Wishing you all a very happy beginning of summer this June 2023!
Photo by Jake Landau
The weather changes and these days it can be really nuts. It’s lots of heat and sun or heavy rain and floods, or maybe its sand storms and drought. In between if we‘re lucky we’re going to have moments where it relaxes into a mild place and the sun the light, the climate in a city or rural country or desert area might just be perfect.
What happens then? It’s busy, it’s social, it’s where daily rhythm of life starts to speed up or fluxuate. It’s concert season, it‘s exhibitions, it’s the end of the school term and students, parents and families trying to make it through the term and graduations. It’s dinners,cafes, it’s still loads of work hours and deadlines.
How are we supposed to center ourselves in the midst of all of the motion? How do we find presence in a world that demands our attention in many directions?
Entering our first summer with Rhythm in Nature , I find myself contemplating how integrating listening practices connected to nature can affect me. Without trying to fight the tension of summer busy-ness , I find myself accepting the tensions like a multiple polyrhythm, and leaning into this. What does this bring ?
I think leaning into the tensions of active or overactive daily rhythm allows me to breathe deeper and live an integrated life in the flow of daily rhythm.
Some of the things that accompany me in my daily life are listening practices in rhythm that I also wrote about for my upcoming book that will release this summer; are subjects that I also teach about in the course Drum Labs: Rhythm in Nature; and areas we’ll examine in Drum and Gong Labs our upcoming summer residency at PS21 Chatham.
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It is in the constructions of melodic rhythms of beautiful birdsongs like the yellow breasted chat.
It is also in the practical and wonderous ways to calculate rhythms in
equations of waves and their tides in an ocean.
These wave equations and melodic rhythms of birdsongs play themselves out continually both in their diverse environments and also in the numerous ways it is replicated or transformed in the cultures of urban birds and urban water systems.
A practical listening guide ( on field and in the studio) to enter a world of rhythms in nature is also an opportunity and space to discover that we can find ourselves inside the reflections and rhythms of these waves, inside a birdsong. Also, as I write in the book, we will also find ourselves in so many more spaces in the natural wonder of the earth, from the ice caves of a glacier, to the echoes of desert canyons,to the insects and the forests.
Really excited to enter our first summer of Rhythm in Nature with the soon to release first book that accompanies the course Drum Labs: Rhythm in Nature. The international community of artists in the Rhythm in Nature course are really incredible and I’ll be sharing more on the community and the art work of some of these incredible artists!
All my good wishes to each of you,
Susie
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