On Repetition

34 page manuscript book written with metal pens in Chinese ink, illustrated and bound by the scribe on Zerkall paper, red Ingres endpapers, bound in millboard covered in Somerset textured paper with a Nepalese Lokta jacket

250 x 125 mm (closed) | 250 x 250 mm (open)

This piece was made for an exhibition to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Snape Maltings Concert Hall entitled ‘An Orchestra of Letters’. The brief for the exhibition suggested taking inspiration from Benjamin Britten’s connection between words and music.

In this piece, I combine text from an essay ‘On Repetition’ by the Zen master, Shunryu Suzuki, together with quotations and a musical extract from ‘Octet’ by Steve Reich.

I made the connection partly due to the use of repeated patterns in Steve Reich’s music, for it seems to me that a similar rhythmic pulse is also present in a page of calligraphy with its use of repeated letter shapes and elements of visual syncopation.

But also because there is a more explicit Zen connection, for example, in the quotation I use from Reich’s essay, ‘Music as a gradual process’ (written as a kind of manifesto in 1968): ‘Focusing on the musical process makes possible that shift of attention away from he and she and you and me outward toward it’.

I interpret this as a reference to the experience of ‘going beyond oneself’ (or the necessary relaxation of the ego), which seems to take place when one is truly attentive when e.g. playing a musical instrument or engaged in a piece of calligraphy.

For calligraphic training is in many ways similar to learning to play a musical instrument: both require the development of the ‘body memory’, the physiological imprinting necessary to make the shapes or notes required without conscious thought.

And although the calligrapher (mostly) does not have to contend with the demands of a live audience, both disciplines are performance arts where getting the right balance between the technical and the emotional component is key to success.

Combining writing and illustration is what drives me forward, but establishing the right relationship on facing pages in a manuscript book represents a challenge. In this case, I was grateful for the abstract pattern that musical notation provides, which in my view creates a simple contrast with the dense texture of the writing.