Going in circles
Repetitions and the constant battle between safety and entrapment
I’ve always been interested in repetitions. Especially when it verges on obsession. As a kid, I begged to rent The Nightmare Before Christmas at our local video shop so many times that my mom couldn’t stand being in the same room when I watched it. It’s so creepy, she said. But she let me rent it again and again, anyway. As a teenager in Tokyo, I used to sing M-Flo’s “Miss You” so many times at karaoke, that my friends would memorize the song code and punch it in as the first song without discussion. (There was one summer where my friends and I would go karaoke multiple times a week. I paid for this by working at McDonald’s, another activity that involved repetitive motions.) Over time, I got so good at singing this song that I could do all three parts (the rapper, boy singer and girl singer) and it became a kind of performance I would put on for everyone. I could even sing the whole thing without looking at the lyrics. (I could still do a few parts with my eyes closed when requested.)
Every once in a while, I’ll attach myself to something. A movie. A song. An essay. A YouTube video. I’m pretty sure a lot of people could relate to this. Exercising repetition brings a distinct kind of comfort. Predictability. Reassurance. Joy.
A couple years ago, the Nashville Philharmonic Orchestra played Ravel’s “Bolero,” which is probably the most repetitive piece of classical music ever composed. As a listener, it’s wonderful, soothing, and festive as it climaxes with a huge crescendo. As a performer, it tests one’s patience, concentration, and even interest in the piece.
In one of my favorite Radiolab episodes, they talk about repetition using Radiolab’s signature formula, with high-brow discussion over low-brow gateways, always with a dramatic silent pause after the host asks, “But why?” They start with Kristen Schaal’s strange comedy bit, where she and a partner repeat a nonsensical sequence so many times that the audience goes through waves of unexpected emotions: confusion, hilarity, anger, acceptance, back to confusion. It’s jarring when repetition is thrust on us, like an audience in a comedy club. When we have no control over what and how that repetition is exercised.
As a parent of two small children, I feel similarly thrusted into repetitions I didn’t ask for. As I discovered after teaching my Parenthood Micro-Memoirs class, every parent has a story about a song they’ve had to repeat, in particular a song that drives the parent crazy. Wheels on the Bus. Row, Row, Row Your Boat. Not only do the children ask us to repeat the same song, the songs themselves are riddled with repetitions, so that singing it once feels like you’ve already sung it 100 times. (Don’t even get me started on Baby Shark.)
Repetition is how children learn. We know this. Our children’s librarian, who provides free online storytimes every week, reminds us of this. So I continue to sing the same songs, read the same books, tell the same stories.
On top of these requests, our almost-3-year-old is in a phase where he recognizes certain routines and insists on taking off his pajamas exactly like this, opening the door in this order, pouring the milk right to this line, saying “Shuppatsu!” (“Let’s go!”) right before I reverse the car out of our driveway (and if we ever miss an opportunity to let him say this, we have no choice but to drive back home and start all over again).
Of course, there are times when I veto my child’s request, even if it leads to Babadook-level screaming. And I feel guilty and cruel that I’m cutting off these repetitions which are actually like sacred rituals to him. But I also know that the world can’t give him these repetitions whenever he wants it, and right now, I am that world. Sometimes, we have to sit with discomfort. And I feel responsible for teaching him that that discomfort is okay.
I’ve been thinking about repetitions (again) because 2020 is almost coming to an end, and this has been a year in which everyone—adults and children—have been thrust into situations where we’ve had to upend the things that we considered normal, in the span of just a few days. I’m pretty sure that’s why the month of March felt like an eternity. We suddenly had to figure out a new way to get groceries. Many of us lost jobs or had to figure out how to work from home. We didn’t get to say goodbye to the things we lost, because there had been a false sense of hope back then that the pandemic wouldn’t last so long. By the end of the summer, Jin and I had countless conversations about how to move forward with our family life, knowing that we weren’t getting back the things we used to rely on like daycare and babysitters.
Now that we’ve lived multiple months settling into this new normal, life feels doable again. With the news of Biden winning and the vaccines getting closer, the future looks a little less bleak, and yet I don’t know that I’m emotionally ready to change our routines—yet again. When we’re vaccinated and the world reopens, I certainly won’t be the first to enter a restaurant or go into a museum or travel in an airplane. Not so much because I’m scared of getting infected, but because I need time for another readjustment. When we agreed to be in a quarantine pod with another family, we knew going into it that we were all negative and safe. But none of us could step forward to hug each other for a long time. Our bodies stopped us even as we mumbled, “Sorry.”
As terrible as this year has been, I think I’m at that point where I’m actually comfortable with our new routines, which is to say, I’m comfortable with all the restrictions and the things we’ve lost. One of my favorite philosophers says there’s infinity within finitude. I hesitate when I try to imagine what will happen in the coming year, because a part of me isn’t ready to see the lost things come back into our lives. I’m not ready for our paradigm to shift again, just yet.
Speaking of repetitions, I’ll be teaching Foundations of Creative Nonfiction again at The Porch starting January 14, followed by a brand new course called Intermediate Creative Nonfiction starting April 8, designed for students who want to explore the genre on an even deeper level. All courses are still on Zoom, and I’d love to have you or anyone you know who might be interested. Feel free to reach out if you have any questions!