Motivic, Not Motivated

    I've done a major chunk of the work I needed to do to start wrapping things up in my present situation, so I've had some time to myself. This has been taken up by diving into studying music—theory, composition, perhaps one day production.

    Music offers an endlessly novel playfield to keep me interested. Recently, I tried writing a poem about novelty, specifically about how my relationship with it feels ruinous. Music offers a partial solution there, methinks.

    I started a 100-day challenge where I try making random ≥ 8-bar compositions. Days 1 & 2 felt terrible, because I was finding it hard to tolerate repeating anything, even motifs which are supposed to be repeated. When watching videos about the craft stressing the importance of repetition to keep things auditorily coherent, in my mind, repetition is still infinitely boring and "not enough". So, I tried that, and it sounded like what it was: a bunch of notes over a complicated harmonic progression—not music.

    A big part of learning music is analysis. I've been actively listening a lot. Fortunately, the breadth of my music taste helps. I can just hit shuffle on my liked songs, and not get stuck in any genre. It was mildly surprising to me to see how much repetition there is in all the pieces I like. You can't develop a musical idea without establishing it first through repetition. You cannot appreciate themes and variations unless there's repetition. Now isn't that a metaphor for life—on a solid, robust foundation built by repetition, appreciating the incremental changes? You need to establish a musical frame of reference, like the tonic of the key you're in. To demonstrate any change, you need to know what the baseline situation is. But the baseline is determined by repetition.

    One (=my mind) may ask, "Why? Just do whatever for long enough and use the average as the baseline." If your baseline changes wildly with ever new data point, your Δ will average to zero. An average of zero is "no significant change". And here comes the shocker—"no significant change" for a long time isn't exactly novel either, it gets characterised (by the same culprit) as "bad". Sigh~~

    So, studying music is slowly showing me the pratyakṣa benefits of repetition. Of course, easier said that done; but, it does fit into the format of śravaṇa-manana-nididhyāsana. Nididhyāsa is something I've not been able to consciously demonstrate kṛtisādhyatā for. Unconsciously, I have, like the "repetition bad, only novelty always good" idea.

    I wonder if a full cup needs emptying before refilling with what you want, or can the new thing displace the old thing directly. I wonder if "should" is the opposite of whimsy.

    Further, further.