24 Repeat After Me
Episode written & produced by Ross Sutherland
Voices: Ross Sutherland
Transcribed by Sathya Honey Victoria
Imaginary Advice, Episode 24
Repeat After Me
[beautiful mournful looping music, disintegrating like an old polaroid]
[IMAGINARY ADVICE]
Ross: I love you.
I…love you.
I love you.
I love you
I love you.
Sometimes, I worry that I'm saying it too much. On average, I probably say it to my partner ten or eleven times a day. I say it to her whenever we end a phone call, whenever she leaves for work, I say it to her when we’re watching the news together.
I say because I feel sad, and I want to feel better. I say it because I want her to say it back to me, which she does. I say it because we're passing each other in the hallway. Or because I feel guilty about something. Or because of the tiniest pause in our conversation, just a tiny blip in the rhythm of our speech and immediately without thinking those words appear. They effortlessly flow into the gap.
[music changes - mysterious chiming vibraphone]
I love you.
The words become the gap. Sometimes those words seem to come from somewhere else entirely. Repeating them over and over I can feel them changing shape. Getting smoother, lighter.
[like a mantra:] I love you. I love you.
I wonder if something's happening to me. To us.
Repetition changes things. And-and I'm not sure I like those changes.
Voice 2:
Trying to walk
the same way
to the same store
takes high-wire
balance:
each step
not exactly
as before
risks chasms
of flatness.
One stumble
alone and
nothing
happens.
Few are
the willing
and fewer
the champions.
Ross: “Repetition,” a poem by Kay Ryan.
Announcer: It's an honour to welcome to the stage of the Midnight Special the gifted Andy Kaufman! [audience clapping and cheering]
Ross: A TV spot from 1977. Andy Kaufman takes to the stage. He's in a peach-coloured jumpsuit, wide lapels, sideburns, hair combed back. There are two guys behind him with guitars. [music starts playing] A quick glance offstage. And then he begins.
[Andy Kaufman sings:] I trusted you. I trusted you. I trusted you. I trusted you. I trusted you. I trusted you. I trusted you. I trusted you. I trusted you. I trusted you. I trusted you. [audience starts squealing and yelling] I trusted you. I trusted you. I trusted you. I trusted you.
[music, singing continue]
Sixteen lines into the song and you can probably guess where we're going. Kaufman looks so confident! The live audience who, by the way, all appear to be middle aged ladies, seem totally enthralled by the performance despite the fact that, you know, it only contains three words.
[music continues in foreground]
[Andy Kaufman sings, and whoops, more and more frantic:] I trusted you. And oh! I trusted you. I trusted you. I trusted…you! I trusted…you! I trusted…you! I trusted…you! I trusted…you! I trusted…you!
[music stops - audience goes wild for a moment - music continues, in a raucous tone]
[music continues in background]
I find myself thinking about school detention, writing out lines a hundred times, my hand cramping, the blunt pencil, slowly transforming my words into a charcoal sketch of a city skyline somewhere, grey in the distance.
By now does anyone in the room have any idea what the word ‘trust’ means, or what ‘you’ means or even what ‘I’ means?
Even as Andy bows and leaves the stage, you know what's going to happen. There's too much momentum for this to stop. The repetitions continue, whether you want them or not.
[music continues without Andy, audience clapping, presenter yammering in foreground]
Kaufman gleefully runs back on, he jumps into the crowd, eyes bulging wide, he looks utterly insane, as if he would do this forever if he could, ready to fight mind-numbing repetition on behalf of all of us.
[music continues, Andy singing and yelling again]
Whenever I watch that sketch, I start to feel a little nauseous. Seeing a man work so hard to stay in the same place—I can't bear it. Fear of repetition is-it's not a rational fear. It's something far more primitive than that. Something buried deep in the collective psyche, this fear of repetition, of being repeated over and over until we forget who we really are.
-o-
[intriguing jazzy music]
The writer Jorge Luis Borges had a phobia of mirrors. As a boy in Palermo Borges had grown up with three large mirrors in his bedroom. In the dim light of the evening, he became convinced that the reflections could move all by themselves. Borges grew up fearful of ever being duplicated, of anything that would separate his mind from his body.
Borges is not alone here. In fact, every culture has its own version of his nightmare. In ancient Egypt, it was known as ‘ka.’ In German mythology, the word is doppelgänger.
Haven't we all felt that fear even just a little bit at the hairdresser’s, standing between two parallel mirrors, caught in that endless corridor of duplication? Doesn't everyone feel that twinge of vertigo, that loss of boundary, the self dissolving into an ocean of selves?
