Joy in repetition

The generative power of doing the same thing over and over again

Every daily drawing of Kate Bingaman-Burt’s since 2007

“Insanity is ‘doing the same thing over and over, expecting different results.’ That’s writing poetry, but hey, it’s also getting out of bed every morning.”
—Mary Ruefle, Madness, Rack, and Honey

Hey y’all,

I saw this image on Kate Bingaman-Burt’s Instagram two weeks ago and I haven’t been able to get it out of my head. I’ve sat here for a few minutes this morning staring at it before writing to you. What it is: A layering of every single daily drawing of something she’s purchased since 2007.

When I usually think about an artist’s body of work, I visualize piles of sketchbooks stacked up or diaries taking up a shelf:

Clockwise, from top-left: James Kochalka’s sketchbooks, Michael Beirut’s composition books, Duncan Hannah’s diaries, David Sedaris’s diaries, David Letterman with paper cups representing completed shows

The thing I love about Kate’s image is that by layering up all these images a black hole appears that seems to be eating up the drawings. It feels spiritual to me, somehow, like a void or a womb from which something springs forth.

“Looking at a blank page of paper is pretty scary,” I remember Kate saying years and years ago on an episode of Design Matters. “If you’ve got this repeatable project set out, you know what you’re supposed to do.”

Repetition has a bad reputation. Doing the same thing over and over every day conjures images of Sisyphus rolling his boulder up the hill.

But as Camus wrote, “One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”

Or as Prince put it, “There’s joy in repetition.”

Kate explains in her post how the project transformed from a sort of Sisyphean punishment to something joyful:

I started this project on the heels of drawing my credit card statements as a form of punishment. I chose drawing because it was my least favorite way to create. I started this project because I wanted to draw something other than my dumb credit card statements and because I tricked myself into actually liking the drawing process. Eighteen years later, it’s my favorite thing to do.

“Time is repetition, a circle. This is obvious. Day and night, the seasons, tell us this. Even so, we don’t believe it.
—Joy Williams, “Autumn”

G.K. Chesterton wrote a long, beautiful passage about repetition in Orthodoxy. It bears reading and re-reading in full: