A Boomwhacker to the Side of My Head

Back in 1990, a guy named Roger van Oech wrote a book called A Whack to the Side of the Head, about unleashing one's creativity.

My whack came at PASIC (Percussive Arts Society International Convention) last weekend, when I sat in on a whole series of drumming workshops to prepare for an upcoming  Symphony project with the Court.

Warren and I both attend PASIC whenever possible, and this year it was possible. That meant I spent three days in the heart of the Percussion Universe amid the shiny cymbals, amid the tapping and the tinging and the playing of almost every percussion instrument known to mankind.

And there, in the midst of all those shiny cymbals and all the tapping and the tinging and the playing of almost every percussion instrument known to mankind, I got a Boomwhacker to the side of the head. (Figuratively, not literally.)

At the first drumming workshop, I was the only person in the room who raised a hand when the facilitator asked if there was anyone who didn't know what a Boomwhacker was. In response to the shocked gasps when my hand went up, I blurted out that I wasn't a percussionist. They didn't throw me out of the room, but very nicely allowed me to stay and join them in playing. Afterwards, a real live percussionist came up to and said I could never claim not to be a percussionist again in my life. "You've been initiated."

The next day, I went to another drumming workshop. The room had been rearranged so that the chairs were in concentric circles, each chair with a percussion instrument of some sort - drums, shakers, tambourines, cowbells - on or beside each seat. I slipped into a chair with a large floor drum in front of it, looked and listened around the rapidly filling circle, and soon found a rhythm to add to the group.

The guy from the day before was five seats away. He looked over and nodded at me. "I knew you'd be back," his satisfied smile said.

We drummed for a long time. The first circle of chairs (15 of us? 20?) filled and the second started filling (another 30?). Each player wove his or her beat into the other ones filling the room. Sometimes a player would listen and start a new pattern to fit in a different way with the others.

There is a concept in physics known as entrainment. Entrainment is the tendency for two oscillating bodies to lock into phase so that they vibrate in harmony. It was first noted back in the 1660s by a Dutch scientist, Christian Huygens, who noticed that when he placed two pendulum clocks on a wall near each other and swung the pendulums at different rates, they would eventually end up swinging at the same rate due to their mutual influence on one another.

In Percussion Universe, entrainment means that 60 people all playing their own free-form rhythms in a drumming circle, without a conductor or "leader," will naturally fall into a "locked" pattern where each player's patterns harmonize rhythmically with everyone else in the circle.

In that room, our rhythms continued, swelling and receding, while the facilitator smiled and invited more people to join the circle.  We were locked. We were entrained. We drummed on for a long time, lost in the rhythms of our own making. We drummed on long enough that my hands became bruised. Long enough that many of us in the circle bonded without saying a word.

Coming out of the drumming workshops at PASIC, but especially out of that particular workshop, I felt energized. Ideas - about drumming, about instrument making, about projects back home, about writing - flew through my head. I all but skipped and cavorted down the hall each time I left a workshop.

The drumming workshops were a Boomwhacker to the side of my head. They dislodged preconceptions and misconceptions I had about drumming, starting with "I can't do this." They turned on lots of lights in my head: Whooaaaa - I can do this! Whooaaaa - we can do this! Whooaaaa - we can launch that project without a lot of $$! Whooaaaa  - this is WAY COOL!

Sometimes you have to step outside of yourself to see where you are and where you are going. Sometimes you have to leave your comfort zone and stick your hand up (even if you are the only one doing so) to jumpstart your brain and your energy.

Sometimes you need a Boomwhacker to the side of your head.

Road Trip Lag

I know. I still haven't written about the wedding or our trip out there and back. I really will.

Soon.

I'm just not there yet.

As of today, we have been home for one week. One week. After 13 days on the road, we rolled back into our very own driveway last Friday at about 6:00 p.m. Home.

It has been unsettling. Neither Warren nor I were ready to be back here. We were numb. I still am. I feel as if I have been sleepwalking through the week.

I don't like feeling this way.

A few weeks before we left, in the hectic rush we called "July," I had accompanied Warren to the Cincinnati area for an evening rehearsal. He was playing percussion in a small orchestra down there (two hours away) that our conductor Jaime also conducts. I arrived hot (no AC in the car) and out of sorts. Sitting in air conditioned rehearsal area, I penned a blog post that never saw the light of day.

That post ran as follows:

My bags are too heavy. I am sitting in a rehearsal hall in Batavia, Ohio. I am blessedly cool after a warm, sticky day and a two plus hour drive down in the sun.

