Just Beat It
I prove once again I am a professional caliber musician! At Mae Haad, Koh Tao, I happen upon a couple of uncommitted hours before the cruiser leaves for Chumporn to connect with the Bangkok-bound bus. I pull out the djembe. Deep cuts from shell scrapes still unhealed on my right hand, I refer the bass beats to my left, substitute open hits to tabla-style taps Lala taught me so well. The ticket sellers, unengaged and sitting on the stoop of the 7-Eleven, backwards on motorbikes, and the food stand ladies standing by are interested. One of the guys swaggers over and drops a plastic alms cup in front of me; smiling I continue to tap away. A few coins tinker in … finally, positive cash flow!
It’s chump change, but the total earnings of 4 Baht help me towards my 10 Baht strawberry ice cream topping bread bits, sweet sticky rice, and two flavors of jelly grass. Yum, seems like my drum can put food on the table!
Thoughts on drumming from Manali.
Beating on my drum, the ideal of rhythmic purity meets the shock of physical, temperamental instability, reality. I examine my fingers to find them crooked, trained into specialized, yet crude shapes through years of fingering finger boards. Aghast: my one wrist bends at an improper angle; neither relaxes into the beats as I will them to. My shoulder feels disjointed. Tense. Crackles as I swing it in a painful pendulum. My hip, my ankle, all off-kilter, conspiring to throw my tapping into chaotic dischord, losing the signal to the noise. I must use my head to find the tricks, the proper underhanded techniques to condition these deficiencies to a minimum. I start slowly, subvocalizing the inner beats. Practice components. “Hands separately, then together.” Echo from the Mrs. Britt years.
And I suppose the first pinnacle of achievement to be the ability to simultaneously play an intricate beat and be completely conscious of my natural breath, with the beautiful unrelated rhythm of its own.
Is this mechanization or transcendence?