Upon hearing about my interest in finding rhythms in daily life, Milo referred me towards Henri Lefebvre’s book Rhythmanalysis. I initially thought that it would be primarily about audio rhythms but instead I am finding that its a book grounded in the larger rhythms of life, looking into the nature of repetition and how we live our lives by weaving in amongst rhythms both inherent to existence and constructed by ourselves. This has lent a new perspective to my piece of work, and has inspired me to re-structure the sequencing of audio – perhaps to represent a day in my life, chronologically ordering the recordings to reflect the repetitious aspects of things. The piece seems to be re-shaping from a self portrait derived simply from pleasurable sounds into a work about daily rhythms (both audio and life-based), and I now plan to include a series of harsher, less pleasant sounds as a representation of the unwelcome life-rhythms that I experience.

This talk of life-rhythms has resonated with me greatly, and it feels as though I’m a step or two closer to figuring out what my own happiness is centered around. Taking time to observe the rhythms in play feels like a tremendous reason to be alive. The slow changing of seasons, the way we start our days in our own unique manners, the more complex evolving rhythms of growing older and behaving differently, and the polyrhythms of interaction that occur when coexisting with others. Certainly, it seems to be an easier raison d’etre to explain than the overall peculiarity of existence that I feel is fundamental to my understanding of life (referenced in the blog post titled THE ABSTRACT [or rather, an abstract for the abstract]).