I spent last weekend with a remarkable group of men at Pyramid Lake, in the Adirondacks. Many were recovering alcoholics and addicts, but all were unique, and brave beyond measure in their openness and honesty with each other and with themselves. Maybe it was the years of Alcoholics Anonymous 12-step principles at work. Maybe it was the lake and the mountains. Maybe it was no women for miles. I've thought long and hard upon it this past week, and decided that it was none of these things.
It was the drums.
Up they drove in their burdened cars, parking in front of the ramshackle lodge to unload their gear. Almost without exception (me being one) they lugged large, Native American-looking drums from their trunks and back seats. These were not sissy high school marching band drums, played by scrawny teens laden with acne. No, these were manly drums made from earthy materials, pounded by real men. Living things died so that these drums could beat. Skin was stretched and antlers sawed. Each meeting began with a circle of chairs and impromptu drumming. The men couldn't wait. Like children on Christmas morning they rudely fiddled with their drums individually as the leader tried to give pre-meeting instructions. I would have said "If you touch that drum one more time I'm going to shove it up your ASS," but he was gentle with them, this leader of men. He was older, and had been through most of life's fires at work, at home, and in his own soul. He had great patience with his drummer boys, understanding their pain, their need to shut the #%$& up after a long week and just pound the piss out of these instruments.
Initially it freaked me out. I couldn't do it. Oh I tried lamely that first night, with a borrowed drum whose girth intimidated me. I'm a quiet person by nature, preferring anonymity when possible, and all I could manage was a timid tapping with my fingertips as the cacophony around me shook the windows. I felt pinned to my seat, unable to breathe, as this ancient war council worked themselves into a frenzy. Good God, there were even Indian war cries. What the hell had I gotten myself into? For me it brought to the fore all the negative emotions and memories of the Corps, all the things I'd tried to escape or bury for the last eighteen years, nothing more. It was my childhood's comic books, my father's Korea, my older neighbor's Vietnam, my own Desert Storm, and my children's GWOT (Global War on Terror), all marching to battle inside this low-ceilinged Adirondack great room. For the next three drumming sessions I sat silently, listening to THEM and to my own heart. Over the course of the next few days and nights I heard the stories of neglectful and abusive parents, saw the tears of injustice, frustration and rage, and felt in my own heart the raw emotion and pain that shapes our worlds...
...but on the third day, in the silence of the morning lake, I heard the music. It reverberated off the rock of the cliffs, bubbled up from the backs of great snapping turtles, and dropped heavy from the weighted boughs of the trees like pine cones seeding a wonderful new symphony upon the earth. The loons already knew this song. Maybe they wrote it? I don't know, but finally I heard it, and when it was time to return to the lodge for our final session I couldn't wait to dig through the box of spares for an unused drum. There was only one left, a small, 6" diameter lollipop of sorts on a 12" stick, but it was of animal hide and I gladly pounded it as enthusiastically as all the others in the room with their great buffalo drums.
Yes, I play guitar, and write songs. It helps.
But I know what I want for Christmas...
TRIBAL DRUMS
Fire and war.
Conquest, power, courage.
We drum them up in a 21st century sweat lodge,
20 ordinary men, for there are no extraordinary men,
just men willing to DO.
Many fall, but the drums beat on.
March to the beat of a different drum, but they are all different drums here.
There is no good, no bad, no rich, no poor. There is only energy, vibration, and freedom. It picks up without signal, develops rhythm on its own, and dies out without cue or purpose.
It is there and it is gone.
It is life.
I am above it, but I am also below it, inside of it while being outside.
Beat on, you beautiful bastards.
I'll beat my paper with pen...
RAGE WORK
Watching the rage work was like watching a southern lynching, or a gang rape. In a small, isolated room, in a building set apart and far away, a rope was hastily thrown over exposed rafter, and dangling dead on the end of it the body of our common ancestor, the limp, heavy, shapeless body of "pain." We watched in awe and horror as, one by one, men took axe handles to their pain, and gave it a name, and a circumstance. They hacked into it with the savage, gloating blows of the outraged victim, set free at last. It was a beautiful and terrible thing to behold, this beaten justice.
21st CENTURY HEROES
Men. Brilliant men. Beautiful, wax-winged, golden-haired men. Each has stolen Zeus' fire. And we flew high with it, didn't we, so high above the heads of mortals. But our wings melted and we fell to earth in pieces, waxy little god-pieces of bone and ash, to be dumped again into the stream of life on a wing and a prayer, carried off to the sea as the rhythms pound against our hearts. I get it now. I do, I get it. Somebody pass me a drum. And, don't forget to wear your life jackets, men.