(…)
Angelo Badalamenti’s “Dance of the Dream Man” from the serial drama Twin Peaks. Of all the TV shows in history Twin Peaks probably contains the highest percentage of supernatural doppelgängers. Writer and director David Lynch has always known how to plug into the unconscious fears of his audience.
Being visited by your double has always been seen as a portent of your death. The doppelgänger doesn't need to replace you. It steals your identity simply by existing. It exploits your fear of being a fraud, of being an imitation yourself. In this poem by James A. Lindon, a man encounters his doppelgänger. The poem is structured so that every line is repeated twice, the second half of the poem, becoming the mirror image of the first.
Voice 3:
Entering the lonely house with my wife,
I saw him for the first time,
appearing furtively from behind a bush,
blackness that moved,
a shape amid the shadows,
a momentary glimpse of gleaming eyes
revealed in the ragged moon.
A closer look, he seemed to turn, might have
put him to flight forever.
I dared not
for reasons that I failed to understand,
though I knew I should act at once.
I puzzled over it, hiding alone,
watching the woman as she neared the gate.
He came, and I saw him crouching,
night after night.
Night after night,
he came, and I saw him crouching,
watching the woman as she neared the gate.
I puzzled over it, hiding alone,
though I knew I should act at once,
for reasons that I failed to understand.
I dared not
put him to flight forever.
A closer look, he seemed to turn, might have
revealed in the ragged moon
a momentary glimpse of gleaming eyes,
a shape amid the shadows,
blackness that moved.
Peering furtively from behind a bush.
I saw him for the first time
entering the lonely house with my wife.
Fear of the doppelgänger hides in an ancient corner of our minds. You can't rationalize this feeling because it isn't rational. Just like my fear of saying ‘I love you’ too many times, it's a fear of turning into an echo, like a photocopier running low on ink.
This irrational ridiculous fear that repetition is a sign of weakness instead of strength.
[spare piano melody, a voice sings in German]
[Ross interpreting the German words into English:]
Oh, you doppelgänger. You pale comrade. Why do you ape the pain of my love which tormented me?
Upon this spot, so many a night, so long ago
[singing crests and ends]
“The Doppelgänger” by Schubert with words by Heinrich Heine.
-o-
[piano continues]
The first time I told her I loved her I remember we were walking alongside a canal together. It was winter. We were sharing a pair of gloves, our spare hands clasped together in my jacket pocket for warmth.
[music ends - silence]
We kissed under the orange glow of the streetlight, preserving us like amber. I told her that I loved her. The words felt like…lightning.
Language can be a drug, just like any other. Words have power. It's easy to abuse that power, to become dependent on it, to lose control of it, to find oneself returning again and again, the drug weaker each time.
But maybe, maybe some things need to be weakened. I mean, if every time I said ‘I love you,’ it felt as powerful as the first…if I could make my heart skip a beat on cue, who would need any other drug ever again, if three words were all it took? I'd never leave the house. Perhaps those words need to be diluted, just a little. Brought down to a healthier, manageable dose. Perhaps this is our way of moderating their effects, of controlling them. After all, some words can hurt too much.
Voice 3: My mother taught me this trick. If you repeat something over and over again it loses its meaning. For example: homework, homework, homework, homework, homework, homework, homework, homework, homework. See? Nothing. Our existence, she said, is the same way. You watch the sun set too often, it just becomes 6 pm. You make the same mistake over and over, you'll stop calling it a mistake. If you just wake up, wake up, wake up, wake up, wake up, wake up, one day you'll forget why. Nothing is forever, she said. My parents left each other when I was seven years old. Before their last argument they sent me off to the neighbour's house like some astronaut jettisoned from the shuttle. When I came back there was no gravity in our home, beds floating. I imagined it as an accident, that when I left, they whispered to each other “I love you” so many times over that they forgot what it meant. Family, family, family, family, family, family. My mother taught me this trick. If you repeat something over and over again, it loses its meaning. This became my favourite game. It made the sting of words evaporate. Separation, separation, separation. See? Nothing. Apart, apart, apart. See? Nothing.
From the poem “Repetition,” by Phil Kaye.
[repeating beat of electronic music]
We repeat words to get a better grip upon them. But it's all too easy to crush those words into dust, to hug them so tight that they fall to pieces.
From the moment we learn the power of words, we inherit the power to abuse them, if that's the right word, abuse.
Abuse something too much, and it becomes invisible.
Anyone who's battled with addiction knows this only too well. It’s the nightmare endgame of any drug dependency, when a drug has become such an integral part of your system that it seems to have disappeared completely.
