Periodically, I find myself making some kind of facial gesture or not-totally-voluntary movement: a little burst of body. Usually, it happens when I’m walking and thinking to myself. Sometimes, it’s close to pantomiming my internal monologue, but, other times, it just happens. I wouldn’t go as far to say they’re ticks, but they usually feel pretty out of nowhere even when they naturally pair with something else running through my head.

When this happens, I often find myself repeating the movement in quick succession at least once, sometimes a few times. Usually, it just feels “right”. Sort of like after you get the chills. Even though the inciting nervous rush has dissipated it feels “right” to shake out your body almost like you’re “resolving” whatever caused the chills in the first place.

Beyond “feeling right”, I also catch myself doing this at times when other people are around, and I want to dilute the significance of their presence to the movement. I think I’m just self-conscious that they might think I’m biting my lip or pinching my eyes shut or flicking my wrist or whatever as a response to their presence. Like they somehow caused it or, if not that, that they’ve caught me in a uniquely “odd” time where I’m doing something weird. For some reason, repeating the movement makes me feel better. Like I’m expressing, “No, I didn’t blink each of my eyes one at a time because you got too close to me! It’s just something I’m doing right now for reasons that are none of your business and which are unrelated to you. Move along and ignore me!”

I want to stress and reiterate this is no burden to me and I don’t attribute it to anything unique about myself. But even when I’m not “unique” I enjoy thinking about the ways I am.

Today, this happened as I was walking home and getting ready to sign-on to work, and a new thought struck me.

“Repetition legitimizes.”

It’s something I’ve heard online music educator and Jazz Fusion band leader, Adam Neely, repeat in several of his videos. He is usually talking about it in the context of musical improvisation and composition. When you’re playing music and you go for an idea that feels weird, lean into it! Repeat it! Repetition legitimizes what otherwise might feel out of place and transforms it into its own little motif and musical idea. You didn’t screw up that musical phrase. You augmented it and then reaffirmed this variant on the phrase by repeating it. Bam! What a cool idea.

And when it came to me this morning, I couldn’t help but notice the parallels between that and the language I use to describe the earlier “burst” feeling. Repetition legitimizing those motions. Heck, I even previously described the bursts feeling as “resolving” some earlier feeling of tension (if that ain’t a musical parallel, nothing is.) Somewhere in here there’s an insightful observation leading me to thinking about “dance”, its relationship to the body, the body’s relationship to music, and the experience of those feelings in the mundane of every day. But it’s getting late and I’m getting tired, so I’m going to sign off without realizing that observation.

Oh well, it was a neat morning thought of no particular consequence. I like the idea that there’s something tying these impromptu moments back to something that feels so “put together” and “man-made” like music. It almost makes music feel inevitable. Something that just happens because of our human bodies and not because we’ve “thought” it into existence with our minds.