Journal writing to instrumental music

The 9th graders started class today with a quote by Anais Nin, whose name rang a faint bell in my memory, but whose writing I'm sure I've never read. After class today, I discovered she was a French-born, American author, who was born in 1903 and died in 1977, and is most famous for her journals, which detail her life from age 11 to shortly before her death, as well as her erotica. Apparently, Nin, who married one man in the early 20s, married another man in 1955, and her journals chronicle this double life.

In any event, the quote I'd found was: "We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospection." Apparently Nin really did 'taste life twice.' The students have been responding to quotes as well as questions I have posed over the entire semester, but until now, I hadn't incorporated music into the journal writing time. I thought this might help students who normally might try to carry on quiet conversations focus more on the writing if instrumental music was a part of the process. So this morning I decided that I would bring in Mice Parade's "All Roads Lead to Salzburg," which is an album of experimental electronica. The first track, which is about 9 minutes long (just about right for journal time) is hypnotic and seemed to me like it might lead the students to write wherever their thoughts might take them. I haven't read the journals yet, but I think I'll keep using music to help them get into their own writing.

The quote confused many of them. We defined "retrospection" as a class, which hopefully helped. The brief discussion afterward makes me think that many of them are at least becoming vaguely aware that writing and memory are deeply interconnected.