Grief and Music

During a moment of dementia, sometime before his death, my father gave his stereo system and his collection of vinyl records to a relative, leaving my mother without any music. It was something she lamented in my phone calls to her. As a result, I purchased a portable stereo capable of playing CDs from Amazon and had it shipped to her in Northern Ireland. My mother specifically asked for the music of Johnny Mathias. I also added Dave Brubeck’s Time Out; it was the one of the albums that my parents particularly enjoyed when I was younger. Probably, I should have added an album by Stephane Grappelli. One of his albums, perhaps Tivoli Gardens, Copenhagan, Denmark, was something that my mother excitedly wanted to me to hear when I was visiting one year.

One year around Christmas, when I was putting together a package containing such things as cans of pumpkin and boxes of corn bread, two things my mother couldn’t purchase in Northern Ireland, and books by James Patterson, one of her favorite authors, I added two more CDs, Matthew Halsall’s Colour Yes and Nat Birchall’s Akhenaten, two representative CDs of contemporary British jazz. My mother, however, never mentioned playing this music although she did receive the package and thanked me for the pumpkin and cornbread.

Even so, after my mother died in May of this year, at the age of 87, the music I have turned to repeatedly has been Matthew Halsall’s Colour Yes, particularly the tracks “Together” and “I’ve Been Here Before.” These tracks exemplify the sense of grief that I felt and continue to feel.

A Partly Cloudy Day Along the River

These pictures result from an occasion in which I managed to get away from my online classes for a little while. Photography for me is a combination of light and dark and the capturing of these contrasts in combination with various shapes. I learned to take pictures using black and white and that training shows in my pictures.

Annual Magnolia Blossoms_2014

My annual collection of magnolia blossoms appear below. These pictures were taken in mid-April before a strong cold front, accompanied by high winds, destroyed these blossoms. They were at their peak for only about three days. These pictures were taken when the blossoms were in the morning sun. My wife and I had spent the night grading and were outside for a little while before we went to bed later that morning. We have since turned our hours around and sleep during the night. That pattern may change again as we work through the stacks of grading and prepare to turn in our final grades in about three weeks time.

Music Over Movies While Grading

The music listed on the right largely makes up what I have been listening to as I grade my students’ essays. From teaching five sections of writing online, I am usually swamped with grading. This semester I have been reluctant to stay up at night and confine myself to my home office where I do nothing but grade. I much prefer getting to sleep when it is still dark outside. This week I ended up having to switch my hours around because of my backlog. For some reason, it is harder to get the grading done during the day. My grading has been piling up, and I have nights and nights of work ahead of me before I will ever start to catch up.

Blau, Nashaz, and Stoa, by the way, are things I listen to at those times when I am active—washing dishes, cooking dinner, bathing, collecting the trash, etc.

I know some college instructors who prefer to watch vidoes on YouTube or movies on NetFlix while they grade. Dividing my attention makes it more difficult for me to get the work done. I am the kind of person who needs to remain on task. That’s why I often have to shut the door to my office for long periods of time. A meowing cat craving attention can prove to be a big distraction. Without my music, I am often tempted to take a break from grading and start surfing the Internet. Often anything can be more interesting than a freshman or sophomore essay. It takes music to remain focused on what I have to get done and to achieve those daily goals, say, getting six or more essays graded. Some essays, particularly the initial ones in a new assignment, can take up to an hour. Part of that time is devoted to Turnitin while the rest is spent typing up grading comments so as to justify the letter grade. A recent assignment took sixteen pages of comments, approximately nine thousand words divided among forty-two essays.