I have spent a good deal of brain function over the last month dedicated to thinking about repetition. I have come to two insignificant conclusions about repetition and my practice:
Repetition is not a new topic on my mind. It has taken up a significant amount of my brain real estate for years and will continue to be so. I am interested in learning how and why I continue to repeat things in my life and in my practice, and why I continue to return to repetition as a tool for ideation.
Understanding repetition as its own noun is deeply challenging. Understanding what repetition is, rather than in relation to my habits seems important and difficult and worth pursuing.
This journal entry will focus on insignificant conclusion no. 1:
Repetition has become a tool for my art practice. Not a skill like color matching in painting or properly wiping an intaglio plate. It is a tool or piece of equipment. It’s the pencil used to render an image. It can be engaged with when the work calls for repetition.
This is both good and bad for my work. It means that I can always use repetition in the process of work. I sits imobile until I choose to mobilize it. Until I choose to include it in my process. It also doen’t change or improve with time the way a skill does. I might get more comfortable using it the way I get more comfortable using a different press for printing, but the press doesn’t change or improve. It’s just there. You become a better printmaker by using the press more, simply by practicing, but the press itself doesn’t change. You make better images, use different processes, wipe your plate better, choose higher quality papers, but the press just remains a tool used for your art which is improving. The same goes for repetition. I think. Maybe.
Frédéric Gros talks about repetition in walking in A Philosophy of Walking. He distinguishes between boredom and monotony. Walking is monotonous.
“When you walk you are going somewhere, in motion, with uniform tread. There is far too much regularity and rhythmic movement in walking to cause boredom, which is fed by vacuous agitation (mind rotating aimlessly in a stationary body)...So it is generally right to contrast walking, which presupposes a purpose, with melancholic wandering.”
I’m not sure how I feel about this. I agree there is a difference in monotony and boredom. But for me, melancholic wandering is often just as productive as walking described by Gros as a way to stave off boredom.
Repetition as it relates to my OCD seems to be important here. I will often go on a walk, purposefully wandering aimlessly and let melancholia take over my mind. Many of my best ideas come from aimless melancholic wandering. But repetition of melancholia can also lead to intrusive thoughts. There is nothing productive for me in intrusive thoughts. There’s a lot to unpack here. I don’t know. It will take time.
I continue to watch the same shows on repeat, listen to the same music, read the same novels, eat the same meals from the same restaurants, etc. etc. This repetition in life acts the same as walking. It keeps my mind occupied with enough mindless stimulation that my brain can focus on other things. On making art usually. I know from unfortunate medication trials that my OCD and my ADD are VERY closely linked. There’s something here about allowing the natural repetition from my OCD to drown out a portion of my racing thoughts so I can focus on what is important at hand.
But this isn’t a PhD in psychoanalyzing and untangling the mess that’s in my head. It’s about researching my creative process. Part two of this journal entry will focus on the larger picture of repetition and how it is/will be a theme in my work rather than just a tool.