As we head back to school, feelings of novelty intermingle with those of repetition. Never the same, but still again...
In the stores, shelves offer their displays of school supplies. In our intimate lives, we consciously - or unconsciously - prepare for what we call "reprise", back to school, wondering what will be different this year.
French poet René Char had these wise words: "the act is blank, even if repeated".
WHEN MUSIC REPEATS ITSELF
In music, there are a few forms which create that feeling of eternal return that Nietzsche spoke of. The rondo form is one in which the refrain alternates with different, contrasted verses. It is schematized as follows: A-B-A'-C-A''-D-A''', etc...
A Passacaglia is a slow, three-beat musical form in which the bass is obstinately repeated. Sometimes just a few notes will be repeated from beginning to end, while the upper voices will develop, like variations, ornamentation or other modulations, leaving this "obstinate" bass unchanged throughout the infinitely expanding work.
And then there are the repertoire's famous Chaconnes, the most popular of which, Bach's for solo violin, simply repeat the same pattern over and over again. And what beauty!
We also know that french composer Maurice Ravel imagined what he called the most "anti-musical" work of all, in his Bolero, based on a single melodic element and a repeated rhythm, with no development other than timbre colors and a few harmonic enrichments. Nothing but repetition! And a trance begins...
So what does all this tell us?
That you never bathe in the same lake twice! (Heraclitus)
Let's go a step further! For those of you who follow me will be aware of my dual passion for music and the care of mind and soul.
Some time ago, I realized that it's deceiving to believe that we've evolved if we never have to relive past scenarios. Or rather, I understood the need for subtlety in this idea, which is widely used in psycho-emotional therapy.
DO WE REALLY EVOLVE?
When we're interested in freeing up shadowy areas within ourselves - in other words, in bringing awareness to unconscious parts of our own psyche in order to open up our field of possibilities - we all too often believe in a straight line running from left to right. That's natural since that's how we were taught the time line in our early school years. But time has never been linear!
At other times, we might think of a vertical line, from bottom to top. Again, this idea comes from an evolutionary concept, according to which what's below is inferior and less developed than what's above. Yet these concepts have no basis in science as such. But our subconscious is teeming with them!
So let's take a look at the movement of planets, atoms and even living cells... Aren't we forced to conclude that "things go round and round"?
Yes, we are going round and round - and this expression deserves to regain its nobility. For what else can we do when we think we're hurtling towards the horizon, the very horizon that would only lead us, at the end of the race, to retrace our steps?
So goes the Earth...
Obviously, when psychotherapists allude to the idea of never reliving the same patterns, they forget, in my opinion, to specify that it's not so much a question of the event itself as of the way in which it's experienced.
A person may have experienced several bereavements (indeed, it's part of life to experience bereavements in different forms, alternating with rebirths), countless divorces or even accidents. But let's look at it the other way round: if a person experiences an incalculable number of repeated successes, would we say they haven't evolved? In fact, he or she may not even be aware of these successes, unlike the other person living through events that seem sadder at first sight, who may be aware of experiencing liberations and advancing in his or her understanding, maturity or wisdom in living through them? In the lightness of life, quite simply?
RETURNING TO CONSCIOUSNESS
Within me, I have this sensation of a music that reflects us, of a vibration that's all our own. Why on earth would we want to escape it? Like a rondo form, it can, on the other hand, be experienced from a new angle every day. "The earth revolves around the sun, but every day the sun's light falls on the earth from a different angle" wrote Paul Auster in his film Smoke.
So one day, I'd like to officially declare to all those who, like me, have the slightly shameful sensation of déjà vu (already seen), of déjà vécu, that there's nothing more normal than going over and over again this theme of ours, this melody that sings within us. And yet, each time we return, it's not the same story...
Or else what? We should never be angry again, because we've already known peace after anger? We should never feel sadness again, because we've known the joy that followed sadness? Storms and seasons alternate. To want to wipe out a part of existence would be to prevent ourselves from living.
There's a very special emotion in walking in the sand where our footprints were already laid the moment before, because we'd been there. Our eyes, enriched by this emotion, look elsewhere, see something else...
HISTORY AND REALIZATION
According to Buddhists, we reincarnate thousands of times. Perhaps ad infinitum? Fortunately, we'd then be immersed in this oblivion, this deep amnesia that we take for ignorance, otherwise we'd be infinitely bored, constantly seeing the sun rise and set, with no other purpose than this perpetual movement. As our breathing only alternates between two typically harmonic beats - tension and relaxation - we continue to marvel, or at least, to be unaware of all the unveiled mysteries of what we call "life".
Because the aim is not to know. It's to be...
My belief is that we go through our theme over and over again to get to know all its flavors, from life to life, or in this single incarnation.
DOES MUSIC REPEAT ITSELF?
After the Second World War, so-called "classical" music could no longer offer the forms of the past as they were, notably the famous sonata form. Why was this? Because it consisted of an A-B-A' pattern, the last part of which reflected the beneficial return of a beginning. But after Hiroshima and Auschwitz, was it possible - or even decent - to imagine returning to one's former life? Impossible. How was it possible to rediscover wonder after seeing horror? And yet, this is the work of Life, stronger than anything else: we continued to breathe in and out, to wake up and fall asleep watching this impassive sky...
Today, when trans-humanism and other artificial intelligences are making their appearance, we still believe that nothing will ever be the same again.
Without doubt, the form will no longer be that of returning to the past in exactly the same way, but of going much further back: to the origin! For the true origin has no time and no place. Above all, developments and crises always bring us back home, not the fake one created by some kind of deception, but the one that, in a nutshell, boils down to this: the essential. The very essence of our being.
Is this why, at the same time, we are witnessing the apogee of technology and the attraction of returning to ancestral wisdom? Neither, but a combination of the two reminds us of the extreme sophistication of who we are.
But, having found that, we'll keep spinning and spinning, just as children spin on those wooden horse merry-go-rounds they can't control, but on which they can experience all sorts of things.
As we enter the new school year, marked by the "blue" full moon of August 31, I like to think that wherever we go, we go nowhere but around the same core: our soul, which calls us back to ourselves!
I wish you to be all what you are in this September,
Melody and rhythm,
Harmony and pulse.
In peace and with heart,
Hélène Tysman
