Download - Friday Night Jam
Friday Night Jam
Nowick Gray
Cougar WebWorks
VICTORIA, BC
Copyright © 2014 by Nowick Gray
All rights reserved.
Published by:
Cougar WebWorks
www.CougarWebWorks.com
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Gray, Nowick, 1950-, author
Friday night jam / Nowick Gray.
Issued in print and electronic formats.
ISBN 978-1-4995-6682-6 (pbk.).--ISBN 978-0-9811431-2-5 (epub)
1. Improvisation (Music)--Instruction and study. I. Title.
MT68.G782 2014 781.3'6 C2014-905267-7
C2014-905268-5
Friday Night Jam
Introduction (1996)
During the last six years a number of the local
neophyte drummers have attempted to breathe
life into and out of that longer-lived institution,
the Friday Night Jam. Haven of Elvis aficionados
and Credence Clearwater hacks, Willie Nelson
impersonators and would-be-Deadheads, the
Friday Night Jam has lived by one rule: anything
goes. Unfortunately for my taste, the “any” part
of it sometimes gets lost in the Standards shuffle.
Which is to say, group improvisation is hard to do
well. When it works, however, it’s dynamite, true
inspiration, golden. It can even redeem the most
tired of oldies, given an injection of altered lyrics,
rhythms, and original solos.
The chronic problem at the Friday Night Jam
has been to amalgamate the Afro-Latin drums
and percussion with the western guitars,
accordion, piano, harmonica, and their associated
forms: primarily in the straight-ahead four-four
mold. The drummers generally want to lean the
beat over to the offbeat, the syncopated, the
reggae. Reggae has been a convenient meeting
ground because the compromise is simply found
in the regular upbeat. But more than that is the
issue of a controlled, recognizable “song” versus
an extended, authentic and moveable jam.
Group drum jam energy works best in waves,
without restrictions of straightjacket lyrics,
measures, predetermined chord changes. You can
put it all together in a great package, if you’re
Santana or Olatunji. For us amateurs, that
challenge takes work and practice as a group, and
these are not appropriate to the looser anarchy of
the jam. Even the oft-attempted “Let’s take turns
and go around the circle for starting something”
is hard to maintain consistently in that venue. So
success is left to chance, to who shows up and the
mood they’re in, to the phase of the moon or the
health of the crop or the status of one’s lovelife, to
how many drums can support each other for the
occasional detour down Africa lane. It’s all about
listening, and sharing leadership, and these are
qualities that don’t come to us easily or
automatically.
The biggest obstacle in this culture comes
from the worship of the guitar god. The lead
guitar calls the shots: sets the melody and mood,
determines the volume (easily overpowering
drums with a twist of the amp button, or
requiring them to tone down, if there’s no amp,
until the natural projective life goes out of them).
It’s true that rhythm is fundamental and so a
single percussionist can take any song and shift
its character, ruin it or drive it to new life. But in
terms of group dynamics, the guitarist is
generally preeminent, by default. Everyone looks
to them for the next song, waits for them to
retune, and depends on the structures that they
have memorized and are offering as a well-
furnished boat for everyone to ride in. What the
drummer offers is support: this is what is
expected. For a drummer to share or take the lead
is not expected or easily allowed. Conversely, it’s
hard for other musicians used to taking lead
melodic parts to learn to settle for supportive,
truly rhythmic roles.
So lately the jam is in decline. Lately there
haven’t been many drummers showing up,
because when we do, we’re held back by the
inertia of low energy, low volume, and low
creativity. We, like the other musicians, are aging,
or have a lot of distractions on our minds, or are
afraid to boldly take the loose reins, or have
simply given up trying—for now. But as always,
it’s different every week. Who knows what
stranger or visitor will show up this time, or what
random collection of hideaways will decide to
come out and celebrate this full moon? When it
fails it’s deadly dull, and a Friday night wasted.
But when it clicks, and moves into magic, there’s
nothing like it in the world.
1991
September 23, 1991
Day after Fall Faire and I’m sitting here dull
and reeling after a weekend full of the social
whirl, performance Saturday afternoon, again at
night by campfire, drums drums drums, the
lesson being, this time, again, to listen, to tone
down enough perhaps if that’s what it takes to
listen, to converse. This lesson arose in the jam on
the first good song after the long instrumental,
and Walkin came in with the lyric again, and I
interrupted in the next half line with an inane
idea for a title. Peter had to say, “Too late,
Nowick” and that killed the song. All right, it’s
not a conversation, it’s a ceremony.
Music, like life, is a learning in social relations,
interactions. Sometimes it’s complicated, or I care
too much, or try too hard, or find it a difficult
sport. I do better at the individual sports, I always
found; does that imply playing as a drum soloist?
No, the best is when the teamwork, the laughter,
the ceremony clicks.
