A BEAUTIFUL CHILD

I had a very strange dream last night. I know that by telling you this I’m breaking my wife’s No Dreams Rule, but perhaps some of you can relate. If not, I apologize in advance to you (and to her).

So here goes…

I’m sowing a miniscule garden. It’s at the bottom of a twilit ventilation shaft between two multi-storied buildings. The wall on the other side of the shaft is blank concrete with a dirty grey whitewashed surface. The patch of ground I’m working on is an ad hoc “patio” between the buildings. My place has a sliding glass door that gives onto it. But the buildings are so close together that the space is nominal. The garden patch is about the width of the handle of the hoe I’m using. Widthwise, the length of the hoe handle will span the garden in either direction.

On a tiny strip of concrete bordering it, I’ve arrayed a trowel, a small watering can and a number of envelopes of seeds. There too, trying hard to stay out of my way, but at the same time, not wanting to miss a thing that is going on, is a delicate, pretty little girl. She looks to be about five or six. She isn’t dressed for gardening. She looks more as if she were on her way to Sunday school. She has on a belted, cranberry-colored coat. Below it, a fringe of lovely blue dress with a crinoline underskirt is visible. She’s also wearing dark leggings and shiny patent-leather shoes with straps and silver buckles.

The little girl’s dark hair forms long, corkscrew curls that reach past her shoulders and is tied back at the temples by a large pink bow at the back of her head. She has a bright, open face, with large, intelligent eyes, the color of which is an almost mahogany brown. Their expression is intense and wiser than her years might indicate. Her facial complexion and the skin on the backs of her hand are the color of a burnished buckeye, a rich, luminous brown. She is really a quite beautiful child.

Although, as I say, the little girl is working very hard to stay out of my way, it is also clear that she is very excited by the project of a garden in such a squalid, joyless little place. It is also clear to me that she’s my ward. I’m responsible for her. I can tell that she is already imagining what that drab, ugly patch of ground will look like once the seeds I’m planting sprout, grow and start to bloom into a stunning, multi-hued bed of vibrant, floral joy.

But in order to be allowed to stay, she has to put up with my grim, joyless concentration on the task at hand. And on my ill-humor, my own lack of imagination to already see the future as she, in her innocence, already does. She must cope with my lack of hope and faith that make sowing these seeds a last-ditch exercise in futility rather than an expression of an inner confidence and of the certainty that beauty will triumph. As such, she is forced to repress her overwhelming joy, to tone down her bubbling enthusiasm, to mask her certainty that planting a flower bed in such a lugubrious place is an act of unshakeable faith in a brighter, more beautiful future.

As I toil without anything like happiness or hope, I’m constantly barking at the sweet little girl to stay out of the way and let me finish “my” work. She is virtually vibrating with her enthusiasm and desire to be part of the project. But she is aware that, with me in charge, the price of her being here is for her to hide and suppress any outward manifestation of her almost uncontrollable excitement.

She stays on the sideline, smiling and almost visibly tremulous with emotion, waiting for me to finish making meager furrows with the trowel and sprinkling in the seeds, before raking the loose soil over them with my hoe.

“There!” I say finally. “Finished.”

I take my tools and duck backwards through the sliding door into the gloom of the ground-floor flat, leaving the little girl alone in the “patio”—such as it is. The point of view momentarily shifts and the focus is on the little girl. Alone at last, she is now beside herself with happiness in the newly-planted garden. She squats at first, surveying my handiwork from the concrete strip that I have marked as her “in bounds” territory. But then, she can no longer resist the temptation, gets down on her hands and knees, and gently starts to caress the cultivated earth.

With her tiny hands, she pats each ridge where the seeds have been sown. She leans close and whispers to them, murmurs and coos. She tells those seeds, tucked into their warm berth beneath the soil, how beautiful they are and how much more beautiful they are all going to be once they’ve grown and are in bloom. 

She picks up the little watering can and starts to sprinkle the soil, seeking to nurture the seeds, so as to ensure their health and progress. She knows that water is the key, the fountain from which all life springs. Not too much, mind you. Not enough to drown the tiny seedlings. Just enough to make them grow and flourish, strong and healthy.

The whole while that she is doing this, the pretty little girl keeps talking to her seed friends. She keeps telling them encouragingly that she loves them, that she will never abandon them, that she will be back every day to visit them and to water them.

But then, suddenly, I am back. And I’m angry, intimidating, asking her just what the hell she thinks she’s doing and why she always has to make a nuisance of herself.  “Didn’t I tell you to keep out of there? Well, didn’t I? What have you got to say for yourself?”

