Last night, we went to a drum circle in the Arts Park. They happen every month, but it's on the night of the full moon, which means that if I'm in class, I can't go. If it's rainy, I bail out. Last night it was chilly, but that wasn't a deterrent.
It was led by a group from Resurrection Drums, which was a pleasant surprise. It helped to have leaders to get a rhythm going. They also had drums, which they passed out to people who didn't have one.
My spouse and I had brought a drum of our own and a shaker, so we didn't need the drums. I was happy to have the bits of instruction that they scattered throughout the night. For someone who has listened to as much music as I have, as wide a variety of music, I am still staggeringly bad at picking out the beat, and I can be even worse at maintaining it.
What I love about a drum circle is that it doesn't matter. The stronger drummers carry the rest of us along. All of the beats get incorporated into the larger experience. It's a metaphor for our larger lives, but I realize it more fully in a drum circle.
I have never been to the kind of drum circle where we lose ourselves in the ecstasy of it all--or maybe others are, but I'm not. It's hard for me to get out of my head that way, and probably impossible for me to do that in a public place with strangers around. During these times of raging pandemic, we stayed spaced apart, drumming in our chairs, and I was just fine with that.
A drum circle doesn't feel pagan to me, although I know that there are others who might not participate for fear of what spirits we're summoning. But there is a bit of a mystical element, where I lose my sense of being a lone actor, where I am integrated into the larger rhythms, both the drum rhythms and the life rhythms.
And here is a tiny video that I recorded:
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