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Alan Wake's Paper Supplier's avatar

Beautiful. I hesitate to call it relatable for the fear of having misunderstood or misinterpreted your experiences and falsely likening them to mine, but there is something here in this writing that feels very much like "home". While, I find myself approaching this need for repetition to derive comfort with great disdain, you seem to have found a way of aligning with this desire.

Holly Elmore's avatar

Yeah I’ve never really gotten the shame about liking repetition. Boredom and novelty-seeking seem more junky to me if we have to judge 🤷‍♀️

Alan Wake's Paper Supplier's avatar

It's just the constant FOMO paired with an inability to justify repetition. It doesn't feel like I'm gaining anything. Of course, I feel more comfortable and cuddled by familiarity, but there is always this nagging thought that this is not how you're supposed to live. People urge you to exit your comfort zone for a reason, after all. I don't know if any of it resonates with you.

Holly Elmore's avatar

I think repetition isn’t necessarily a comfort zone. A lot of times I repeat something bc it really affected me in an effort to understand it, each repetition going deeper.

But even when it feels easy and compulsive, I trust that there’s a reason my body craves it.

Zagreus's avatar

Great rapport. This occurred to me: instead of the routinization of charisma — the charisma of routinizaion.

SubTly's avatar

I have a similar long-term relationship with the orchestral-and-vocal theme to 'Gladiator' https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1UiD2sxoWo... And likewise with Heinz Tomato Soup, until they changed the recipe (in the UK - less salt? Or my taste buds changed)

Jacob's avatar

First this is a wonderful example of the power of writing for sharing the intensely personal: I couldn't *relate* to many of your examples in quite the way you experience them, but I could somehow get insight into your feelings because you picked them out so precisely. And it made me think maybe I should celebrate more the pleasure of rounding off prediction errors – which I think as you perhaps intimate are more easily done with aspects of our experience than eg the stock market or geopolitics.

Also the fact that you picked out Duchamp and then later used Campbell's soup as an example later immediately put me in mind of Warhol – who elevated Campbell's Soup to fine art by repeating its image. But he depicted every variety; you take it one step further by repeating just one over and over.

Holly Elmore's avatar

Oh my gosh you're right-- how could I miss the Warhol angle on Campbell's soup!

Jorge O’Well's avatar

By the way, I I like the fountain. And the staircase. But it’s /they are singular. The only. Repetition thereafter.

But we can slip back in time also. Did I repeat myself? 🤔

Jorge O’Well's avatar

One can go to “art school” and masteratelier in a group therapy semi-decade idle/diddle.

Or one can take the less traveled, as they say, and assuredly shorten the path and just do it. Win or fail with less cost and more honest critique. Maybe.