repetition
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On The Musicality Of M.C. Escher
“Order is repetition of units. Chaos is multiplicity without rhythm.” “My work is a game, a very serious game.” “Are you really sure that a floor can’t also be a ceiling?” – M.C. Escher I’ve long been curious about M.C. Escher’s (1898-1972) drawings and woodcuts because of their precision, their order and symmetry, their use Continue reading
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On Motion, Repetition, and Transformation: Robin Harvie’s “The Lure Of Long Distances”
It is not down in any map; true places never are. – Herman Melville At the core of Robin Harvie’s The Lure Of Long Distances: Why We Run (2011) is a disturbing yet intoxicating idea: that you’re not really free in any endeavor until you no longer feel the gravitational pull of wanting to return Continue reading
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On Boredom, Music and Time
One of the symmetries between the psychological state of boredom and the experience of listening to music is that they both shape how we feel time. In his book Boredom (Yale University Press, 2010), Peter Toohey quotes the poet Joseph Brodsky speaking of boredom as representing “pure, undiluted time in all its repetitive, redundant, monotonous splendor” (186). Elsewhere, Toohey also Continue reading
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On Embracing The (Repetitious) Mundane: Two Works By Jean-Philippe Toussaint
I recently discovered some short novels by French novelist Jean-Philippe Toussaint. In his books Monsieur (1986) and Television (1997), Toussaint explores with whimsical yet clinical detail the dynamics of repetition–along with the virtues of doing very little to get by in life so that its textures and contours are revealed to us. In Monsieur, our otherwise unnamed protagonist Continue reading
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On Music and Advertising: Weezer’s Tour de France Izod Commercial
I can’t seem to get enough of the Tour de France. A recent convert to the event, I sit transfixed in front of the screen, watching the peloton flow across the French countryside, up and down mountains, over winding roads and through picturesque towns, past lavender fields and 12th-century churches while the English ESPN commentating wizard Phil Leggett provides non-stop Continue reading
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On Marcus Boon’s In Praise Of Copying
Marcus Boon’s recent book, In Praise Of Copying (Harvard University Press, 2010), is a timely argument in favor of our freedom to freely copy one another in the name of healthy creativity. Boon, a professor of literature at York University (as well as a DJ and contributor to Wire magazine) notes that the word copy derives from the Latin “copia” which means Continue reading
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