Playlist

While working on Stumbling toward the Buddha, 10th Anniversary Edition, I listened to music while I wrote. This was a first for me. I usually demanded silence while I worked, even wearing noise-canceling headphones.

My audiologist and my sister brought music into my writing life.

Hearing aids turned me into a spy. I could hear conversations on airplanes flying above my house. I heard an eighteen-wheeler rumble past out house and then realized it was my stomach growling. I eavesdropped on treetop bird chatter until robins dive-bombed me to get some privacy.

When the audiologist told me I would become accustomed to hearing aids, and sounds would start to fade into the background, I was disappointed. I was a junkie for sound. She told me to introduce it in other ways, such as music.

My sister Michelle, a professional gospel star and longtime Bey, turned me on to Beyoncè and Beethoven.
Because you’re supposed to stop writing to refuel the brain with art, I introduced music into my routine. I scheduled afternoon listening sessions, lay on the couch to refuel creativity with acoustic art. Then late one afternoon, there was no time left for both writing and listening. So I tried them simultaneously.

I wrote better (you be the judge of that). I slept better, too.

While I composed the Author Notes for Stumbling, the following albums burrowed into my prose.

• Bach: Unaccompanied Cello Suites (Yo-yo Ma)

There were times, reflecting back from ten years later, that I uncovered aspects of myself I would preferred to have left covered. Dismay spilled over into embarrassment spilled over into confusion spilled over into guilt spilled over into anger spilled over into hatred spilled over into despair spilled over into hopelessness. I couldn’t hold it all. The cello enfolded me. Together, we wept.

• Breaths (Sweet Honey in the Rock)

Rage argued I should incinerate the white male patriarchy for a few pages, but I was supposed to be writing reflections. I was supposed to be vulnerable. I needed to chanel the rage, so I closed the laptop, staged my own protest march around the living room, and belted out “I’m Gon” Stand.”

• Cowboy Carter (Beyoncé)

Many of the author notes considered the subject of identity. When did my Blackness affect an incident? In which situations was it irrelvant? Cowboy Carter demonstrated that every creation from a Black artist is an expression of Blackness. Beyoncé inspired me to be my genuine self.

• Mozart: The Complete Piano Sonatas (Carmen Piaazzini)

My energy dragged midafternoon as usual, but I felt the urge to write. On a whim, instead of downing a Diet Coke, I streamed Mozart. When caffeinated, I was tense with obsession as in, I will finish this essay, dammit; no matter what. I shoved words onto the page. With the rippling piano runs of Mozart’s allegros, words paraded onto the page of their own free will.

• My Black Country: The Songs of Alice Randall (Various Black women artists)

I expected twang. But the vibration was kind of church-y. And then something more mournful than me on a bad writing day. And then the spoken word “XXXs And OOOs” made me bounce like I’d listened to hip hop all my life. Country written and sung by Black women. No twang nowhere. Alice Randall exploded my preconceptions. What better gift for a writer?