Drum Circle
I'm just emerging from one of the worst creative droughts in my living memory, os forgive me if what follows is unreasonably prolix. When I manage to put word to page, or picture to page, or text to screen, is one of the most supremely fulfilling experiences I am privy to.
So presumably we're talking about drum circles. I attended one recently, and being the person I am I couldn't help attaching symbolic significance, which is really the impetus for any writing I do. The whole "rising above the mundane, but through the mundane" thing. Is that a a cliche yet? It very well might be, but that might be a topical cliche. You know the kinds of parallels I will draw: like life, drumming is a group activity; we cover one another's weak spots; doing the same beat over and over, though easy, quickly sucks the magic out; once the magic is gone, the endogenous analgesics are gone, and you realize your flesh has been mortified--fingers like sausages, palms like tanned leather, fingernails registering your heartbeat with fidelity, etc, etc. And drumming is susceptible to mistakes: and the same kind of mistakes get made again and again: you go for an embellishment that doesn't come off, and you might learn your lesson, but other young whelps are just entering the circle, looking to make it big, to strike a fortune, to be noticed by the dancers around the fire. (There was a torch in the middle; the sky was obscured by a thick canopy of trees in a fire pit. There were also torch jugglers; there were castanets; there were maracas. A few people brought their voices. And the dancers brought limb and belly and back and flailing hair and beaming smiles. Was everyone angelic?) This event made me proud to be caught in the great meat wheel. The next day, I had a bruide on my left hip to mark where my roommate's djembe rubbed up against my skin through the shirt. Was that awakening, or only a by-product of something that mabe snapped as I slept? I don't know yet, but what I do know is that my desire to pay attention and actually write something down is back. I have a lenghty absence to compsnesate for.
Gunter Grass put this best in one of my all-time favourite prolix books. Little outsider midget Oskar drums out the follies of 1930s Germany, the horrors of the Eastern Front, the supreme modern boredom on the ramparts of Normandy, the suicides of greengrocers, the duplicity that is the privilege of the atractive, the taste of blood sausage, the crying-rooms of the post-war period and many other things. Being antedated 50 years doesn't bother me. I'll never pull in a living from this stuff, anyway.
Here are some story ideas. I'd appreciate feedback. These are still in the "bit" stage; that is, they are kernels. Maybe I shouldn't say "bit"; that implies some sort of comedy. Which these aren't--intentionally, anyway.
1) A bottom-of-the-barrel autoclave technician tries to humanize his machine by sticking to it a collection of banana stickers.
2) A man hatches a devious plan to sabotage other people's karma: he steals things, and then leaves his stolen goods with notes suggesting they have been thrown out. People take them home, and since in this particular metaphysic there is no difference between outcome and intention, they (eventually) suffer. What would make a person do that?
3) A wealthy doctor is taking the bus for the first time in 20 years. He sees a bus ad for his weight-loss clinic, and is distressed to find its production value so low.
That's all for the moment. We've veered pretty far from talking about drum circles.
Consider: "We must accept finite disappointment, but we must never lose infinite hope."
So presumably we're talking about drum circles. I attended one recently, and being the person I am I couldn't help attaching symbolic significance, which is really the impetus for any writing I do. The whole "rising above the mundane, but through the mundane" thing. Is that a a cliche yet? It very well might be, but that might be a topical cliche. You know the kinds of parallels I will draw: like life, drumming is a group activity; we cover one another's weak spots; doing the same beat over and over, though easy, quickly sucks the magic out; once the magic is gone, the endogenous analgesics are gone, and you realize your flesh has been mortified--fingers like sausages, palms like tanned leather, fingernails registering your heartbeat with fidelity, etc, etc. And drumming is susceptible to mistakes: and the same kind of mistakes get made again and again: you go for an embellishment that doesn't come off, and you might learn your lesson, but other young whelps are just entering the circle, looking to make it big, to strike a fortune, to be noticed by the dancers around the fire. (There was a torch in the middle; the sky was obscured by a thick canopy of trees in a fire pit. There were also torch jugglers; there were castanets; there were maracas. A few people brought their voices. And the dancers brought limb and belly and back and flailing hair and beaming smiles. Was everyone angelic?) This event made me proud to be caught in the great meat wheel. The next day, I had a bruide on my left hip to mark where my roommate's djembe rubbed up against my skin through the shirt. Was that awakening, or only a by-product of something that mabe snapped as I slept? I don't know yet, but what I do know is that my desire to pay attention and actually write something down is back. I have a lenghty absence to compsnesate for.
Gunter Grass put this best in one of my all-time favourite prolix books. Little outsider midget Oskar drums out the follies of 1930s Germany, the horrors of the Eastern Front, the supreme modern boredom on the ramparts of Normandy, the suicides of greengrocers, the duplicity that is the privilege of the atractive, the taste of blood sausage, the crying-rooms of the post-war period and many other things. Being antedated 50 years doesn't bother me. I'll never pull in a living from this stuff, anyway.
Here are some story ideas. I'd appreciate feedback. These are still in the "bit" stage; that is, they are kernels. Maybe I shouldn't say "bit"; that implies some sort of comedy. Which these aren't--intentionally, anyway.
1) A bottom-of-the-barrel autoclave technician tries to humanize his machine by sticking to it a collection of banana stickers.
2) A man hatches a devious plan to sabotage other people's karma: he steals things, and then leaves his stolen goods with notes suggesting they have been thrown out. People take them home, and since in this particular metaphysic there is no difference between outcome and intention, they (eventually) suffer. What would make a person do that?
3) A wealthy doctor is taking the bus for the first time in 20 years. He sees a bus ad for his weight-loss clinic, and is distressed to find its production value so low.
That's all for the moment. We've veered pretty far from talking about drum circles.
Consider: "We must accept finite disappointment, but we must never lose infinite hope."
posted by A. D. at 12:08 AM
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