“I’ve listened to “Don’t Go Away” about 200 times over the past two weeks. Because repetition soothes me, I’ve formed strange and bone-deep attachments to books and movies in my life, things I return to compulsively. But I’d have to quit my job and abandon sleep and drinking to watch Paul Thomas Anderson’s Magnolia or read Dave Eggers’s A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius that many times. “Don’t Go Away” lasts four minutes and 40 seconds. For pure catharsis, that’s a damn good return on investment.”
Sarah Hepola on the phenomenon of listening to one song over and over again, which I have to say, I also do (and love doing). I cannot tell you, to intersect a bit with the above, how many times I’ve listened to Aimee Mann’s “Driving Sidways” over the last few weeks. (Thirty? Three hundred? Somewhere in the middle, for sure.)
There’s something about listening to one song over and over that is just, like, you don’t learn anything from the experience. I don’t, at least. But it like soothes this part of you. It really does. It’s like using fine grit sandpaper to smooth out a bit of your psyche, but in away, of course, that doesn’t hurt. Quite the opposite.
