When you were working on your thesis or dissertation or book or other long-term project, did you listen to something compulsively throughout the period you worked on it? And was it just some random thing that you latched on to, or was there a reason?

I've been listening to Strange Little Girls by Tori Amos and Annie Lennox's Medusa as I wrote my thesis. The first one is understandable, but I'm not a particularly huge Annie Lennox fan. All the time, I've been wondering: why these CDs? Why not Tom Waits? Ramones? Patti Smith? Talking Heads? I PhotoShop to Cadillac Tramps. Why can't I write to them? I figured never mind - these CDs were working, I was writing, things were good.

This morning, it finally occurred to me that both of them, being albums of covers, are derivative works. Since my project focuses on the intellectual commons, that makes perfect sense. I'm wondering why I never noticed it before.