Coffee shop writers amaze me. I fear I’m too distractible to concentrate in a setting with clinking spoons, bursts of laughter, a growling espresso machine, and chair legs scraping the floor. Give me silence. Sometimes, though, even silence is too loud, and so when I am alone I turn to a few albums I find soothing or stimulating, depending on the day. Instrumental or choral only, no singular voice singing lyrics, since my attention tracks words like a bloodhound tracks scent. A few favourites include the works of two Quebec-based composers of ‘classical crossover’ music, Alexandra Stréliski (Inscape) and Jean-Michel Blais (aubades); Gabriel Fauré’s and Maurice Daruflé’s Requiem; anything by Bill Frisell; an old compilation of Ralph Vaughan Williams (I often put 5 Variants of Dives and Lazarus on repeat), and the brilliant Cree cellist Cris Derksen’s debut album The Cusp. They offer energy, calm, variety, melody and sometimes repetition in ways, according to scientists, that light up the limbic system, create new neural paths and increase blood flow to the brain. I can’t speak to the science of it all, but I do know the music pulls me deeper into my writing even as it seems to fill my whole body. It’s immersion of the best kind.
— Lorri Neilsen Glenn is a Halifax poet, essayist and writing mentor. She is the author of poetry and nonfiction titles, including The Old Moon in Her Arms: Women I Have Known and Been (2024) and its prequel, Threading Light: Explorations in Loss and Poetry (Nimbus Publishing).
You can read Lorri Neilsen Glenn and Kim Pittaway’s story "When Memories Meet Words: A Conversation about Writing Memoir" in Issue 304 (Summer Creative Nonfiction 2025). Order the issue now:
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