-o-
A worrying development: the more anxious I become around the words ‘I love you,’ the more unnatural those words begin to sound. Is this a sign of things to come? You start off chasing a buzz, and you end up with just… a buzz, a noise? I really don't like how that sounds. [music fades and ends]
It makes me think back to Andy Kaufman again, about that impossible fight that he picked with boredom. Why did Kaufman decide to make that sketch a song?
Perhaps rather than thinking of my love as being reduced down to a noise, perhaps instead I can start to think of those words becoming music.
I found myself researching the psychologist Diana Deutsch. I first heard about Diana on the science program, Radiolab on American radio station WNYC. Diana discovered something known as the Speech-to-Song Illusion. Here's a recording of Diana's voice.
Diana Deutsch: The sounds as they appear to you are not only different from those that are really present, but they sometimes behave so strangely as to seem quite impossible.
So, one day whilst playing around with this recording, Diana accidentally looped a bit of it:
[Diana:] “…but they sometimes behave so strangely - they sometimes behave so strangely - sometimes behave so strangely - sometimes behave so strangely - sometimes behave so strangely…” [continues looping in the background]
This is the Speech-to-Song Illusion: the discovery that the simple act of repeating something shifts the way that your brain hears it. A second ago, it was spoken English. But now, it's starting to sound like a song. [repetition fades into silence]
As soon as something is repeated, our attention is immediately moved away from the content of the words and towards the contour of the words, the patterns of high and low pitches, the rhythms. Now go back to the original recording. It still sounds as if Diana is breaking into song when she reaches those words.
[Diana:] “The sounds as they appear to you are not only different from those that are really present, but they sometimes behave so strangely as to seem quite impossible.”
Once words become music, they won't go back.
Perhaps when I say “I love you,” it's the same thing. Those words have now become song and should be thought of as music, not speech. Sure, those words may be harder to hear now, but you can't say that music needs to be comprehensible in order to have emotion. Music can move us in ways that we can't even translate back into words.
“I love you” has not lost its meaning. The meaning has just migrated into a different sphere. The expression remains as true as it's ever been. It's just been translated into a nonverbal feeling, a nonverbal feeling, a nonverbal feeling, a nonverbal feeling, a non-verbal feeling, a nonverbal feeling [fades as it continues repeating]…
[three soprano voices singing entwined]
From the composer Steve Reich. The entire song is composed of a single line by Ludwig Wittgenstein, the line “How small a thought it takes to fill a whole life.”
[music continues - tenor voices weaving harmony with the same words]
-o-
I was diagnosed with asthma when I was five years old. The doctors told me that if I was ever caught without my asthma inhaler, I should repeat this phrase to myself until help could arrive. I was told to repeat: it is passing. It is passing. It is passing.
Simply saying the words was supposed to force the event into reality. As a child, I had many opportunities to use this phrase, always caught short without my medication. I remember one attack, age thirteen, in the middle of Thetford Forest with my friend Darren. Whilst Darren biked back to town to get help, I lay on the floor of the forest and repeated those words over and over: it is passing, it is passing.
Once inside the rhythm of the mantra, the words began to disappear, passing over from the conscious world into the unconscious. Slowly, I began to feel the muscles in my chest relaxing, buying me the time I needed until Darren could return.
I remember the effect this had on me as a boy to learn that words—just words!—could affect my reality in such a profound way. It was many years before I discovered the author of that mantra Frenchman Émile Coué, coiner of the term ‘autosuggestion.’ Coué actually advised people to say the mantra in French: ça passe, ça passe. [voice starts singing softly in the background] Saying it this way was easier, even closer to breath; words, invisible by design.
One of Coué’s students C. Harry Brooks wrote a book on how to correctly use these formulas. The strange thing is, as I read Brooks’ manual, I couldn't help but imagine the author addressing my own problem, as if he was instructing me on how to correctly use the words ‘I love you.’
[second voice joins]
Voice 2: On waking in the morning before you rise, repeat the formula in exactly the same manner. Its regular repetition is the foundation stone of the method and should never be neglected. In times of health, it may be regarded as an envoy going before to clear the path of whatever evils may lurk in the future.
[cello joins, voices continue]
But we must look on it chiefly as an educator, as a means of leavening the mass of adverse spontaneous suggestions which clog the unconscious and rob our lives of their true significance.
Do not be anxious about it, continually scanning yourself for signs of improvement. The farmer does not turn over the clods every morning to see if his seed is sprouting. Once sown, it is left till the green blade appears. So it should be with suggestion.
[music continues]
We all know the myth of Sisyphus, punished by the gods, forced to push a rock up a hill for eternity. Whenever the boulder reached the top, it would magically escape him and roll back to the bottom, ready to be pushed all over again.
