Hallelujah

There are certain questions that drive my incessant thirst for living, that drive me to be passionate and to become familiar with anything. “What must the world be like so that man may know it?” is a big one. Navigating the space between fear and anguish is why language was created. It’s why politics exists, why art exists, why linguistics exist, why music exists, why dancing exists, why things like gestures and sex categories and ideas about family and religion and holidays and any category exists. There is always something indefinite about the world; it is laden with contingencies and surprises; it is a vital context which is never mastered once and for all; for this reason, it is a source of permanent insecurity. But there are things that bring us peace, that bring us home. 

 Miles Davis said that when he improvises its not about the notes, but the space between them. Picasso said that same thing about painting. It’s not just about what you are painting, it’s also about what you’re not painting. One great dance choreographer asks his students to, when improvising, ask “why not” instead of why. In Bikram you come back to standing or corpse pose after every posture. And I started to notice the same thing when I was beating out whole notes on each cymbal to a metronome set at 60. The space between those really slow beats started to come alive and it was filled with inertia, it was so much more than just silence. the space between...

 “I went into the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life and see if I could not learn what I had to teach, and not, when I came time to die, discover that I had not lived.”
i realize how important the silence is...

Sounds a lot like life huh? If I fill my life up with a million thoughts, people, things, then I won’t have the mental space to listen to the silence and see what it has to say, how it wants to speak. I’ll be too busy heaving under a thousand contemplations to realize that Eden is all around me. and in order to be a great drummer, a great dancer, a great girlfriend, sister, mother, daughter, friend, lover, musician, student I need to hear the silence. I need to let it speak. Just be. Everything is everything the same principles that apply to drumming apply to dancing and driving and relationships and speaking and taking drugs and fucking and playing with your cats. Two lovers sat on a park bench, with their bodies touching each other, holding hands in the moonlight. There was silence between them. So profound was their love for each other, they needed no words to express it. And so they sat in silence, on a park bench, with their bodies touching, holding hands in the moonlight. Is there anything more perfect?

 Once you figure life out it becomes fun to play with and you realize that the system is not controlling your life, that everything bad is good for you, that you are the decisive element.  The hieroglyphics of humanity are very decipherable. Once you learn the rules you can break them.

 Find your beat, beat the shit out of it, and then every breath you take is Hallelujah!