Mood Music

‘Are you dead or just revising?’ was a telling question I remember seeing as graffiti on a wall in Cambridge many years ago. This is the time of year when that question seems particularly pertinent. Signs abound in college courts and corridors reminding passers-by to reduce noise to a minimum and many areas are out of bounds to visitors and tourists alike. To revise is to require a hushed environment without the intrusion of voices or crashes and bangs. Is that right?

I suspect many students actually work with loud music thudding through their earphones. Voices are most intrusive when the conversation is audible – maybe even intriguing – and intermittent. (I write this on a train when a small family drama is unfolding behind me, with sad words, suppressed tears and an attempt at covering up to reassure the accompanying young children: it’s deeply distracting, even disturbing, and I have resorted to my own earphones and some Villa-Lobos to try to obscure what’s going on.) However, the white noise of a persistent lawnmower or steady traffic flow is unlikely to be nearly so bad for the solid thought required for revision as brief bursts of giggling tourist laughter or the on-off noise of a pneumatic drill.

Nevertheless, excessive quiet isn’t necessarily conducive to concentration in my view. Having many years ago slipped into the (bad) habit of working in my departmental office at the weekend, I have tried out various strategies. I love the fact that I can work without the distraction of meetings, phone calls or people dropping by. Even the flood of emails is reduced at weekends. It is my opportunity to have several hours of solid concentration, at least in principle. In practice it doesn’t always work out like that and the web is as much a distraction for me as for anyone else. But one of the ways I use the web is to listen to streaming radio from a classical music station in the US. It, unlike our very own Classic FM, has few advertisements and plays long works in their entirety. At the hours I’m listening to it it also doesn’t run to interviews with performers, plays or operas like Radio 3. It simply plays long chunks of charmingly eclectic music – not simply recycle a limited selection of the same old chestnuts – with occasional interruptions for brief news and weather reports.

I like it and often have it on as background. If I’m concentrating hard I hardly notice it until I suddenly become aware that it is playing something that is maddeningly familiar but that I can’t name, or else that their weather forecast is predicting something strikingly different (warmer or colder) than our temperate climes. Nevertheless, there will be many Saturdays when I feel no need for this stay and comfort and am perfectly able simply to plug away at Powerpoint, manuscripts or email without the need for uplifting music. The general quietness around me does not disturb me.

Compare that with my current situation. Despite being advised I would soon be moving office (with the consequent angst I described here), the move has now been deferred for a couple of years. The clear-out I had started was unnecessary, although I now have several empty filing cabinets which potentially I could start filling again. However, although I personally am not moving there are moves afoot. As a result the large open plan office off which my own office opens has been cleared. Cleared not just of people but of furniture. Redecoration is in hand, but for some weeks this stalled. Outside my office was a large, empty and echoing chamber. I felt as if I was working in a morgue and most unpleasant it has been, made worse by the poor state of repair and decoration of the space being exposed by the emptiness. This unfortunate state of affairs has definitely impinged on my ways of working. Steady silence, echoing footfalls if anyone does pass, day in day out for some weeks has been depressing. During the working week I feel embarrassed about tuning in to my streaming radio and so I don’t. I sit there in an uncomfortable distracting silence constantly aware of the surrounding nothingness and feeling much less able to concentrate than usual.

So, for all you students sitting with head allegedly down revising (but clearly playing on the web or you wouldn’t be reading this), find your own correct level of silence. Getting attuned to the right tunes or simply being happy to hear the chirruping of birds outside, find out what makes you most effective. Don’t be fooled by college attempts to make you sit in stony silence if that’s the wrong thing for you. Mood music matters.