“This Music Is a Bit Repetitive”–that’s why I like it

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Hadestown, George Thorogood, Linda Book, John Denver, Styx, The Saw Doctors, The Blues Brothers, Juan Luis Guerra, The Persuasions, The Little Mermaid, Odetta, Mumbo Gumbo, Pan Jive Steel Band, Abba, Kudana, Tom Waits, Doc Watson, Billy Joel, Five O'Clock Shadow
A small selection of music I like

The other day I was driving somewhere with my mom and I had some music playing. It was Taylor Swift, as it happens–I know only a few of her songs and wanted to hear some more of them. When we arrived at our destination and I turned it off, my mother said thoughtfully, “It’s a bit repetitive.”

It isn’t the first time she’s said that about music I was listening to, and I tend to react as though she’s criticizing my music–after all, doesn’t “repetitive” imply “boring” and maybe even “unoriginal?” This time I tried to take the comment at face value, and observed that yes, this kind of music has verses and choruses and generally repeats the chorus multiple times at the end, with more or less variation, before closing.

My mother and I have different tastes in music. She loves classical, and I grew up complaining that her music was “boring”. (Yes, that was bratty of me. I didn’t fully realize that till I had a kid of my own.) I like–well, I like music with words, as well as music that is danceable. We overlap a bit on traditional folk music. (Which does have repetition in the form of choruses, but doesn’t repeat them multiple times at the end, unless the musician playing chooses to do so.)

The more I thought about her comment, though, the more I realized that repetition in this kind of music is a feature, not a bug. If the chorus is catchy or somehow pleasing, hearing it again and again is a pleasure. It’s something I can sing along to, even if I haven’t learned all the verses to the song. It’s like listening to the song over and over–it’s repetition, sure, but it’s fun.

Thinking about this led me to think some more about my aforementioned reaction to classical music. While I can pick out some repeated bits, for the most part I can’t follow the structure of the pieces. I’m sure it exists, but I don’t hear it. So for me, listening to classical is a bit like listening to a lecture on economics or accounting–first I’m lost, then I’m bored, and finally my mind drifts off to something else.

It’s possible that had I taken piano as a kid, I might have learned to appreciate classical music. But I don’t regret the time I spent instead drawing, writing, and messing around with plants. And there is plenty of music out there with wonderful lyrics and/or a danceable rhythm. I’m not going to run out of things to listen to.

And I’m not going to deny that some of the music I listen to is “repetitive.” It is–and that’s part of why I like it.

The Random Discovery of Poetry

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How often do most people read poetry? How often do poems enter our lives, compared to all the books, news articles, blog posts, social media posts, and so forth?

I like poetry, but apart from re-reading poems I encountered in school, I can’t say I seek out much poetry. I buy and borrow lots of novels and non-fiction, I subscribe to newspapers and magazines, and I surf the web, but I rarely look for new poetry.

Fortunately, sometimes poetry seeks me out. How poetic of it! I wrote earlier about a neighbor who sometimes inscribes poems on the sidewalk in chalk, with the title and poet’s name included. I’ve also run into an occasional poem I like in the newspaper, or in a novel. And now, for reasons known only to the mysterious and ever-changing Algorithm, Facebook keeps showing me poems in my newsfeed.

Good poems, actually. Poems that sometimes make me look up the author. Catherine Barnett. Brian Bilston. Barbara Kingsolver (okay, I already knew her name, but I didn’t know she wrote poetry.) Poems that sometimes lead me to buy a book of poetry. Wow.

I remain a fan of Robert Frost, Ogden Nash, and Edna St. Vincent Millay, but I’m delighted to be reminded that good poetry continues to be written. (And by “good,” I really just mean “appealing to ME.”) I hope other people are also being accosted and charmed by the occasional randomly discovered poem.

Till next post.