In the couple of months, I’ve been listening to the song “I Have Been Floated” by the Olivia Tremor Control almost obsessively, over and over and over again. It was something that I found almost by accident, adding it to a playlist initially because I liked the organ hook and moving on, only for the song to take root in my brain and settle in for the long haul.
(To speak to how little I was really paying attention to it at first, when it started playing on a loop in my head, I couldn’t remember what song it actually was, just the melody; I went back through everything I’d been listening to to try and find it, going, it’s definitely got to be something I heard in the last couple of days, right? I’ve not just made this tune up, have I?)
Somewhere in the middle of the third or fourth day of listening to the song for a third or fourth time, I realized that this was something I do entirely unintentionally; become obsessed with something in the short term and loop it, revisiting it time after time to try and understand it on a level that unlocks something inside my brain. It’s most often music — with this song, it’s me realizing that the way the song plays with recurring elements is a masterclass in arrangement and production — but it can be anything: a TV show, a book, a comic, a movie. When I discovered the rom-com Rye Lane, I watched it three times in one weekend. I’ve watched Lovers Rock more times than I can remember, despite only seeing it for the first time three years ago, especially the “Silly Game” scene, which I rewind and watch again even while playing the movie through as a whole. It’s all about trying to get why it makes my brain itch.
This is, perhaps, a “me” thing — the desire to revisit until something feels fully understood and appreciated — but I doubt that I’m the only one who does it, somehow. Don’t all of us who have ever considered ourselves fans of anything have this gene inside our heads?