Drumming

Being the old hippie that I am (my dad calls me his Flower Child), I love hanging out with the peace-out crowd. Last Sunday I went to the local in-the-park drumming circle that gets held at the mouth of our local spring. It was fun, and there were all sorts of people milling around the park just doing their own thing: frisbee, dog-walking, sunning, laughing and just having fun. There were jugglers learning how to pass clubs, jugglers working with fire, and us, the drummers.

The average age of this "circle" is about 60, I'm guessing, and is made up of aging hippies and some really good black guys who come down and show everybody else how to do it. I was one of the youngest ones there, I think. The oldest had just turned 100 and she was still truckin'.

Drumming for me has become magical, mostly because of my shamanic practice. As a sonic driving tool, it entrains the psyche, the "mind" into a state of "mental weightlessness" where access to alternate sources of information is possible. When I get it right, I find that the drum actually talks to me, I hear words or see pictures or just get a sense that I'm connected to something bigger. I literally feel energized, as if I've been "plugged in" somehow. My spirit gets bigger and the drum and everyone else's drum becomes an extension of me. When I'm in that state, the group comes together in fierce effortless unison; we play as one being, anticipating each other's beats and riffing off each other. The spirit of the drums then is very playful. It's an almost sexual thrill, a very visceral party that creates a spirit bigger than onesself. Or plugs you into it.

My little patch of world is truly getting interesting. Drumming and juggling, a Sanskrit study group, another course created by a friend of mine to teach the Lord's Prayer in Aramaic so that peoples of the world will have a unifying tradition if they choose, Tai Chi, Roller Derby, a thriving non-profit arts warehouse, birthplace of creativity really, where really Cool Stuff is being born daily. You name it, we have it here somewhere.

I'm so amazed at what my fellow friends are bringing forth into the world! Comparing my insides to others' outsides, I also cringe a little that I'm not doing more and not fearlessly following my Personal Legend. Though I know I am learning to hear my heart more clearly and find the pathway that is a closer parallel to what that might be. I'm trying to be patient while becoming completely me. And fearlessly brave in the pursuit and bringing forth of what I know is divinely inside me and waiting to get out.

It used to be that I itched to get away from here, to a "real" place where there were cool people and I pined for the loss of the cool nexus that was the Triangle in North Carolina that I had loved for more than a decade. Lo and behold, the treasure I've searched for, the cool people were already here. And hey, I'm finding out that I'm one of them, too.


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