Noticing Summer practice - Week 4/8 - Theme: Rhythm

First half of the Noticing Summer practice is almost done 🥳 I’m sharing pages from my sketchbook and simplifying the process. How is it going for you?

The sounds
Of the Harlem night
Drop one by one into stillness.
The last player-piano is closed. 
The last victrola ceases with the
“Jazz Boy Blues.”
The last crying baby sleeps
And the night becomes
Still as a whispering heartbeat.
I toss
Without rest in the darkness,
Weary as the tired night,
My soul
Empty as the silence,
Empty with a vague,
Aching emptiness,
Desiring,
Needing someone,
Something.

I toss without rest
In the darkness
Until the new dawn,
Wan and pale,
Descends like a white mist
Into the court-yard.

Langston Hughes, Summer Night

Starting off this article with the hectic rhythm of a summer night in Harlem (New York City) and the city slowly falling into stillness. But summer rhythms can be so different depending on where you are: open windows cause us to be more aware of the all the surrounding sounds. The division between private and outdoor space is suspended - everything melting together in the summer heat.

First pages from my Noticing Summer sketchbook, I try to make one page per week.

The Prompt

For the past 3 weeks I always suggested a few prompts, but thought that maybe it’s just further complicating things. I want to make Noticing Summer as easy as possible to fit into your busy daily life, so I thought that the prompt should stay open. I’m seeing how the weeks pass by quickly and I barely have the time to keep on with the practice myself - how are you doing? What do you think of simplifying the prompt and leaving it as a single word?

Rhythm makes us think “sounds” but it can be interpreted in a visual way too - what rhythmic elements you see around? For me that’s the light coming in through the Venetian blinds in our bedroom, long into the evening (oh, those wonderful late sunsets) when my son is already sleeping. I see the warm glow of sun divided into perfectly organized small portions, one wooden slat after another.

To get inspired

Giorgio de Chirico (1888-1978) - his rhythmic city scapes always brought to my mind the sun-drenched hot summer days and mysteries that hide in the shadows

There’s a newly revived interest in Odyssey because of Christopher Nolan’s adaptation, but I would like to invite you to watch Oh Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000) by Coen Brothers. The plot is loosely based on Odyssey but instead of Ancient Greece it shows three escaped convicts in 1937 Mississippi on a journey to find a buried treasure. The action is very strongly tied to the rhythm of the soundtrack, and this lullaby is a perfect example of it - summer heat, nature around and everything is slowing down in a trance-like state with the song of the three sirens.

Striped marquise awning is a perfect example of a summer rhythm to me