Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Repetition, repetition, repetition

I repeat myself a lot. I repeat myself, A LOT. Repeating myself, something of which I do a lot, is the myself that repeats. The sheer repetition of the many repeats I have made over the years, merely repeat the things I've said before.

Now, is repetition the dearth of ideas, or the birthplace of genius?

I'm not saying this because I think I'm a genius (though of course, I am) but because most of the breakthroughs of the world have come about from repetition. Even Einstein's equation was the culmination of years of repetition of other thinkers, including his own obsessions.

For what is repetition, if not obsession? Thinking about the solution to a problem; OBSESSING over it, REPEATING the problem over in the mind; finally finding the solution - surely this is the hallmark of genius? To finally find-that-answer: 'it's genius!'

But no, it's not genius, you think, it's just me obsessing to the point of madness. The point where my brain is so overloaded with the problem, that the solution becomes obvious. The point where I've repeated the problem to myself so often, the solution lies in the repetition. And you might think it's genius, and I might claim it, but I know it really isn't.

And this is the basis of true genius, the knowing that it really isn't.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

I so should not just have taken a whopping hit. It's ok... I'm reading it through again...

rubbish said...

My head hurts.

VEG said...

I'm sorry, could you repeat that?

Laura said...

I've always thought that you had to be a bit mad in order to be a genius.

And I'm fine with that.

Eric said...

Hmmm, it seems that repeating slows things down so you can creatively model against the subject of your obsession.

That's a very good method, but it disappointed me recently when trying to codebreak a message from a dead guy's pocket published by the FBI asking the public to take a look. Then again, I'm probably not a genius.

tennysoneehemingway said...

BdV: actually taking a whopping hit should work great for this post.

Rubbish: not as much as mine.

Veg: hahahahahahahahahahahahaha!

Lola: they're coming to take you away you know.

Eric: it'll come to you in a dream.