So today you are hiding, since the first three days of the week were taken up with teaching and committee work, and because tomorrow will have at least two committee meetings in the middle of the day. You need a full day to get back into full immersion for working on this paper you’re writing. You’ve no plans for exciting and varied writing venues today, as described in a previous post. This is because now you’re more into the part of the writing that can benefit from just sitting in one comfortable and familiar place for a long time, staring, scribbling, typing, mumbling, and drinking lots of tea and coffee…
…and listening to music. Today, you woke up in the mood for Cassandra Wilson’s music, and so while you write you’ll be listening for the entire day to every album she’s ever recorded. Blue Skies is one of your favourites, as is Blue Light ‘Til Dawn. And the recent Glamoured, has many wonderful reworkings of several modern standards from several genres such as pop, jazz, blues, country…(for example, Sting’s “Fragile”, while the original is a favourite of yours, never sounded better, or made more sense, before her version, and you’ve been listening a lot to her wonderful version of Willie Nelson’s “Crazy” recently). But you’ll not just be listening to her later stuff, you’ll be digging way back into work closer to her earlier, more experimental M-base collective work too.
Happy Hiding Away, Writing, And Listening To Cassandra Wilson Day*
-cvj
(*After the excellent blog Girls Are Pretty .)
September 15th, 2005 at 11:28 pm
Clifford, it’s a fine line between talking about yourself in the second person and doing so in the third. Get some rest before that happens okay?
September 15th, 2005 at 11:35 pm
Hi cassandra (of no relation to the blog subject),
Thanks for the Cassandra-esque warning. But I’ve probably been slightly nuts for quite a long time now, so it’s ok…
Check out the link at the bottom of the post for why I did it in that style.
Cheers,
-cvj
September 16th, 2005 at 7:17 am
It’s curious, Clifford, I never found it possible to concentrate with a human voice in the background, I thought that was a general phenomena. I listen to music constantly when working, but it cannot involve singing (or too many of those crescendos , which excludes almost all romantic era music…). Similarly I am fine with all kinds of construction constantly going on, but a conversation in the adjacent office will throw me off.
(apologies, stuck here at O’Hare with wireless, lots of time and nothing to do…)
September 16th, 2005 at 7:47 am
ditto Moshe– As time goes on, I find if I”m writing, music is essential but there can be no voices. A long time ago, I could listen to King Crimson’s ‘Elephant Talk’ while writing a paper but, now, no chance. Voices in the hall are really bad too. I prefer to shut the door, but then supposedly this gives students a bad impression that one is now ‘inacessible’. On the other hand, when I’m working in the lab, then music w/voices is MUCH preferred.
Clifford, you touch on another subject; switching mental gears after highly stimulating committee work. For myself, at some point I’ like to do some research but the time & political energy drain for committee/infrastructure work can be quite parasitic. Does music help you switch gears quicker and provide motivation?
September 16th, 2005 at 7:53 am
1. I love Pretty Girl blog style.
2. I love the one song Cassandra Wilson song I have, her version of “Time afte Time.”
September 16th, 2005 at 8:27 am
Hi Moshe, jepe,
Words and voices don’t seem to bother me….but maybe it is once it has become really familiar….not sure. I have diferent moods…sometimes I must just listen entirely to piano. So last week I had a “Mendelsshon’s Songs Without Words Day”, for example, and I’ve had “Bud Powell and Thelonius Monk Days” in the past, and will in the future. When it is vocal music, it has to be of the right sort…otherwise it would be distracting… Cassandra works for me maybe because of the way she fits with the music so well; she not just singing on top of it, she’s inside it.
And yes, it sometimes helps to switch gears and get into the “zone”..
Suz! Go out right now and get her last…listen to samples at the links I gave…. She reworks a lot of songs into masterpieces…With “Time after Time”, she fully completed the transformation on it that Miles Davis began….Get “Glamoured”, say….or “New Moon Daughter” or several of the other later albums for these multiple-genre reworkings… you’ll be laughing and in tears….its great. And let me know what you think!
-cvj
September 18th, 2005 at 7:22 pm
I also cannot do writing work with lyrics I understand, but I can with languages I don’t know very well. I have a playlist entitled “singing, non-english” for listening to if I want to hear vocals while I work.
September 19th, 2005 at 9:11 am
The music sets the stage for a inspirative surge for the essence of mathematics and deep thinking Non! Every Platonist would know this?: )