Think Kit #21: Repetition, Repetition

(Part of Think Kit!)

I remember very distinctly the first time I heard the motorik backing beat of NEU! From a young age, I had been a finger-tapper, pencil-drummer, leg-shaker – I was generally vibrating, due to some internally-combusted mix of anxiety, energy, and nervous compulsion. Though I never really listened to much music growing up (or played anything beyond the dried-saliva smelling beige recorder), somehow the 4/4 beat was in my blood. "Hallogallo" resonated with my insides, and I can still listen to it over and over without being sated.

Repetition soothes my inner beat. Repetition is my musical mantra, apparently. I can get down with the overlords of day-long chords, Oneida, the extreme-drum-circle of Boredoms, the modern two-chord slow-boogie of Wooden Shjips...it just makes sense.

When it comes to personal mantras, I also tend towards repetition. My friends and I, a couple years back, began to write songs, and in a fit of 5:00am-inspiration, decided that a few years back would be the Year of Doing "Stuff" (stuff, while replacing something less couth, meant actually creating), and the following year became the Year of Doing Better "Stuff".

And now life's 4/4 beat has turned the corner again – 2014 has snuck up like the gray hairs poking out of my temples. I've decided that the mantra I'll repeat this year is less wordy, but more complex:

(Photo taken at DFW.)

I am at heart a conservatively-behaving person (not politically – there'll you'll find me...quite left); whether a Lutheran upbringing in an auto-town is to blame, or my 20th-century genetic mish-mash, or some inner alarm that urges caution, whatever it is, I'm not prone to risk.

In 2014, I'm still going to use judgment, still will assess the scenario and take stock and size things up...but I will make a conscious effort toward chance, toward the road less travelled, toward the difficult, the labor-intensive, the creative epicenter of self, and other parts unknown.

...I am a writer, after all, or at least I call myself one. And each writer needs fertile material. Time to put the plow down and see what I can dig up.

psychedelic things i liked when i was a kid, vol. 2 (or: unattached thought stew)

Friend (& super-great booking dude) Dan C. told me, pre-Tortoise show, "Yeah they're really good for 5 minutes, but after that...it's the same thing. You get the idea." Now, he may have been acting salty due to Ghana going up 1-0 on the U.S. in their quarterfinal Cup match. Or, he may have had match fatigue....er, show fatigue. As a veteran of playing 300+ shows, and attending many more, I can totally understand seeing a band several times and not continuing to be impressed. However, I wonder if this doesn't say something more about our culture in general, and even something about me. A predilection to krautrock, attending Tortoise shows, and reading a 1300-page World War I-era fictional tome doesn't exactly place me in the same time-space-continuum as the rest of the Tweet-feeding, aerosol-pancake-eating, Generation ADD.


yes---this is real. pancakes are so hard to make!

I'm not trying to claim that I have some sort of super-powered attention span (I don't; as evidence, I have 6 tabs open on this Chrome browser); and although I often want to (after working with several thousand kids this year), I'm not claiming that a shorter attention span is inherent in Generation Z. In fact, my only claim is that (and I just read this somewhere on Internet...can't remember) we wear our consumable art like identity badges. This is some sort of filter for most people. "I like this_____this______and_______, what about you?" A creative filtering. Unfortunately, when you aren't into People Magazine and Baconzillas, your filter is coming on pretty strong. What have I been listening to this month? Mostly early Stereolab and CAN records. This sentence automatically flies me to NeverNeverLand. Not that I have beef with that, but what has filtered my art digestion process to the point where I am interested in something that is uninteresting to most...or, how did I end up consuming the mostly inconsumable?


CAN...a little less hip in the late 80s. But who wasn't?

The first time I heard Tago Mago, the first time I heard Trout Mask Replica...these were bizarre experiences. I'm not sure how my brain processed these---was I being influenced by those around me who were partial to such records? Yes, but if that was always the case, I'd love Modest Mouse, or the Pixies...both of which I appreciate but get no emotional grab from. I think maybe repetition is the key...something very mathematic, very primal about krautrock. Even about this Dos Passos book...events pile upon events in such random fashion that the written world becomes a fractal. World War I is merely a piece of pattern in the midst of a thousand others... Perhaps by following my natural Id, my inner circadian rhythm, the tide of my body, compels me to follow art that self-repeats, that tessellates in often-times unnoticeable ways, that digests-and-then-echoes.

Now, to figure out how to seek repetition in art, but not life. Feeling the need to break out of whatever fractal I've woven myself into lately. Immerse myself in other patterns. Other weather systems. Maybe a coast, or two?