Updating

So I thought I would be able to pick back up and talk about the drum lesson(s). But so far life has not afforded me that luxury.

HOWEVER, I am now back to post hopefully more than once every 2+ weeks about what has been going on.

So, here is a (brief?) recap:

Drum lesson #1. We do rudiments. I stand in front of a drum and first read some music. It all comes back to me -- the forced piano playing when i was a kid. Say 6-8 or 9 or so, I played piano. I really don't remember ever wanting to play piano, I'm really not quite sure how it came about. Anyway, it brought me back to those times sitting in front of the teacher's piano, while I wanted to play the song the way I wanted to play it, not the way it was written.

Apparently I'm not much different on the drums.

Don't get me wrong. It was fun as hell (because hell has got to be fun, in a sick perverted twisted way, right?). In a way. I got to be loud. I got to smack drumsticks on this drum and then was told I wasn't loud enough. Kids must love this! No wonder! You have this ... this... forum, where you are taught that it's ok to whale away at something, as long as it's a controlled whaling away.

And I really liked the teacher. This is someone who used to work with my husband, but no longer does, and has been teaching drums for ages, and who has been playing them since about when I started piano.

So I'm tip-tapping increasingly louder on the one drum feeling good, feeling like, hey, maybe I have this beat or something?! Here I am in this great basement in this great Sellwood house, and I'm thinking hey, maybe I'm onto something? Maybe this vision I had of myself when I was 21 or 22 of me about 23 moving to LA and learning to play the drums...maybe that's a vision I could really be, maybe it's not too late (okay I don't want to move to LA but is any of this making sense?). I even have drummer hair! It's getting super-long and the curl is never going away...I'm...I'm totally Slash! (circa 1988)

And then we went on the drumset.

And that's when it all went to shit.

I would tell you the names of the drums in the drumset except that I don't remember. I've kind of...blocked it out. There was the snare drum. And the bass drum. I remember those, because they were the only two I could play at the same time. It wasn't a matter so much of getting the beat, it was keeping it and trying to ... well, it was sort of like the musical version of trying to rub your head and pat your stomach at the same time. Who can do that? I guess drummers.

Teacher was great. Really patient.

A few days after the first lesson: We went to a drum recital that she was leading. All kids, ages from oh I'd say 7-17. Some of those kids were really good! I kind of wished that I had been put in front of a drumset as a kid. But I dount that would have jived with my parents, who I think, did not want the kind of daughter who drummed. I don't know. I just never got that feeling. It's like how I run now--as a kid, I was never encouraged to do it. Not like I was discouraged from it, but like...it wasn't even an issue. It wasn't something that I was to do. We weren't an athletic family, we weren't a musical family.

Because we weren't, I wasn't.

Dunno, though. It's too easy to blame your family for everything. It just is.

But I went back for a second lesson. Just because...I wanted to see again.

And I felt like...why am I here? It wasn't the teaching--again, she was awesome and I would totally recommend her to anyone who would do it. It was just me really realizing that this is not someone I needed or wanted to be. I was never going to buy a drum set, I was never going to make the time to practice--heck, I can hardly keep up this blog, and writing is who I am!

And I was never going to be the kind of person who could do something totally different with the left foot and/or hand than the right foot and/or hand. I love drummers. I have a huuuuuuuuuuge respect for them now; and for that matter, any musician.

It really is a whole language, it's a whole communication, it's a whole expansion of the brain and different kind of smarts than I could have imagined, and certainly not something that I ever considered when I was a kid and music lessons were a chore. It's beautiful. I will listen for the drums in songs, now, not just the melody. I won't take it for granted.

So I could have--and had intended to--describe the actual details and semantics of the drums and how the low-ceiling basement felt and sounded and the beauty of the day. But I realize, now, that's it's ok to have a "me" lesson about the drums instead.

I'm going to post another update about the thing I tried last week, for May. I think there will be something else for May, but I haven't settled on it yet.