My Favourite Music

I just told my students in class one to blog about their favourite piece of music or song. I am very curious about what they are going to write about. Usually I would never tell my students what to blog about, but today I broke my rule of never giving the students a topic. The reason I broke my rule was that I want to show the students a technique for helping them get an essay topic. Today's topic is: write about your favourite song or piece of music . . . but that can be very difficult to write about in a five paragraph essay. Therefore, I want all the students just to free write about their favourite song so that they can generate some ideas and start to think about the topic. After we have done this for about 10 minutes, I'm going to show the students how to narrow down their topic.

The other class, my students and I listened to the song 'Suzanne' by Leonard Cohen. I guess I am infatuated with Leonard Cohen. I can't believe that I even told the students that I used to hope that I was Leonard Cohen's love child. Hmmmm, sometimes teachers just reveal waaaaaay too much information about themselves when they are teaching. Anyway, I've always fancied myself as being a bit of a Leonard Cohen. I really identify with a lot of his music. I guess I have been listening to it for years now. I first discovered it when I was about 21 years old, and I have been listening to it constantly since then. It was like a light went on in　my head. It was simply amazing. Anyway, since then, I have noticed that if I meet someone who also likes Cohen's music, we instantly become friends. It is like we have this connection between us. I wonder how many friendships have been formed over the world because of Leonard's music. If I meet someone who knows Leonard's music, it is like we instantly share the same cultural and spritual space. We are already one because we have already had the same experiences. Hmmmm, I wonder if any of this makes any sense.

It's funny, over the years, I seem to have been finding more and more layers of meaning in the music of Leonard Cohen. It is like the music and me are both maturing together, and developing new subtleties.

Wow, I have written a lot. I think I will write more about this topic when I come into the lab with my class 3. Sorry class 2, but the lab was booked, and I couldn't get the computers for us on Thursday.