I have been under a tremendous amount of stress.  I have a paper due on Tuesday that I have yet to start.  I need to go through van Gogh’s letters and then decide what I want to write about first.  I also have to go through my material from the archives and type up a lot of it, format it and then research information for the contextual annotations.  I have to present this on Wednesday.  Then I have an annotated bibliography due on Friday that I cannot conceivably finish in time.  I have to read five books and then find ten articles to use.  Then I get to write a page-long summary for each of them and a five- to eight-page overview of the focal material I come across previewing the bibliography.  I have never been so frightened of failing to complete my work before.  I have felt anxious, certainly, but never trepidation.

So, I thought that I could use some calming peace before I go to bed.  I know what kind of sleep I will have to endure otherwise.  I wanted to prevent that from happening, so I open up my iTunes to see what I have at my disposal. I looked through all the music listed as classical in genre.  I had Gregorian chant, and while that does help calm me down, I know that there are other things that are much more effective.   I decided to pull out the big guns, so to speak.  I knew exactly what I was looking for — Gluck’s Dance of the Blessed Spirits.  The moment I heard Gluck’s composition years ago, it had an almost unfathomable effect on me.  It calms me and it fills me with ineffable and unrestrained glee.  Simply put, it touches my very being, my soul.  It is one of my favorite, if not my favorite, pieces of music ever.

Imagine my surprise, then, when I search and find it missing from my iTunes library.  It has disappeared.  I know for a fact that it used to be on there.  If this is a practical joke, it is not funny.  The CD that I have it on is 1000 miles away, so I cannot easily put it back in my library until I go home for Christmas.  I had to resort to YouTube in order to listen to it.  I am somewhat calmed down now, but it is still not the same.  YouTube!  Hopefully I will still manage a restful sleep so I can be productive tomorrow.

I am curious, though, as to why Master P’s Pass Me da Green was labeled as classical in my library — sandwiched right there in between Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 and Mozart’s Sonata No. 10.