like being overcome by the forms and colours of the sound, but in a sort of euphoric way.

When I listen to 'Spanish Flea', I believe I can jump 100 times my own height.

I actually used to roll around in something like ecstasy, on a bed, listening to the track "Yours Is No Disgrace" from The Yes Album!

I don't mean that it was literally, physically, sexually arousing, but in a "sublimated" way, it surely must have been.

That was the first piece of music that had a really powerful effect on me. It roughly coincided in time with the first time I really experienced sexual desire - very late in life, at the age of about 19 or 20.

(Rambling a bit, I'm afraid, because there's a lot bottled up in me, after the last 40 years:)

A year or two later, listening to a Beethoven string quartet (Op. 127 in E flat) on the radio (BBC Radio 3), I discovered an even deeper but less physical pleasure in music. I taped that piece, and listened to it so much that I could literally hear it playing in my head, with great clarity and strong emotion. It wouldn't play in my head from start to finish exactly as performed, it would be chopped up into shorter pieces which would then get mixed up with each other and get repeated and played in sequences unrelated to their proper order in the composition.

I've never heard of this happening to anyone else, not even musicians, but it surely must do, and I wouldn't be at all surprised to learn of there being some Aspies who, like me, aren't musically gifted, but who do hear music in their head like this. It's an odd thing, because I have absolutely no musical talent whatsoever, I've never played an instrument, discussion of the structure of classical music goes right over my head, and although I know that the piece I adored so much was in something called "E flat", which is something called a "key", I have only a fuzzy idea what a key is, and I never notice a key change (except when it is done badly at the end of a pop single).

I also can't dance to save my life - although I do (or I used to) dance ecstatically to Beethoven quartets and symphonies, when I was on my own and no-one could see me.

I always felt very constrained in the audience at classical concerts, and could sometimes not restrain myself from making annoying movements and noises in response to the music. (The only concert hall where I ever felt at ease was the Wigmore Hall in London, which has a uniquely intimate atmosphere. Or it had - I haven't been there for decades. It is a small hall, for chamber music only. Chamber music was what I liked best.)

Music makes an odd link between me and my younger brother, who suffered severe brain damage when he was born, and who of course behaves oddly, and has strong obsessions, and a strong desire and need for routine: he dances wildly to The Beatles, The Beach Boys, The Rolling Stones, and other popular music, waving his arms about and shrieking, and would have no inhibitions about doing it in public!

Much of his "handicapped" behaviour, I noticed, was not the result of his brain damage, and was due to training by our family. I noticed his brain worked far better than mine in some ways, and in particular he has an extraordinarily good visual memory. I took advantage of this by devising a colour coding system for his 7" pop singles. From having needed to be told which was which, because he can't read, he instantly memorised the code, and was able to know without being told which single was which.

The family at first resisted any suggestion by me that he might not be as brain-damaged as we all thought. I expect they would still equally resist any suggestion by me that there might be something "wrong" with my brain, even though my mother has told me at least one thing suggestive of something innately different about me: apparently I wasn't cuddly as a baby.

There's an odd thing going on, whereby, having once noticed superior mental ability in my brain-damaged brother, I am now being led to consider whether my own brain might have some neurological abnormality usually associated with mental retardation. It's sort of ironic, if nothing else.

Another odd fact, which I can't really fit into any neat scheme or pattern, is that even though I was always cast as "the clever one" in the family (why must families create these rigid roles?) my mother once said she thought that my brother would have been even cleverer, if he hadn't suffered brain damage because of oxygen starvation at birth. (Perhaps she didn't like to be reminded of this tragedy, which is why there was resistance to acknowledging the superior mental abilities he actually did still have in spite of the severe damage. I can't remember if her remark came before or after my observation of his undamaged faculties.)

Much later in life, psychiatric medication (paroxetine) seemed to permanently damage my appreciation of classical music (but not popular music, at least not so much), as well as making it difficult for me to read books, which used to be perhaps my greatest pleasure.

(There is more irony in the fact that psychiatry blindly causes actual brain damage to its "patients" in the course of their "treatment", but I had better not get onto that particular hobby horse!)

Definitely.

My current one is in my sig.

Lou Reed's The Bells makes everything better and more gothic.

I have music going on in my head all the time. For me it's also sections that repeat, or get merged with another piece, like a mash-up. It's usually clear, more like an actual recording than just a tune.

It really is all the time, I've tried to stop it, but can't. The system seems to be hardwired into my brain. I listen to music all day just to create a bit of mental space. There could be worse things.

It often happens that some random sounds in the environment sound a bit like some section of music that I've heard, and that triggers it playing in my mind.

I couldn't get music theory when I was at school. Without understanding the underlying rationale (which is complex) the system of scales seemed arbitrary and that just confused me. Now I'd really like to understand how music (ie classical) 'works', and it's starting to make sense. Maybe piano lessons. Too old for guitar heroics now, although I used to have that fantasy some time ago...

It is the reason gangstah rap is popular

Somewhat like mine: I imagine others from my life are watching me while I do something good at work, or at home while being super-mom, my dad I was not talking to for years always 'watched me', teachers who thought less of me 'seeing me doing something good', etc. It is a delusion and in my case goes back to low self esteem.

Oh yeah I'm a rock star in my mind. It's a bit sad because I see myself on stage either thrashing around with a guitar or taking the lead vocals, and I'm not in a band nor can I play any instrument.
Sometimes I'm playing in front of my favourite bands...