The Drummers and the Dancers
Drumming. I had been drumming for hours. Hands beating out the rhythm on a goatskin stretched over a shapely ceramic tube. Others drummed with me: some in unison, some in counterpoint, and others in a counterpoint to the counterpoint. Still more hammered out a basic rhythm. I felt the energy of the group flow through me; became focused in me. I took the lead for a phrase or so. The others stayed to the basic beat we had started with. Another soloist answered me. I replied, questioning. He answered again. A third drummer joined the conversation. The three of us spoke with our drums, floating on the syncopations of the group.
Together, we left the confines of the living room and were transported to a clearing in the forest where a great bonfire burned. There, dancers spun and leapt, sang and called, clapped and stomped. All around the fire, glistening bodies moved. I could see antlers silhouetted in the firelight. Glass beads and crystals worn by the dancers scattered the light out into the surrounding forest, and glinted off our hands. Their rhythms were incorporated into our drumming. The drummers and the dancers became one rhythm, one pulse. The heartbeat of the Mother. The heart of the Earth.
Sparks exploded from damp logs and spiraled up the hot column of air created by the fire. I heard my voice faintly, though I was shouting the wordless melody that came from my belly. Others heard ahnd chanted with me, our hands never stopping the beat. I felt my boundaries grow fuzzy. My awareness extended beyond the confines of my skin, rising up, joining first with the other drummers and then with the dancers and then with the fire and the forest and the earth and the moon and the sun and we became the universe, creating it in our own image in an ultimate act of love.
One of us remembered: We are mortal. Another recalled: We are human. The rhythm faltered. The walls of the living room snapped back into focus. I dropped back into my body, ripped out of community with a painful suddenness. The drums stopped, raggedly. I looked around the room at the others, who were also looking around. I would catch another's eye and we would giggle, as if we shared some wonderful secret.
©1998-2006 by Wendy Sheridan. All rights reserved. Note: No mind-altering substances were used in the preceeding experience. This experience is the basis for the verses of the song "Round and Round". And I hadn't been to Starwood Festival, yet.