I am sitting here writing (longhand) on the notebook I brought along. It was hard getting the notebook and pen out of the small canvas bag into which I had packed them. It was a struggle because the bag was too heavy. Even though it is small and I was only lifting it from the seat next to me into my lap, it was a struggle all the same.

My bag is too heavy.

I have packed it too full. Rehearsals are almost three hours. So I'd put a water bottle in to get through the evening. And the notebook and pen. Well, four pens in case I had some huge pen crisis.

My keys, of course, my wallet (which is a little credit card holder and is only 3x4), and my phone. Also some acetaminophen and some antacids.

And three books - two hardcover (small) and one paperback (trade size). The hardcover books are short and I didn't want to finish reading one and be without something else to read.

Oh, and my appointment calendar (yes, I still keep a paper one) in case I needed to make an appointment sitting here 140 miles from home, from my computer, and with my phone turned off.

My bag is too heavy.

Small wonder. I packed it too full of "what if" items instead of those things I really need tonight.

I am also thinking about the bag in the car, the one in which I packed a brownbag supper for us to eat. As we approached Cincinnati, I planned to start handing out sandwiches. But first I had to move the bag from the back seat where it was wedged in on top of percussion equipment, to the front. To accomplish this maneuver, I had to take off my seatbelt, turn around on the seat on my knees, and s-t-r-a-i-n to lift the bag. Not because of where and how it was packed in the car, but because it - yep - too heavy.

The bag itself is very lightweight. It is large, a little bigger than the reusable shopping bags that everyone is carrying these days. I am always lulled into packing it fuller (and heavier) because of the extra space.

So in addition to the sandwiches, it held two bottles of water (mine), two cans of soda (Warren's), a bag of chips, and some snacks for the drive because Warren is always famished after a full rehearsal. Only because the bag "has room," I put in the whole sack of animal crackers (14 oz) and the whole box of Nutty Bars. I don't mean I opened the box, removed the contents, and placed them in the bag. I mean I put the whole cardboard box in. After all, there was room.

And let's not forget the ice packs in the bottom of the bag to keep things cool (the bag has a thermal lining). I could have gone with two small blocks, but the larger block fits nicely. Never mind the weight, there's room.

Needless to say, the bag was heavy. Very, very heavy.

I could have packed a smaller bag - or taken smaller portions - but there was room, so it all came along.

Warren worries about me helping carry his equipment because much of it is bulky and heavy. His stuff is nothing compared to my bags tonight. If the Donner party had set out with our supper bag, they never would have resorted to cannibalism.

As I sit here penning these words, my mind keeps returning to my carrying so much when, clearly, less would have done amply. I weighted myself down unnecessarily with extra books, extra ice packs, extra everything, as if we would be driving to a remote plateau tonight.

My bags are too heavy.

Lately, I have been feeling burdened and stressed. Too many days where our schedules don't meet, let alone blend. Too many loose ends that keep unraveling. All this tugs at my peace of mind. There are bills which need to be paid, some tricky scheduling to pull off before we hit the road, and more than my usual anxieties about, well, just about everything.

My bags are too heavy.

Like the lesson with tonight's bags - tangible, physical bags - where I am struggling to lift even the smallest one into my lap, I need to unpack my mental bags as well.

This is where my writing started to unravel. I never got back to the writing and it never got posted. But as I struggle to regain my equilibrium after our trip, I find the words haunting and relevant.

Warren and I email every day - just a short note to start the day - and my continuing mood post-trip has dominated my comments to him. I wrote:

I think the trip shook me up the most in showing me how much I have let slip (in terms of reflection, energy, forward movement, small moments) in the jumble and push of this year. We have both been moving at the speed of light all year long - especially with some of the Symphony issues - and the trip was (even though fast paced) a shock to the system. It was like a mirror - and I am not sure I liked everything I saw about myself and our life (the pace, the hectic qualities) in it. I feel as if I am sleepwalking right now. I want to be alive all the time, every moment, especially with you.

I think that says a lot of what I am feeling. Packed and hectic as it was, the trip nonetheless allowed both of us the chance to get outside of our routines and everyday persona. For me, that was a huge (and shocking) revelation of just how far I have crawled into a daily routine of just going through the motions. Yes, I am working, yes, I am keeping house, yes, I am tending to my marriage and my friends and my family, but am I really paying attention to what I am doing?

Am I really living?

As I finish this post, it is late Friday morning. The first jars of tomato sauce are in the canner (the gardens were a wreck by the time we returned, but there are always tomatoes). I'm finally getting some photos of the wedding up on Facebook. We have had yet another busy week: every night this week, one or both of us has had a meeting or other commitment. Liz is with us for the next two weeks, and she has her own appointments: band camp, scouts. Tonight the three of us are volunteering at a fundraiser because the sponsor is so understaffed that we felt bad and said we'd help out. Tomorrow morning starts the moving of the Symphony office.