At first she stands with her head down, letting my overwrought tirade wash over her like a cold, heavy rain. But as I go on and on, as if that tiny patch of miserable dirt were the last shred of anything I still possess, she eventually lets the watering can fall to the ground and looks up into my face. Her eyes are filled with tears and incomprehension. They look wounded, full of sorrow. They reflect hopes dashed, love betrayed, joy choked and murdered.

Quite suddenly, my anger melts into remorse. I am awash in deep regret. And then, looking into her dark, wounded eyes, I’m feeling everything she is. I am not talking about just “knowing how she feels,” but rather, feeling it first-hand—the humiliation, the incomprehension, the frustration, the fear and pain. It is the terrible, shattered sensation of a cruelly broken moment of happiness.

Just as suddenly, I am gripped by a revelation. It is the lightning knowledge that the little girl is not “my charge”. Rather, she is an integral part of me, a piece of my very own soul, one face of my own inner child.  I am she and she, I. We are both victims of my inability to resolve issues of the past, to enjoy the miracle of each moment of life. She is a better, more innocent, more perfect me. She soars above petty frustration, futile remorse and crippling pessimism.

In short, she is the best of me, and as such, the part of me that I consistently bully, repress and abuse.

 

 

 

 

 

 

OLD SCHOOL DRUMMING

 I recently joined a Facebook group called Old School Drummers. I did it at the invitation of a friend and former fellow drummer, Mark Paulus of Lima, Ohio. 

I also did it against my better judgment. Mainly because I haven’t been anything like a real drummer in decades. But then, again, if you’ve ever been a drummer, it’s something that stays with you for the rest of your life.

Truth be told, I can still read the music and hear the licks in my head, even if my hands and feet stubbornly refuse to reproduce them with anything close to accuracy. And I have instant recall of the feeling of being at the top of my game—never great, surely, but good. Maybe even very good. 

Every day, I find myself lamenting the fact that I ever stopped playing. I know that if I’d continued, still today I would be as good as I was way back when. Perhaps better. But after having stopped for several decades, having timidly taken it up again is, I suppose, self-indulgent. I will clearly never be even a shadow of the performer I once was. Playing now will never be anything but a salve to help relieve the sorrow of having neglected and lost something once so hard-earned, precious and vital to me.

But, okay, it is what it is. No crying over spilt milk. And here we are. Starting over, like a false toddler learning to walk again. 

In the end, I decided to take up my friend’s invitation to join the group, because, as I say, the acute memory of what it’s like to play and play well makes me conversant on many of the subjects that this group generates. Even though, I can’t, like many of the other older members who never quit, post videos of myself cookin’ on the drum kit at age seventy-something. The reality is that, if I were to post myself playing, the proverbial jig would be up!

People talk about all sorts of things on the OSD site. It’s a highly populated and very active community. Drumming, it seems, is something we’re really passionate about. It’s incredible the range of topics members find to discuss. There are all sorts of opinions about which drums are the best and why. The size, weight and quality of drumsticks. Which bass pedals and hi-hats are most effective. Why one brand of cymbals is better, brighter, mellower, etc. than another. And, by the way, what’s the best way to clean cymbals…or should you clean them at all? How to best restore pearl finish and metal hardware. Best drum heads and why. Drum tuning and how it affects sound quality. Different configurations of drum kits and why one might be more effective than another. Ways to get around symptoms of aging like arthritis and hand and wrist pain and still keep drumming.

Dan (middle) with fellow Wapakoneta High School
drummers Jane Siferd and Mike Krebs.

And then the more obvious discussions about who “the world’s best drummer is/was.” Which groups from which eras were the most outstanding in the worlds of jazz, hard rock, soft rock and fusion music. Which learning aids are the best to buy. And then there are myriad videos of great drumming to wow us and bring back memories of some of the greatest old school drumming ever heard.

So anyway, the other day, there was a sort of “remember when” post that featured a pair of VeriSonic hollow aluminum drumsticks from the nineteen-sixties and asked if anyone remembered them. I did. Quite well. I immediately recalled when we got them in at Porter's Music Store, where I worked in Lima,  from age sixteen through eighteen. We had them in a special display in all sorts of sizes, from light jazz sticks to thick 3S sticks used for marching band. I also remember that, for a little while, the Wapakoneta High School drum section I was in had them in the school team colors of red and white—red shafts, white tips and butts.

