I notice a lot of artists are obsessed with creating trilogies. Filmmaker Lars von Trier has his “depression trilogy” of films. Robert Smith and his band The Cure have their “dark trilogy,” consisting of their Pornography, Disintegration, and Bloodflowers albums. Filmmaker Ingmar Bergman had Through A Glass Darkly, Winter Light, and The Silence. There’s J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy of books. Tons of musicians compose trilogies of songs, or a song with three ‘movements’ in it. Emerson, Lake, and Palmer have their aptly titled tune, “The Three Fates.” Dream Theater have their “A Mind Beside Itself” trilogy of songs, consisting of Erotomania, Voices, and The Silent Man.
These are just a few examples that came to mind while writing this, and of course I’m not talking about franchise bullshit like Home Alone 1, 2, and 3. I’m talking about pretentious art stuff. I wonder why it’s so common, why artists are drawn to doing things in threes. I don’t know but I don’t like it. What about duos, quadruplets, quintuplets, etc? I haven’t come across any of those that I can remember so I feel like it’s mostly a path dependency thing, where artists are accustomed to other artists doing it so they instinctively copy the blueprint. Even when artists don’t intend to make a trilogy but later acknowledge they have inadvertently done so, I find it annoying. I don’t even want to hear about it. Trilogies are just so overdone.
I actually love almost all the pieces I listed in the first paragraph. I just have to not think of any of them as, ahem, you know what.
crimson highway 