The gods wanted to remind Sisyphus that he could never surpass them, that he was human. The stubborn boulder was supposed to symbolize the limits of human achievement: monotonous, incomplete, meaningless, ultimately absurd.
[music fades]
Sisyphus is the poster boy for mindless repetition. He's the embodiment of the empty struggle. Because of this, many philosophers have written on Sisyphus—what it means to discover that our actions have no significance beyond themselves. Søren Kierkegaard connected the boulder directly to the theme of love, how easy it is to endlessly pour affection into something that remains unchanged. Kierkegaard sought solutions to this problem, ways to escape from Sisyphus’ trap. But for the French author Albert Camus there was no way to escape. Camus wanted to embrace the nonsense of Sisyphus.
He writes:
Voice 2: I leave Sisyphus at the foot of the mountain. One always finds one's burden again. But Sisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks. He too concludes that all is well.
This universe, henceforth without a master, seems to him neither sterile nor futile. Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that night-filled mountain in itself forms a world. The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.
-o-
When we say ‘I do’ at the altar, those words immediately change the world around us. In a legal sense, at least. Saying ‘I do’ is like a magic spell: say those words at the right time and they cause you to become married to someone. You only need to say them once—well, once per marriage—and then boom, you don't have to say them again. The responsibilities of that sentence are complete. Words like ‘I love you,’ however, those words are different. Saying ‘I love you’ doesn't make you fall in love, can't make you stay in love. ‘I love you’ is the rock we push forever. Some days, those words might feel like a noise or music or breath or unconscious thought. But it's that same path up and down the mountain. The work is never over.
[choir singing the words “I want to live where you live” again and again in variations]
[IMAGINARY ADVICE]
[electronic music returns]
That's the end of the podcast for another episode. This episode originally aired on Radio 4 last month as part of their series called Something Understood. It was produced by Eleanor McDowell for Falling Tree Productions.
I've got to apologize for the slight slowing of production here. I've just been on tour with my theatre show Standby for Tape Backup for most of the last month, which just made it hard to get some of these new episodes finished. But there's the several new ones in the works, so I've got another episode coming out very soon indeed.
If you would like to support the podcast, you can now do so through patreon.com. That's p-a-t-r-e-o-n.com. So, this is a way to throw in with a very, very small amount of money every month to help support the podcast. And I'm incredibly grateful to everyone who has signed up so far. If you'd like to sign up, I'll put the link in the liner notes of the episode. But a big thanks to our newest supporters, Emily M. P., Mac R., Debbie P. and to Jeffrey L. Thanks, Jeffrey. Thanks to you all and may babies sleep all the way on your planes.
Oh, yeah. Something else to mention. Last week's episode, Nice My Selector ended up getting remixed on Joe Muggs’ NTS music show last week. In fact, he opened up the show with it, sort of turning the story into this incredible piece of nightmare psychedelia. Here's an excerpt:
[Other Ross, sounding vaguely threatening:] Have you got anything crunchy? I love crunchy jungle. Know what I'm saying? With a black glass. Like a layer of liquid. Know what I'm saying? I like frosted snow music on the back of the spine, yeah? Dogshit music, you know? Like, cold streets with thugged-out breath. White satin oak leaves that drop like ugh! It’s sick, I love it, yeah.
Have you got…Mate, have you got…Mate, have you got Cross-Check by Smash Navicom? Have you got-have you got any Crass Hardware? Armory Wolf Renegade? Have you got… the Cannons of Mecca Babylon? Yes, mate.
There you go. It's amazing! I really recommend listening to the entire show, which is a blazing pyramid of evil noise. I'll put the link in the liner notes for that as well.
[dance music resumes]
Final plug. If you live in Boston…Boston, then I'm going to be doing Standby for Tape Backup at the Harvard Film Archive. Around sort of midday on March 26, as part of the Boston Underground Film Festival. Does anyone who listens to this podcast live in Boston? Maybe one person. Okay, so, so, so that's for you.
Okay, so [clears throat] time to go now. I'll just leave you with the outtakes from the episode. Uh, back soon. Thanks for listening.
[ethereal vibraphone]
I love you. [clears throat] I love you. I…love…you. I love you. That's more-that’s maybe closer. I love you. It’s maybe nicer if it starts to sound singsong but maybe indistinct.
I love you. What I meant to say was, I love you. That sounds completely alien now, it’s completely meaningless-I love you. [seriously:] I love you. [lightly:] I love you. Shall I keep going? [laughs maniacally]
I love you. I love you. I love you.
[fades out]