Noticing Summer practice - Week 5/8 - Theme: Detail
Diving into all the little details that make our own experience unique, with inspirations from Bruno Schulz, Zofia Rydet, and Ripley series.
Over by a fence, a sheepskin of grass rose up into a rounded hummock-mound, as if the garden had turned over onto its other side in its sleep and its broad, peasant shoulders were breathing the silence of the earth. On those shoulders of the garden, August’s unkempt and harridan luxuriance was expanded into silent hollows of enormous burdocks, holding sway with their flaps of shaggy, leafy tin plate, straggling tongues of fleshy green. Those distended rag dolls of burdocks bulged there like peasant women sitting around half-devoured by their own crazy skirts. The garden was giving away for free there its cheapest pellets of wild lilac, stinking soap, a thick plantain gruel, a wild aqua vitae of mint, and all the worst of August’s rubbish.
Bruno Schulz, August
This short story (read full here) by Bruno Schulz (1892-1942) became the ultimate summer memory to me. I read it for the first time while lying on a meadow in Polish mountains with his book in my lap, feeling the summer heat and lush greenery eating me up, while I couldn’t have had enough of it. Schulz’s language is so rich and full of everyday life poetry - he helps me see the extraordinary in the most mundane experiences and sights. He lived in Drohobych (present Ukraine), and never really travelled anywhere - all of his voyages happened in his imagination, and - whoa - what journeys those are. His writing and his art teaches me that we don’t need to travel far to be able to see new worlds, sometimes it’s all about looking inside.
The Prompt
I chose the theme “Detail” for this week, as I would like you to shift your attention and focus on something minuscule - can be an object, but could be a feeling, an action. As always I would like you to get attuned to all your senses and think beyond visual - what sounds, flavors, tactile sensations you experience and you would want to remember? I know that I’m always defaulting with the visual and it takes a lot of effort to be mindful of my whole bodily presence. At the same time I would like to memorize these even more - I won’t have photos or sketches to keep them alive for longer. Isn’t it a bit sad that we can’t take a snapshot of a smell or a touch the same way we record a sight or a sound? I think we would all be a bit more grounded if we could - smell is such a primal way to locate yourself in time and place. What details you might overlook and forget if you don’t note them down, in whatever form you choose, from this summer?
Zofia Rydet, Polish photographer, did a project called the Sociological Record between 1978 and 1990. She traveled around Poland and took simple dead pan photos of people in their surroundings. Through this approach the little details of someone’s living space became equally important as the people themselves, telling us even more about them than any portrait could do. After years have passed, the photos became a witness of a world that doesn’t exist anymore. You can explore the photos for free on a website created by the Zofia Rydet Foundation: click here
This Netflix adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s Talented Mr Ripley is a spellbinding experience thanks to Andrew’s Scott superb acting and the incredible black and white cinematography - every detail matters. Italian summer has never been that chilling - watch if you need a bit of cooling down on a hot day. A true gem of a show.
