The emergence of variety

Is it a sign of my waning creativity that I've begun the last two posts with quotes? Well, perhaps - most of my creative energy these days goes into coming up with noises that might make a five-month-old giggle - but it may also be due to my recent of diet of reading for classes. Pick up any issue of Artforum from the 1960s, and you'll likely find at least one article - and, more probably, several - that opens with a high-octane quote from Wittgenstein, or Jonathan Edwards, or some opaque minimalist. After you read enough of them, the habit simply becomes second nature, and one simply sees all of one's actions and words as prefaced by the floating wisdom of one's elders. It's a pretentious variation on Quoyle's habit, in The Shipping News, of thinking of his own life in terms of corresponding newspaper headlines. Man Lives Ordinary Life Framed By Ostentatious Quotes.

In any event, in his 1955 book The Banquet Years, Roger Shattuck discussed the music of Eric Satie, a composer I've mentioned before in this blog. Here's Shattuck: "Satie frequently scrutinizes a very simple musical object; a short unchanging ostinato accompaniment plus a fragmentary melody. Out of this sameness comes variety."

Out of sameness comes variety: amen. For roughly 160 days now L. and I have been living days that are, for the most part, marked by regular patterns: wake to Cleo's cries; feed her and wolf down a bowl of Cheerios, or oat bran; walk, follow the course of a mobile, and try to live a rather full life during those three 30-minute naps. Of course there are occasionally dramatic variations, but for the most part our recent life has been lived in a comfortable set of well-worn grooves. And yet, just as the pattern begins to feel rote, or too familiar, Cleo throws us something new: she smiles. Or she rolls over. Or she puts her left foot in her mouth.

Out of sameness comes variety. Hercalitus said that we can't step into the same river twice, and the reason's clear, in music and in parenting: motifs heard twice are different than those heard for the first time - and those heard for the first time are, against a backdrop of rough sameness, sometimes completely disarming.