*

Exact repetition can remove us from time. Is this the antithesis of—or a state akin to— the endless expanse, the unbrokenness we feel, when faced with chaotic variation?

An article in the New York Times summarizing recent research reports that rhythm in music is more expressive than pitch, timbre or dynamics (loudness, softness). The amygdala and other areas of the brain registering emotion become most active when the music’s established meter is altered. That anomalous hitch in the step—that mild extension or contraction of duration—the foot poised above the sidewalk an extra instant or the extra unstressed syllable on the poem’s penultimate line, gives a subtle thrill, reminds us we are alive.

I recall the first Philip Glass choral work I heard in the 1970s, prone on a balcony bench of Finney Chapel, which served as a concert hall at Oberlin College: simple patterns of sound in whole- and half-steps, repeated in exacting harmony. Attending as if in a trance, I’ve never forgotten the surge of pleasure my body registered at the first slight rhythmic variation:

Ta da ta da dummm
Ta da ta da dummm
Ta da ta da dummm

Ta da ta da dummm
Ta da ta da dummm
Ta da ta da ta da dummm.