»Habit is the ballast that chains the dog to its own vomit.«

No, this is not a quote by Marie Koldkjær Højlund. She does know its author, Samuel Beckett, who in 1930 published an essay on Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time, pointing to the power of habit to trap people in uncomfortable patterns. Højlund is an associate professor of sound studies and thus has a broad academic frame of reference. Still, she does not know this particular quote when I (naturally, a little way into our conversation) cautiously introduce it at the small café on Jægergårdsgade in Aarhus, which – like many other mornings – forms the setting for Højlund’s itinerant working life.