Repetition

[Sylvain Poitras <sylvain.trombone@gmail.com>]

Some thoughts on repetition for your consideration:

"How then is repetition associated with boredom? The goddess of
repetition shows a triple aspect: there is repetition itself, which is
lively; there is répétition, or rehearsal, which is only re-animated,
a zombie or revenant; and there is slavery, which is dead. The
differences among these three aspects have to do with telos, or final
cause. "

"Slavery lacks telos. One thing is enslaved to another when the second
repeats the first without final cause; nothing is happening; they have
no future, no exit: Sartre's hell, without possibility of
transcendence. Boredom."

"Répétition is repetition in the presence of a given global telos, a
goal with respect to the thing repeated. There is already an idea or
picture of the whole thing repeated, to which successive presentations
are supposed ever more closely to approximate. The telos, however
admirable, does not change or grow, and the thing repeated changes
inessentially and perhaps only in small increments from presentation
to presentation, yet the process of successive approximation imparts a
certain wan glow of pseudo-life to the series and thus to its
components, les revenants."

"In contrast, what I would like here to call "repetition" is
repetition within a larger thing whose telos is not given (as in
répétition), but is in the process of being formed. Such subglobal
repetition is not répétition because the point is not to perfect the
thing repeated, by accomplishing its telos, but to point beyond the
thing repeated to the thing being formed. This is lively because it
escapes the dead hand of some prefigured order; like life, it is a
process of continual transcendence toward who knows what end. The
focus is always forward, un-self-ish, opening away from the current
entity in the direction of something larger and unconfined."

From: Rahn, John(1993) 'Repetition', Contemporary Music Review, 7: 2, 49 — 
57

* * *

While my interest in livelooping stemmed from my desire to create
music in a live context that I couldn't create otherwise, I've lately
become interested in the more 'philosophical' aspects of that choice.
Anyone familiar with the myth of Sisyphus?  He was condemned by the
gods to roll a rock up a hill only to see it roll down once at the top
(repeat ad infinitum...  life-looping?).

The threefold aspect of repetition that Rahn describes makes a sort of
intuitive sense.  However, it seems to me that the distinction between
them might have a lot to do with perspective or state of mind (one
man's slavery is another's repetition).  For instance, Albert Camus
envisioned Sisyphus as an absurd hero who happily got up the hill
everyday to rebel against the absurdity of his existence.  Quite a
different point of view on what most take away from the myth (you mess
with the gods and you'll be enslaved for eternity doing pointless
shit).

Just some thoughts for a Monday morning.  How do you (do you?) address
some of these considerations in your music?

Sylvain