Bolero: The beauty of repetition

Some time back I got the opportunity to work in Goteborg (Gothenburg in English) which is the second largest city in Sweden. I was amazed by the rich culture of the city and was used to go to some event everyday after work with the intention of exploring the city as much as possible. Goteborg opera house was one of my favorite places. I watched about 10 shows in it. One of them was a ballet named 3xBollero. It comprised 3 dance performances to Ravel's Bolero. I particularly liked the third performance which was called "Episode 17" choreographed by Alexander Ekman. I guess other two performances were too advanced for me to grasp. It was the first time I listened to Bolero and I started liking it. 

Bolero is a orchestral work by Maurice Ravel which is known to be ultimately romantic. Special thing about it is that it repeats the same short theme over and over again. Instead of a complicated long theme we hear the same piece repeating in different melodies. Each repetition adds a new color to the work and the listener does not get bored by the recurrence. I do not know much about music and I can describe my feeling as "A masterpiece highlighting the beauty of fine details of a simple thing using repetition". Bolero is said to be inspired by a painting created by Valentin Serov (Painting is the one in the beginning of the article).  A brilliant performance of Bolero is available here:

In the modern world we get continuously bombarded with lot of stuff and usually are not given a chance to stop and look at something closely. Repetition is regarded as waste of time and people always ask for "new" things. We have been trained for fast moving TV screens for a long time. However, my experience is that I need some time to feel or understand something properly; even a really simple thing. I get emotionally attached with a thing only after keep looking at it for a long time. The same goes with problem solving too. I solve a math or engineering problem only when I have the patience to think about it repetitively for 100 times. After the same problem revolves in the head for a prolonged period, the patterns associated with it  and the very reasons that made it a problem start emerging. After this stage the solution appears like a obvious one that should have been uncovered in the first see.

My opinion is that the overwhelming amount of data we get exposed to does more harm than it helps. Serious encounter with anything needs close attention and patience. Works like Bolero just remind this fact to us who are compelled to run with gigabyte speeds.