Beauty Comes In Many Forms

Welcome to Rhythmic Patterns.

Know a rhythm. Create the art.

Today we are starting something new: our website and this space for blogging about culture and the arts. I hope that you will find these blogs engaging and refreshing to your soul. The vision of Rhythmic Patterns is to provide teachers and students tools needed to remember and create culture. Culture has many definitions. Related definitions given by Merriam-Webster state the following:

• Culture is acquaintance with and taste in the fine arts, humanities, and broad aspects of science as distinguished from vocational and technical skills.
• Historically, the five main fine arts were painting, sculpture, architecture, music, and poetry
• The humanities entail the study of the human world and society from a critical perspective. This field includes popular majors like English, history, and philosophy.

When I think about the fine arts and humanities, I can see that there are many technical skills needed. So I might different a little in Websters definition. That said, it is clear that the fine arts and humanities are important forms of culture. Crafted words, music, and art are a voice in this world that require time, talent, and human souls willing to listen and see.

This past week I went shopping for flowers. I found these beautiful colors: amazingly textured green leaves and dark pink, light pink, and white flowers. I came home and put the flowers into clay pots that I have at my home in China. The clay pots reminded me of life. Our lives are like clay pots, containers into which things are put. Much of what is in the pot is unseen, the dirt is there and it holds the roots of what grows within us. That which the pot holds can be beautiful or ugly or something in between.

Culture and the arts are like these flowers. Beauty seen. Roots hidden. For these flowers to grow their roots must go down deep into something. They need water to thrive and sunshine to grow. When I think of basic study in the arts and in the study of any language, it is the same. To learn a skill like violin or painting, one needs seed, roots, and flowers growing. The seed is the desire to do something creative. The roots are the foundational rhythms of skill learned protected by the dirt of experience. And the flowers that grow from a seed are each unique artistic expressions created. Thus if you know the rhythms of an art form, you can create unique expressions like individual flowers of songs, paintings, and new languages spoken.

Beauty comes in many forms. As our team and friends of Rhythmic Patterns share thoughts and tools that help you to remember culture, I hope that your mind will be refreshed and your awareness of beauty surrounding you will be increased. Be it through study of the English language or Himalayan languages, through deciding to purchase a painting for your home or a handcrafted leather belt for a friend, or simply through deciding to learn how to play a bamboo flute, may your life be rich in beauty. May you be one who remembers and creates culture.