The Beat

I would have chosen a different instrument if I thought that drums had to be played like a metronome

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                                                      - Danny Carey, Tool

All art aspires to the condition of music. But you can only play music if you dance.  And you can only dance if you are uninhibited, if you can let go, lose your mind. So really all “how to play the drums” websites should begin with “First, lose your mind.” Then, dance.  Then translate the feeling, the rhythms inside of you into your instrument. Learn how your instrument and your body function together and how this fusion can externalize your internal feelings and rhythms, your own beats. The question ‘how can I say what I’m feeling with my instrument?’ requires you to feel.  

            I’ve been dancing a lot (but not enough) – in any empty, open space I can find, on subway platforms, in my room. Basically, I turn on music and don’t stop moving. And if there is no music, then I dance to the beat of my own internal drum. Gabrielle Roth’s 5 rhythms is my biggest influence. And I’ve discovered that nothing about me is truly authentic or genuine until I’ve reached the point in my dance where I am completely out of my mind and into my body. Sometimes it’s instantaneous. Other times it takes hours to get to this point. I imagine that if I keep up this practice long enough it will be more than instantaneous – it will have permeated the entire way I live my life and communicate with others. This state of  disinhibition is so dramatically different than any other state of being that I have to ask myself why I even leave the house, talk to people, try to play music, do ANYTHING without first dancing my way into this euphoric place.

            True, I can take drugs, drink alcohol, or do other things of this sort to get there. But dancing is free, keeps my body limber, and helps me internalize rhythm. If I’ve got some H2O and a few carrots then, barring physical trauma, I can dance forever and ever without needing to replenish extravagantly.  

When I was coaching gymnastics last week I said to my girls “I can teach you how doing a pelvic tilt and how keeping your butt tucked under your body, your ribs in, and your arms behind your ears will make flipping, twisting, and turning seem magically effortless, but I can’t teach you desire.” After practice I wondered if I was right. Can desire be taught? Maybe not through words- maybe through smiles and hugs and laughter. The way I feel about what my girls are doing motivates them to want be disciplined. When I scream “YESSSSS! THAT’S ITTTTTT!” when A. hits her cast handstand or “WOWWWWWWW YOU ARE AMAZINGGGGGGG!” when H points her toes I have the capacity (and the duty) to instill the desire for discipline in my kids (not to mention that I actually do think these physical feats [feets] are amazing).

The desire for discipline doesn’t seem like an innate desire. Children desire a lot of things – food, water, warmth – mostly the same things adults desire. What is magical about children though is that they haven’t yet learned about lines. For more info, read Alex Grey’s Let Love Draw the Line. http://www.alexgrey.com/psalms/line2.html This is the quality about children that makes them uninhibited and thus easily reachable and teachable. This is what is meant when people say that it’s easier for children to learn second languages than it is for adults. There are so many lines being drawn in our heads during our 16+ waking hours that we have no mental orifices left over for anything other than incessant penciling in. This is also why adults tend to be less physically flexible as they get older – because their bodies are so full of all the drugs (and by drugs I mean anything that is put into your body that makes you less empty and more full) that they’ve put into them over the years that their bodies become more rigid. 

But it doesn’t have to be like this. It’s not about teaching children discipline so that they can become subservient, obedient, less emotional, “contributing” members of a society, a world, a culture, that desires to suppress their uniqueness. It’s about teaching them exactly the opposite – how discipline can help them retain their childlike wonder at the world because the ability to sustain anything for a good length of time requires the ability to sustain anything for a good length of time.

 Life is so very beautiful. Sometimes there is so much beauty that I can’t take it! And other times I look around and see so much beauty and wonder how I can sit there and look at it without feeling anything from it.
I’ve got a lot of musical friends. Maybe they can enlighten me about some of these things. What I know for sure is that when I dance I’m making music and when I make music I’m dancing and when I make love I’m doing both.What else is there to do?