music and writing: the soundtrack of writing

I have a meta statement of this blog's purpose brewing, but it's kind of on the back burner until I defend my dissertation on Friday. Yes, I do realize starting a blog while finishing my dissertation is absurd, but the larger idea for the blog just stuck with me. So a small statement of purpose: this blog is about the ways we come to knowledge. How do we make knowledge? How do we go about learning things that we want to learn like how to bake or knit or sail or change out air filters? Basically, I'm interested in the process of self education inside and outside the academy.

At the moment, I'm listening to Handel's Messiah while writing or trying to finish writing my dissertation defense. Obviously, I am also procrastinating. I find Handel both energizing and soothing. I don't normally write to his music, but I tend to think of this PhD process in terms of music. A slight detour before I explain why I think of the process of an English degree in terms of music. I used to sing for my church choir until the dissertation became my life. I'm an alto, which is the part composers either love or hate. I often find myself singing awfully boring percussion kinds of lines. I've decided Gabriel Faure must have been dating an alto because his Requiem has one of the most beautiful alto parts. Handel also tends to write great alto and contra-alto parts. What I love about Handel is the way everything is intertwined in the larger choral parts. The recitatives aren't as complex or as beautiful, particularly the bass parts, for some reason. In the choral sections, the melody bounces between the singers. It's never stationary. Singing Handel is an intense process of concentration. You have to hear all the other parts in order to understand where your part fits, but you also have to be able shut those other parts out so that you can sing your part without muddling it with the others. Back to why music and dissertation writing go together: I find the points in the process where you are tested be it exams or turning in the whole dissertation or defending to be akin to a choral performance. There's performance anxiety, but there's a certain pleasure in knowing you're about to knock an audience's socks off. And there's an even deeper personal pleasure in just the process of singing. When my church choir did Faure's Requiem, the second to last movement is joyous with a beautiful baritone solo. That solo always makes me smile, and being part of the choir singing that piece was uplifting. In academia and I imagine other jobs that require substantially less navel gazing, it's easy to feel disconnected. Thinking of the whole process as joining a larger voice makes it less lonely but also gives the work purpose.