In short, this week has been packed and booked to the gills. No wonder I am still feeling disoriented and jarred.

Somewhere there is a solution, and as is always the case, I strongly suspect it is within my grasp. I am not unlike Dorothy in the 1939 version of The Wizard of Oz. When Dorothy begs Glinda to help send her home, Glinda replies, "you've always had the power to go back to Kansas." The Scarecrow demands to know why Glinda had kept this knowledge from Dorothy and she says, simply, "she wouldn't have believed me. She had to learn it for herself."

I don't have Glinda to point out the obvious: my time and schedule are out of control. I don't have ruby slippers to click together and fix the problem.

I don't even have a humbug of a wizard to root around for a solution in his bag of tricks.

I just have myself. And Warren. And time.

Time to make the most of it.

Observations on a Short Journey South

We took a short road trip this week, running down (literally) to Boone, North Carolina, to pick up some percussion instruments that Warren had bought from a longtime friend and mentor.

It was the first time since our January New York trip that we just "got away," and unlike the New York trip, which for Warren revolved around the League midwinter meetings, this one revolved around nothing. Yes, we were picking up those instruments and seeing those friends, but we were going as much for the break as anything.

The easiest, quickest way to get from central Ohio to northwestern North Caroline is to drive the interstates. I'm not looking at a road atlas as I type, but I know there are solid blue lines from here to there that would have carried us efficiently and swiftly to our destination, which is why we of course junked any notion of taking them. Warren and I long ago separately discovered that the journey and not the destination is often the point of a trip, and we are in total agreement that the best journeys happen when you get off those routes marked with an I.

When you are off the interstate, there is always something to observe if you just open your eyes, your mind, or both:

1. Decoration Day is high art in rural Kentucky.
Decoration Day is a far bigger deal in Kentucky than in Ohio. Around here, I worry that the custom of visiting and tending to our family graves is dying out. Kentuckians have raised the tradition to high art. We passed cemetery after cemetery awash in color. In all fairness to those of us up north, the decorations were artificial flowers, which are not allowed in most cemeteries around here from April to October. All the same, I had a sense that there was a deep cultural commitment to the custom. I saw one cemetery on a hillside in which every headstone was decorated, looking like a rainbow that became earthbound and swirled up and over the hill.

2. If it is a rural church, it has a steeple.
Small churches are everywhere in the rural South. Baptists predominate, but there is a rich mix of smaller, homegrown congregations sprinkled liberally throughout the countryside. I saw church buildings of every building material - brick clad, clapboard, corrugated metal, vinyl siding - and all had one unifying feature. Every single one, no matter how meager, had a steeple, which was always white despite the color and finish on the building beneath. I imagine that it provides a visual marker of faith: We are here. Come join us.

3. Small businesses are everywhere, but the greatest of these are manufactured housing sales, used car lots, and flea markets.
As we left the Ohio River corridor and its heavy industry behind, heading south on US 23, the commercial landscape changed. Major industry, except for an occasional gravel pit or small coalmine, receded. As we drove deeper and deeper into Kentucky, and then into Virginia, we noticed a pattern to the businesses lining the highway: manufactured housing sales lot, used car lot, flea market grounds (think "weekend community yard sales").

Manufactured housing (trailers) are widely used for housing in the rural areas through which we were traveling. There's a number of reasons for that: it is affordable, it is easily installed, and where one's land often consists of a lot of hill and very little flatland, sometimes it is all that fits without considerable greater expense in preparing the site. (Older homes in the area tend to be very small by "our" standards for the same reason of topography.) While there is considerable cultural and government bias against manufactured housing in central Ohio, the widespread acceptance of it in rural areas seems a more reasonable approach to diversifying housing opportunities for all.

4. Almost everyone has a garden in the country.
As we sailed past the small homes (manufactured or otherwise), I found myself picking out gardens. There are lots of gardens in the rural south. They tended to be large; they were all immaculately weeded. I wondered how much of the produce is passed out among family and friends, how much is canned or frozen for the winter, and how much make its way to a farmers market or flea market for sale.

5. The Blue Ridge Parkway may be the most undervalued, underrated park in the US National Park System.
The Blue Ridge Parkway is part of the National Park Service, running 469 miles from the Great Smoky Mountains National Park in the south to the Shenandoah National Park in the north. We drove the Blue Ridge Parkway about 160 miles from Boone to Roanoke, Virginia. The Blue Ridge, which is 75 years old this year, is a two lane road that runs up, down, and along the crests of the Appalachian Mountains. Commercial traffic is banned; the speed limit on the Parkway is 45 miles an hour. There are frequent turnouts for the view; there are a limited number of sites on the Parkway as well, including Flat Top Manor, the 19th century summer mansion of the Cone family, who made its fortune in the invention of denim. Warren and I spent several hours on the Parkway on our way back to Ohio, marveling at the views and at the pace.

