Imitatio (2021)
The patient cannot remember the whole of what is repressed in him, and what he cannot remember may be precisely the essential part of it. He is obliged to repeat the repressed material as a contemporary experience instead of remembering it as something in the past.
― Sigmund Freud, Beyond the Pleasure Principle
I am sharing what might seem like an odd triad this morning– a passage from Sigmund Freud on compulsion, a Red Chair painting of the aftermath of what looks to be a wild party and a song, Can’t Let Go, from the odd and wonderful pairing of Alison Krauss and Robert Plant.
I think there’s a connection in there somewhere. Just can’t be sure if anyone else will see it.
A compulsion to repeat ourselves is an underlying theme in my work. I sometimes think I know there is something more than meets the eye in these familiar forms and colors and lines and icons –the omnipresent Red Tree, for example– and that if I keep delving into them, they will at some point reveal their secrets to me.
Some tidbits of wisdom, any iota of truth that will make it all make sense.
That must be close to a definition of compulsion. Probably much in the same way that we– both individually and collectively– seem to constantly repeat ourselves, making the same missteps and covering the same ground as though we have some sort of short-term memory dysfunction that prohibits us from seeing the patterns we have followed all along, that keeps us from learning from our mistakes.
I am hoping there is some constructive effect in my own compulsion. I would hate to think that the decades of work that have come with it are a matter of me simply making the same mistake over and over again.
Not that that would surprise me. I often make the same mistake again and again, somehow thinking that this time will yield different results.
Maybe I should stop contemplating my navel this morning and get to work. Who knows? Maybe today will be the day I figure it all out, the day that bit of long sought wisdom is finally revealed.
Or not. Doesn’t matter. My compulsion would most likely blind me to it and keep me at it even if I find it now.
In the meantime, enjoy this Alison Krauss and Robert Plant version of Can’t Let Go, from their second album together, Raise the Roof. It’s a song famously covered by Lucinda Williams on her great 1998 album, Car Wheels on a Gravel Road.
Good stuff.
This post is from several years back. I was going to comment on the many events taking place right now– the Kirk killing, the Russian drones probing NATO airspace, the Epstein revelations, the random abductions by ICE agents, the continued occupation by US troops within our cities, etc. Just thinking about it as a whole felt very much like what this post, especially Freud’s words. We repress the lessons of our past and continually repeat patterns of behavior, thinking that we can come up with different results than those from prior times.
Like the title of the song, we just can’t let go.
Redtree Times 
never heard this; I defy anyone to listen to this and not want to MOVE…
and the thought about repeating and repeating (sorry the music distracted me); I wonder if it isn’t the habit of what we do, the “oops” in our lives, familiar to us, but not so much other people.
My FIL always carried a pistol with him when he came to the farm, ‘just in case’ and even when there was no need, he still had that loaded gun with him. Habit, habit. My mother grew up in Canada, at a time when hamburg came without fat added. She learned to cook it by adding butter to give it a “better taste”. The problem came when I started cooking and tried that in Home Ec. The teacher was appalled. Explained how you don’t need to do that now, dear.
Long term habits can save us, cure us, or kill us outright. It’s distinguishing what goes where that matters.
I’ve thought about that in the past, how we often repeat habits, both good and bad, learned from observing our parents and how that affects how we live our lives. I know I observed a lot of things my father did and for a while began to emulate those things as a young man. But there came a point when I realized that I wasn’t obligated to follow his lead, to repeat the same destructive habits as him. When that point came, I began to see that his behaviors could serve as object lessons in many cases for me on what I should not do. I am not judging him here. He was basically repeating what he had learned from his parents and they from their own. So many folks don’t realize they have a choice, that they don’t have to habitually repeat the same mistakes.