Like a spell or a mantra, which is seeking the right words in their right order (or be an order of sounds?):

a child in the dark, gripped by fear, calms humming. Walk, walk and stops according to your song. Lost, or blanket as it can hardly orients his ditty (...) jumps from chaos to a principle of order in chaos, but also constantly runs the risk of disintegrating.

The refrain enables them to living beings assume landmarks to guide them in the chaos of life and thus a dimension that makes them feel "at home", but also that that "force" out of their usual schemes (from their homes) to create new ones, and even sometimes to jump to "the cosmos": the wall of more subtle defense against chaos.
But far from pointing out the simple repetition of a melody, the refrain is presented as a true and prolific "theory of evolution":

the universe, the cosmos is made of refrains; the problem of music is that of a power of deterritorialization traversing nature, animals, elements and deserts, no less than man.

The House and the cosmos is an original study on the philosophy of Deleuze and Guattari and the place of music in their thinking. In the first part of the book, music and action ritornelo are located in nature, combining music with philosophy and theories about animals Konrad Lorenz and Jacob von Uexküll particular. In the second part, with the help of two great contemporary composers, Olivier Messiaen and Pierre Boulez, Simone Borghi turns his attention to the fundamentals that will allow us to understand the definition of music given by Deleuze and Guattari as "activity consisting deterritorialise the I refrain. "