More on music

Another thought on my rekindled love (though it never really went away) for Bach: The first time I really came to love Bach was during a very turbulent time in my life, when things were upsetting, and I felt like storms were raging around me. The thing I loved about Bach was that to me, his music seemed to present calm and order, an alternative to all the Sturm und Drang that people around me seemed to be engaging in.

At other times, when life was calmer, I found myself gravitating more towards the Romantics - and even to opera.

Recently, I was particularly drawn to the British Romantics.

But then, this fall, stuff started blowing up. Some of it I've talked about on here, some stuff I've had to keep off-blog. A lot of it involves my fairly calm and boring life going on in the middle of other people having huge issues, spewing hatefulness, fighting, blah blah blah.

And so, I go running back to Bach. Because he presents this orderly picture, this ideal of what the cosmos could be. Bach calms me down and reminds me that there's an underlying order to things, even if I can't see it just now.

(I hope that's not a sign of anything worse. I read today that the fellow who committed a horribly public suicide in Harvard Yard wrote about his fascination with Bach: the education blogger writing about him there notes that Bach is "the most orderly of composers," the implication, I suppose, being, when your mind is becoming dangerously disordered, you cling to order. Or something.

I don't know. I don't see - I HOPE - any creeping disorder in my mind. Though I will say I've already gone home and cried more times this fall than I have in the 2 years previously.)

I'm definitely taking myself out to dinner tonight, in addition to the Office Max trip. I heard another piece of news that suggests an ugly storm may be brewing, one I have no part of, no fault in, but will have to weather nonetheless.)

Also, not to be melodramatic or anything - because I know the line was originally delivered during a far worse time than what I am experiencing - but this morning I saw the Churchill quotation, "When you're going through hell, keep going" somewhere. I'm going to remember that as a mantra. When I want to just sit down with my head on my desk because there are SO MANY PAPERS TO GRADE, it's a lot more productive to start on that first paper and just grit my teeth and keep on working.)