Rhythm: pulses, heartbeats, electrocardiograms, metronomes… Without quite understanding why, rhythm appears repetitive and monotonous in my mind when the possible varieties for creating rhythms are infinite. Rhythm is not a concept I could define as autonomous, since I consider it depends on a wide range of variables. I believe rhythm functions, to a certain extent, in a way similar to space. The concept of space refers precisely to the physical absence of matter—that is, it needs to be complemented by the existence of matter in order to be fully understood. It is paradoxical how, under the same condition, we can find its opposite at the same time—in this case, the notions of fullness and emptiness. Apparently, the void cannot manifest without the solidity that bounds it, and vice versa. Something similar happens with rhythm: for rhythm to exist, silence and pause must exist as well. Relating these ideas to “the city,” I note that there are at least two general strands in its rhythm: the rhythm of cities’ growth (treating the city almost like a living being that is born, nourishes itself, grows, and generates energy), and the rhythm carried by each inhabitant of a city. But are they really divisible? How can the rhythm of cities affect us, and in what way? The alienating, stressful rhythm of cities stems from a primary element: repetition, routine. As Bartolomé Ferrando says, “The repetition of something misaligns its meaning; it dissolves it, it undoes it” (2008, p. 63). Every day we perform thousands of tasks, both inside and outside the home. Since the democratization of personal computers and the Internet, the home has ceased to be a place of rest (it has ceased to be the spatial pause of rhythm) to become a place where work continues. Our routine is made up of facts, sensations, and behaviors that repeat day after day. Sometimes they are so intense that they do not abandon us even on weekends (so we also lose the temporal and mental pause of rhythm). By losing the spatial, temporal, and mental pause of the city’s rhythm—which affects and inhabits the individual—or, in other words, by losing pause in all its aspects, and bearing in mind that pause and rhythm are inseparable, we therefore lose rhythm, falling into the establishment of chaos. Paul Ardane speaks of this contradiction between chaos and order when he defines the city as an “Engine of the modernist imaginary, a mental palimpsest that combines order and chaos, organization and entropy” (2006, p. 59). With the repetition of an infra-sign, its meaning is thrown out of joint; with the repetition of the same task every day, that task loses its sense—not that we forget its purpose, but rather that purpose and sense do not necessarily have to be directed toward the same aim. The repetition of a task, a thought, a sensation can end up triggering severe alterations in an individual’s consciousness, leading them to question, again and again, the meaning of life—of their life—who they are. Ardane, P. (2006) “La ciudad como espacio práctico”, Un arte contextual. Creación artística en el medio urbano, en situación, de intervención, de participación. CENDEAC. Ferrando, B. (2008). “Del fragmento, la repetición, el ritmo, la permutación, la aleatoriedad y la indeterminación en la poesía fonética y sonora”. Bellas Artes, núm. 6.