When I was finishing marking exams tonight, I heard a song that distracted me and took me out of my marking rhythm. This isn’t as bad, though, as the song that kind of made me feel high.

One of the things that happens when you’re marking exams is you eventually feel the need for music to provide a little background noise or/and to block out family sounds. The problem is, at least in my case, the music has to meet certain criteria.

It can’t be too ballady and slow because, eventually, I will wake up to find my head and a spreading drool stain on my students’ exams.

The music, however, can’t be too catchy or familiar because then I start enjoying the music too much and not marking. Tonight I’d chosen a good radio channel on iTunes (more on that in a minute) when all of a sudden The Vapors’ “Turning Japanese” came on. This led to chair dancing and lip-syncing but very little marking.

Usually, a punk channel is safe. The music is fast-paced but not terribly distracting. Also, although individual punk bands can be fun, a one-after-the-other stream of punk songs sounds suspiciously the same which also helps keep the marking pace going.

The oddest moment happened a few years back when I’d put on headphones for reasons I don’t remember, although I suspect that blocking out family noises was somehow involved. The headphones did their job until Santana’s “Black Magic Woman” came on. At first I was fine, but, then, once the lyrics were finished and the long instrumental section started, I suddenly felt really groovy, man, like really groovy. And the colors around me started moving and pulsing and talking to me and I could see my bones through the skin of my hands. And I could fly.

Something like that. I felt kind of dizzy and got weirded out enough that I had to stop listening to music.

I did finish marking, though. I just did it with family noise in my ears.