A moment of zen: I've found that I can induce an almost trance-like state by repeatedly playing a particular piece of music. The characteristics of the trance induced varies wildly depending on what I'm listening to. Lateralus on repeat put me into a dark, creepy place that mildly freaked me out. "Daphnis et Chloe" on repeat turned me into a teary-eyed romantic, gushing at everything I saw.

This week, I've been playing Carl Orff's "Carmina Burana" because I have to memorize it in two weeks. (I await gasps of shock and horror from the people who know the piece.) So ,far, I've been very listless and sluggish; I've stopped eating regularly and can't be bothered to do anything around the house when get home. I think this is more due to stress over having to learn the piece than the music itself. It's pretty easy and extremely repetitive, but has approximately 1,395,660,326,425.59 words in it, all of which are either an early form of German or Latin. GRR. I haven't been this stressed about music since doing that 2-second Ravel solo for the last Concordia Society concert (which went well, but was HORRIBLY recorded).