pah rum pum pum pum

I believe the first music came from the drum.
Even before we were born, we thrummed along, growing to the beat of our mother's heart; our own little beater keeping time in syncopation to hers.
I've always loved drumming, I've never given myself completely over to it, but the desire has been there with me since I was a little kid.
When I was in the 4th or 5th grade I wanted to get into band, and I wanted to play the drums -- "no dice," said Dad (who can blame him really), and I ended up with the clarinet. Dawn Smith, who lived down the street and who was the older sister of my best friend Anne, had a drum set and I got to play that from time to time..but it was never really the same. I always loved that Brady Bunch episode where Bobby got the drum set and drove everyone crazy with it. My Dad probably saw that episode and wasn't going to have any of that nonsense in his house.
At some point I picked up a pair of drumsticks and would hang out in my room, air-playing along to the radio and learned how to move my right and left hands in time to the high-hat and the snare. But just my hands..I never got the whole kick pedal thing down (still don't!)
In high school, my friend Heidi Stromburg (who I just heard from actually) also played the drums, and I remember trying to play on hers, but by that time I had acquired too much shyness to play in front of people.
Just a few years ago, after about a year of working at Sisters, I decided enough was enough and I bought myself a drum set. A very cool electronic kit that had the look and sound of a regular set, but could be played with headphones and wouldn't drive my apartment neighbors crazy. I loved it. I hooked it up to my CD player and practiced playing along with Spearhead and Nirvana and the Indigo Girls..pure heaven!
And then.. I completely got over myself and this past summer signed up for the Rock and Roll Camp for Women and got to play for the first time, in a band, on a stage and in front of people! It was one of the best experiences of my life -- if you have ever had any desire to rock out, but don't think you could actually do it -- scare the shit out of yourself and prove that negative little self-doubter wrong, wrong, wrong...and go to camp. There were people there that had never picked up an instrument in their lives and after 3 days were onstage at a rock club, playing an original song. Incredible experience. My little band was The Funk-Ups....we were super groovy.
Anyway.....this blog is so not what I was going to talk about tonight. It's a really long lead-in to tell you the story of how I got to play taiko drums for the first time yesterday.
I was cruising around online and there was a woman who was looking for a motorcycle mechanic for her '74 Honda CB 550. I'm not a mechanic but I was like, "hey - I've got a '74 Honda 550!" So I wrote her and told her so and gave her the name of my mechanic. She wrote back and I noticed her email address had the word "taiko" in it. So I said, "hey, do you play taiko drums?" And she said, "yes..wanna play?"
So I went over to her mom's house (a very sweet woman named Bev who wore a pink Christmas sweater and asked us if we would like any dinner) where the drums are currently stored and she taught me some rhythms and we jammed out for about an hour. They are beautiful instruments. When you hit them, the whole room vibrates up and into your body -- you get into this sort of trance while keeping time - it was like yoga in that whole body experience way. Very cool.
I think one of the things I like about getting older..and certainly being in recovery...is that we find we have the means and the ability to push our own boundaries, step into our fears and do things we never thought we could do. Sometimes they're simple things like buying a drum set..sometimes they're a little more risky, like leaving a safe job for something we really want to do. And sometimes we just get to do things that we've always wanted to do but told ourselves we were too stupid, slow, not-good-enough, blah-di-dee-blah-blah.
Fuck that...march on little chicklets!