Reply #5: might be it

[Wickerman]

Your mind overloads, so it shuts down at first, but not before it gets a bit of an earworm.

I've had that happen with movies, too. Saw a foreign film once that I thought was horrid and I walked out, but I couldn't get it out of my head. Took me a decade to find it again and there was a reason I couldn't forget it - it was brilliant.

You have something with that absorption, new thing.