Rhythm and Rhyme II

Rhythm is not limited to song and dance; rhythm is part of existence at large.

Birds flap their wings with a rhythm; the night/day cycle follows a rhythm, as does the seasonal cycle. People talk and write with rhythm, walk with rhythm and breath with rhythm.    

Rhythm coalesces the multitudes of diverse things inhabiting the world.

The lion is sensitive to the rhythm's of its prey. It crouches in the grass observing the repetitive movements of its prospective meal. With precise timing it pounces. A frog attracts the opposite sex through rhythmic messages; some birds engage in a marvelously coordinated dance prior to mating. Through music many people become united, as in a choir, orchestra, or a dance troupe. And melody itself harmonizes diverse notes and sounds into a seamless flow.

     Rhythm is felt and responded to.

A converter exists that transforms rhythmic input into rhythmic output; that 'hears' music and converts it into lively patterns of dance. Humans have an additional capacity of using their own rhythmic output as a new wave of input. He can listen to himself sing and slow or step up his pace and raise or lower his pitch or volume.

 Every skateboarding manoeuvre has a unique rhythm.

One must learn to hear this rhythm, to break up manoeuvres into their parts - beats - and to play them with the right timing and tempo. And one must listen attentively to their own rhythmic output to check that its in synchrony with the rhythm of the manoeuvre, modifying one's performance again and again until its finely tuned.

Excellent skaters execute tricks with audible rhythm.

Every manoeuvre is a short musical score perfectly measured and composed - and exquisitely played. This is why their technique is so fluent and smooth, for music affords cohesiveness between diverse elements: different instruments, different people, and different notes and tones. In the masterful skater, it is music that coalesces the various parts of a trick - alongside the skater, his board, and the surface on which he skates - into a graceful melodic unity.