Nov 18

Nov 18 Repetition and Innovation: Flip Sides of the Same Coin

By Dennis D. McDonald

“Things are always the same. They are always changing.”

For the past few weeks my 18-month-old granddaughter has been obsessed with the Pixar movie Coco. When she visits us she wants to see the movie again. When she hears the title song “Remember Me” she dances around the room. She certainly enjoys the repetition even if after a while it does tend to drive us adults nuts.

I remember when her uncle (my son) had a similar obsession with the Disney cartoon Dumbo. He watched it so many times that our VHS tape started to wear out.

I’m no stranger to the joys of repetition myself. There are certain Haydn and Vaughan Williams symphonies I never tire of. Also, there’s a creek near our house with paths I walk a couple of times a month. I started doing so when we had a dog but now I do so to see what’s the same and what’s different.

Walking the same creekside trails year after year has familiarized me with what’s the same and what’s different. The seasonal cycles are an obvious source of change. Even as I watch the seasons change with the familiar plants like Trout Lilies come and go I see how the colonies expand, contract, and even move from year to year.

Droughts have impact on the vegetation as do periods of excessive rain. The annual fluctuation in arrival and departure times of ducks and herons are also indications of constant change—as well as regularity.

After many years of walking these paths the phrase the finally coalesced in my mind is, “Things are always the same. They are always changing.”

I was reminded of this seeming contradiction – prizing both repetition and novelty -- by reading Leah Fester’s November 7, 2019 New York Times article, The Unexpected Joys of Repeat Experience.

Fester addresses the issue of repetition versus innovation with several researchers and reports that what seems to be a contradiction really isn’t. We need to consider these perspective when it comes to thinking about the seeming contradiction between our valuing innovation and our valuing repetition:

Repetition give us the opportunity to experience something that was missed the last time around.
We are never the same even when we experience the same thing repeatedly.
Even if something “new” isn’t experienced with repetition, that’s not necessarily bad.

For me the most significant factor is that even if we do experience the same thing repeatedly (how many times have I enjoyed Forbidden Planet?) we never do so in exactly the same way. The environment or context of the experience may not be the same. For example, compare watching 2001: A Space Odyssey on a real theater’s big screen with a modern sound system with watching it on the tablet computer. They are simply not the same experience.

More importantly, we are never the same ourselves from repeat experience to repeat experience. We’re older and — hopefully — wiser. Things may have happened to alter our perceptions and experience between then and now.

And what if things have not happened between then and now? If that’s the case, I’m now convinced, perhaps we are doing something wrong.

Eventually my granddaughter will tire of Coco. Her memories of all the times she watched it or listened to the soundtrack will fade. But I know she has changed between viewings and hearings, as have I.