Consider the summer of 2024: Floods in the Sahara. Fires in the Arctic. A sitting U.S. president drops out of a race. Assassination attempts livestreamed. Wars expanding in the Middle East and Eastern Europe simultaneously. And yet, the S&P 500 is up. Taylor Swift is on tour. The algorithm serves you a reel of a dancing dog between a missile strike and a heat death graph.
That is the in its purest form. It is the rhythm of a civilization that knows its destiny (destino) but cannot stop repeating its mistakes (ostinato). Coda: The Unfinished Bar In 1992, the band R.E.M. released "Automatic for the People." On it was a song called "Man on the Moon," about Andy Kaufman, a performer who faked his own death. The chorus asks, "If you believed they put a man on the moon, / If you believe there's nothing up my sleeve, / Then nothing is cool." Ostinato Destino 1992-
In the lexicon of classical music, an ostinato is a motif or phrase that persistently repeats in the same musical voice, often at the same pitch. It is relentless, hypnotic, and sometimes maddening. The word destino —destiny—implies a predetermined end, a final chord toward which all narratives inexorably move. Consider the summer of 2024: Floods in the Sahara
But meditations require stillness. And there is nothing still about 2024. president drops out of a race
We are Sisyphus, but Sisyphus had a hill. We have a TikTok loop. If 1992- is the perpetual present, the only way out is a new date. A closing bracket. An end to the repetition.