We also marveled at the emptiness of the road, noting that most of the other travelers on it were our age or older. Warren postulated that the Blue Ridge may not appeal to many because of its slower pace and lack of "attractions." He reflected that for a family with young children, driving in a vehicle with in-car entertainment systems, the notion of traveling along the Parkway where the whole point is to look may be anathema, especially when coupled with the slower pace.

While I agree, the thought makes me sad. Here is this truly beautiful roadway, carved out of the hills during the bleak years of the Depression, and fewer and fewer of us know about it or travel on it.

6. A road trip is more of a stretch at my age than 30 years ago (or, I'm not in my 20s anymore)
When I was in my 20s, living in Portland, Oregon, but with all my family back here, I more than once drove nonstop cross-country. With two other drivers, it was 48 hours door to door. I remember those barnstorming trips with nostalgic fondness. With our planning a major trip this summer out to the Montana wedding, I looked at this week's excursion as an opportunity to test my roadworthiness.

Well, I'm not 25 anymore. Bones get stiff, muscles start to ache. My bladder is less forgiving; my stomach is more particular. The neuropathy in my feet moves into high gear. I have less tolerance for heavy traffic. While I can still lock into a Zen-like "zone" and drive for long stretches, I pay the price when I pull over and switch seats with Warren.

As the day (and evening, and night) unfolded as we drove home Friday, I told Warren that this trip showed me I needed to reexamine and rethink our Montana itinerary. Our shortest day then will be 300 miles; I don't want to think (yet) about the days where the mileage tops 600.

7. Small moments abound - always.
A road trip is always a chance to see or hear or do new things. In Virginia, on the way south, we pulled over at Natural Tunnel State Park and discovered you could take a chairlift to the tunnel viewing area. We hesitated until Warren said "when are we ever going to be here again to do this?" I'm glad we did, even if I winced a bit at the chairlift's slow trek down and then up the mountainside.

On Thursday, exploring a little bit of the Blue Ridge with our friends, we drove to see the Linn Cove Viaduct, stopping at the Cone mansion on the way. On the walkway to the base of the viaduct, I heard a trickle of water and saw the smallest of rills running down the hillside. While I marveled over the tiny trickles, another woman on the path pointed out the Gray's lilies (endangered) and the fringed gentian wild orchid (rare now in the wild).

In Sweet Springs, West Virginia, we pulled over to gaze at the Old Sweet Springs hotel (long closed as a hotel and possibly slated to be renovated sometime in the future), reputedly designed by Thomas Jefferson.

And as we crossed from Virginia into West Virginia on one of several mountains crests along Route 311, we came across a young black bear at the state line turnout. It crashed into the underbrush just as Warren shouted "A bear!" and I gasped in surprise. When I got home and emailed my friend Cindy about seeing the bear, she replied "WOW! A BEAR!!!! I forgot there are places in the US you can run into bear!!!"

Cindy's right and her comment resonated with me as I started to write about our trip. If we don't turn off the road occasionally, we may not ride the chairlift to see the tunnel. If we don't slow down from time to time, we may not see the lilies.

And if we are not careful of how we spend our days, we may forget that there are bears.

Gargoyles, Gershwin, and the Guggenheim

What do gargoyles, George Gershwin, and the Guggenheim all have in common? They are all pilgrimages we made when we were in New York last weekend.

Before we left last Friday, the most frequent bit of advice was that we "should see a show." Wicked, The Lion King, something. Sometimes it came in the form of a question. "Are you seeing any shows?" "What shows are you going to see?"

What shows? New York is a show unto itself. We couldn't squeeze in a show because we were too busy exploring places near and dear to our heart.

Warren and I share many things in common, one of the multiple reasons we are so compatible. Among those mutual interests are architecture, cemeteries, George Gershwin, Frank Lloyd Wright, and exploring new places in search of our other interests.

A trip to New York for us is a match made in heaven.

Because of our schedules, Warren and I had all day Saturday as well as Sunday morning before going our separate ways.

The first stop Saturday was easy to pick. We headed for the Guggenheim, the last major structure designed by Frank Lloyd Wright.

The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum sits at 86th and Park Avenue. From Grand Central Station, you catch the Number 6 subway uptown and walk west towards Central Park.