They came in a variety of colors—all with white tips and butts: metallic red, green, blue and gold being the most popular. Most of the Facebook Old School Drummers reacted with laughing face emojis. Some said they’d remembered seeing them but never bought any. Others said they’d bought a pair but never could see the advantage or didn’t like the sound they produced. One guy said he’d had a pair and that they’d lasted him about ten minutes. Most, obviously, being old school, thought them an absolute travesty. If sticks weren’t oak, maple or hickory, they simply couldn’t be considered sticks. 

But I can still recall how trendy we were in the sixties. It was a time when the new generation was out front and emerging, an era when even many older middle-class people were trying to keep up with the trends, wanting to be cool and hip. It was the Age of Aquarius. The New Age, when liberal was the height of cool and conservative was the enemy Establishment. Clothes, music, art and writing were all embracing the trendy nature of the times. If it was new and cool, we wanted it. So would I try aluminum drumsticks? Hell yeah!

So, here’s a funny story. I had just bought myself a couple of pairs of VeriSonics. One pair metallic green, the other gold, if I remember right. I wasn’t convinced they were what I needed for my work as a nightclub musician. I felt good old hickory lent itself better to jazz and fusion music. But in my “sage” seventeenth year, I had a theory about why the VeriSonic sticks were better for concert work than traditional wooden sticks. They were, I reasoned, identical, and so, perfectly balanced, with perfectly molded and matching tips. That meant, I told myself, that they were much better designed, scientifically speaking, for the absolute precision required by symphonic band and symphony orchestra work.

No matter how much I sought to reason and justify my trendy purchase, the truth was unavoidable. I’d bought them because I thought they looked cool as heck. The rest was just window-dressing.  

With fellow scholarship-winner Dave Stroh

Well, shortly after I got the new aluminum sticks, I won a scholarship to attend the renowned Ohio University Summer Music Workshop (now known as the OU Music Academy).   It was a summer music clinic for supposedly gifted young musicians. (I mean, most of the kids I met there, ages fourteen to seventeen, were indeed musical prodigies, but that only served to make me wonder what the hell I was doing there).

I ended up doing well, however, being chosen in performance challenges to be the head percussionist for both the symphony orchestra and the symphonic band. Personally, I think it was because I was the only percussionist with broad knowledge and ample experience playing tympani (kettle drums), on which the others failed to impress, but who knows?

The orchestra was directed by talented Ohio musical educator Charles Minelli. It was my first experience with a real symphony orchestra. I thoroughly enjoyed it, mostly sticking to tympani for challenging pieces of classical music including the Grieg Piano Concerto, which featured my new friend from Cleveland and extraordinarily talented pianist Curtis Jefferson, Cesar Franck’s Symphony in D Minor, and Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons, among others.

But it was in the symphonic band that I felt most at home, since I had been playing in local and all-area concert bands since junior high. The man in charge of the band was probably the most renowned of the instructors at the workshop—Lt. Colonel William H. Santelmann, US Marine Corps (retired), who had been the twenty-first director of "the President's Own" First Marine Band, which was founded at the end of the eighteenth century and one of whose directors had been “the March King”, John Phillip Sousa. The colonel's own father, William F. Santelmann, had been the band's nineteenth director.

Lt. Colonel William H. Santelmann

Santelmann was an incredibly talented and highly intimidating conductor. I doubt any other director could have gotten what he did out of a symphonic band made up of high school teens in the short couple of weeks that he had to work with us. I had seen him absolutely demolish several of my peers in the band during the days of rehearsal leading up to the closing concert, and I wanted to make sure I was never on the receiving end of his fury.

Anyway, all went swimmingly, with me performing at the top of my game, also mostly on kettle drums, while meticulously keeping the rest of my section in check as well. But during the last rehearsal before the event, I decided to play the snare drum part in Modest Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition. And, of course, I broke out my lovely gold VeriSonic sticks for the occasion.

It was as we were playing the climactic crescendo to The Great Gate of Kiev that, for the first time, the colonel's ice-cold eyes locked on me, and he suddenly cut the band off in mid-crescendo snare roll. You could have heard a pin drop—and might well have heard me peeing down my leg, had I not quickly gotten my panic under control—when he stared me down and said, "Young man, are those knitting needles that you are using?"

I laughed. He didn’t.

"No sir," I said, recovering a bit. "They're balanced aluminum sticks for a cleaner, more even sound."

I think I half expected him to say, "Oh, how interesting. May I see them?"
Instead, he gave me the most withering of glares and hissed, "Newfangled trash. I hope you have a traditional hardwood pair with you, or you can leave now and not come back."

Luckily, I did.

Yes, the colonel was indeed, old school.