Warren saw it first, wedged into the block. "There it is!"

My first comment was "it looks so much bigger in the photos." From a block away, it looks improbably small. But that is the beauty of Wright's design, tricking the viewer into imagining it to be a small building tucked into the urban streetscape.

Wright designed most of his buildings on his theory of compress and release. You often enter a Wright structure through a small, low entrance (compress) that then opens into a wide space (release). The Guggenheim is no exception. First comes a small, tight entry with a low ceiling, then you walk into that beautiful open space of the ascending spiral.

We both gasped.

It is amazing space. The art is wonderful too, hung in galleries adjoining the spiraled space, but it was the spiral atrium that kept calling to me.

Compress and release, compress and release.

When we came out some two hours later, we were still not sated. We stood outside and took pictures, marveling and commenting. It still looked small to me, nestled into the neighborhood, but I knew better now.

We then debated where to go next.

Further uptown and farther to the west was a building I have wanted to see ever since reading about it in Christopher Gray's Streetscapes column over a year ago. It is only an apartment building, but stands out in Manhattan for the unusual gargoyles decorating the structure.

I started college at the University of Chicago, a campus full of Gothic architecture on which gargoyles abound. Chicago gargoyles are not happy gargoyles. If you find one with a smile on its face, it is probably because it has just watched another undergraduate bite the intellectual dust.

Not so the gargoyles I was searching for in Manhattan. These gargoyles are happy gargoyles, wearing ridiculous expressions. One is known as the Gobbling Gargoyle, because he is lustily consuming a meal with a large spoon raised halfway to his mouth.

So I asked Warren if he would be willing to take the Number 6 further uptown and then look for the gargoyle building. Of course he would be willing.

We disembarked the Number 6 at 110th and Lexington. That's East 110th. The gargoyles were at 527 West 110th.

"Oh, let's walk." (That was my suggestion.)

So we did. Two miles. It was 18 degrees out, before you factored in the wind chill.

The wind was blowing. Hard.

Have I ever mentioned how wonderful a husband Warren is? He was cold, it was freezing, we were hungry, but he didn't complain once. Not one word. Not one criticism of our slogging up 110th into the face of the wind just to see a building. Not one pointed comment about how after finding it, my hands were too cold to hold a camera after a few moments.

Instead, this amazing man I am married to steered me to a nearby Chipotle where we ate lunch and grew warm. From there, we took a subway down to where the World Trade Center used to stand. By then, with evening coming on, it had grown even more bitter and we quickly decided to beat a hasty retreat to our friends' home where we were staying.

The next morning, we joined our hosts, Ed and Katrina, for breakfast. Katrina and I have been close friends since 1974. She had been out of town until late Saturday night and this was the first we'd all had a chance to sit down together.

Before we came to New York this time, Warren discovered that George Gershwin, who died of a brain tumor at the age of 38, is buried in Westchester Hills Cemetery in Hastings-on-Hudson, less than ten miles from Katrina and Ed's front door. Over waffles, I asked if they would be up for a jaunt in search of George Gershwin. Sure, why not?

Off we went.

It is amazingly easy to find George Gershwin. He and other members of the Gershwin family, including his brother Ira, are in a large mausoleum right past the office as you pull into the cemetery. We piled out of the car and walked up to the doors to peer inside.

There is a Jewish custom of placing a small rock on a grave marker you are visiting. Some say is a way to let the world know, "Someone was here. This person is not forgotten." The Gershwin mausoleum had a few rocks on the top step and I regretted that I didn't think to bring a rock from Ohio to leave as well.

After the cemetery visit, Warren and I had separate schedules for the remainder of our trip. I spent more time in the City and visited with friends while he attended his meetings. My memories include being in Little Italy Sunday night with Bethany and hearing Italian spoken all around us, taking a Lower East Side walking tour with Katrina on Monday, eating pastrami sandwiches at Katz's Deli (think "When Harry Met Sally") and our deciding to walk to Grand Central Station from there (about 3 miles). I spent my time with my girlfriends; Warren spent his time immersed in the world of symphony management. Our final night, Katrina, Ed, Warren and I shared a meal rich in flavor and friendship, full of warmth and talk and laughter and cream puffs.

Warren once wrote that if I chose to cast my lot with him, "you probably aren't going to get Europe, diamonds, many expensive meals or lots of shoes." That statement, meant to be a commentary on his modest income (and also an inside joke), has become a touchstone of our relationship. The morning after we got back home, I emailed him as I do each workday: You may not give me Europe or diamonds, but you give me the world, starting with your love.

So that's why we didn't take in a Broadway show. Because all the show we wanted, all the world we needed, was already right there in our own hands.