1992
January 4, 1992
The drums played beyond performance
anxiety on New Year’s Eve because the
appreciative dancers were eating it up, and the
band was grooving, and I was feeling good. To
find again, get in touch with the inner voice, the
voice that needs to speak. Not plodding, muted,
dull and lifeless, bored and sick of life, but
determined to share what is of worth, what is
experienced in the social impulse of shared stories
and mutual energy, having to do with self-
confidence and feeling of acceptance, and thus
freedom of self-expression. To accept the role of
shaman to drum, to speak the incantations that
will connect us. To be inspired and thus conspire
with the sacred rhythms; to be a keeper of the
rhythms, the tales, the songs. This is the
responsibility, the joy of the artist.
On the one end, to invoke the muses and other
helping spirits, and to placate the evil ones. On
the other, to translate, to convey, to be the
medium and the vehicle between the visible and
the unseen worlds, the living and the dead and
unborn. To bridge the rainbow arch between
people and nature, between people and their own
inner nature, their destiny and origins. To honor
the flow between the various worlds of
experience, and the integrity of each.
January 17, 1992
Lars and Jane and I arrived with the “heavy
artillery,” me saying, “These guys’ll freak out
when they see all these drums.” We started
mellow, and worked into some good tunes
together, except I blew it with “Black Magic
Woman” when I got the mike in my hand, going
off-key and low-energy and pointing into the
amp for wild feedback. Finally Peter attempted a
slow, swinging “Swing Low Sweet Chariot” on
the organ, but Lars and William and Dick and I
kept rocking along with some driving rock beat
long after Peter sat slumped inert at the keyboard;
on and on we drove until my hands were tired
and sore, and finally as he sat there still I said,
“Well Peter, did we destroy your song?” And he
said, “Totally.” So we sat speechless for a while,
and he got up and took out his guitar and sat on
the washtub and played a few mellow acoustic
tunes, no accompaniment except a little of Dick
on the piano, and Lars finally a bit on the conga,
and I got up and moved to a seat against the far
wall, brooding, and Jane looked like she was
ready to leave, and I started to pack up too;
William meanwhile sitting off on an opposite
bench cool and professionally unruffled, and
finally saying, “Aw, don’t let Willie Nelson there
scare you off.” Okay, man. See you guys again.
February 12, 1992
First annual 24-hour drum jam. One rule: Keep
the beat going.
We arrived at the hall, called in the four
directions, chanted, beat the steady 210 of the
shaman’s drum, Michael and Walkin and Jane
and Rowena and I, and a guy from New Denver:
gettin in the mood. Then began a good rolling
rock in the forming circle, with a jazz beat offset
by Ken. Julie, Lars, Doug all showed up and
joined.
From there, a pastiche, a roller coaster, a
trading of percussion toys, a sharing of drums,
ongoing beat. Peter and Michael show up, go like
crazy. Later, Julie and Jane with Peter, Doug and
New Denver, cohesive and driving.
Sometimes it didn’t always work. During the
most high-energy jamming, as between Michael
and me, or me on the good djembe and Nigel on
the yew, I’d be self-centered, loud and
improvisational. Julie and Nigel later would say
they’d look for the quietest drum, to play to that;
or that the loud stuff was overbearing,
impenetrable, lost on a jag. Lars remarked that
traditionally African drummers didn’t play free of
the forms until age 30, after fifteen years of
practice. “Yeah,” I replied, “but we’ve been
listening to jazz for twenty years.”
Miles Davis said, “There are no mistakes.”
Walkin said, “It’s all good.”
Into the night, the evening and night.
Michael lays down, Julie and I take it up. Me
on the big bass, her on the djembe, steady, slow,
and powerful. Michael says, “That was the best
music I’ve heard in Argenta.” I say, “That’s what I
thought hearing you guys play when I lay down
to sleep.”
Of course I didn’t sleep.
When we lay out in the circle on the mats and
benches, we took rattles and shakers in our
hands, to keep the beat. At one point only I was
up, with the sticks. Then New Denver relieved
me, and he took up the slow bass djembe.
Toward morning we made strong black coffee
and got into some grooved jamming, alternating
with slow breathers. At one sparse point Doug
said, “It feels like some Buddhist colony.”
Okay, I thought, and once more set up a
sustained 210 on the yew drum, chanting Om
with New Denver beside me, Doug cross-legged
on the mat opposite. Jane nearby; Julie
wandering, Lars and Michael gone, Ken asleep or
out. It took off—the rolling drumstick beats, the
billowing group voice.
Nigel walked in, dumbstruck. Later he said,
“It felt like a church, a sacred space. You guys
were egoless, totally spaced out. You’d gotten rid
of everything, burned it all away.” He took over
the driving force on the yew drum, eyes closed
and grooving from then on, the last four hours. “I
figured you’d need the energy boost by then.”
When it’s over, we drift outside in the sun on
bright morning snow. And the ravens pick it up
and carry it on: quork, a quork-quork... qu-qu-qu-
qu-quork...
July 24, 1992
Big warm-up party jam, with ginseng, brandy
and pot, till midnight when X arrives stoned on
mushrooms and with pot brownie to share
morsels of, energy for more music and talk in
Third World Stone Age limited lingo words
without connectors:
truth... you... everyone... always... why... why...
when... ah, yes, when... now?... all time... no
time... world to shit... them... ripped off...
garbage... in mind?... whose... beautiful teeth...
yours... good looking you... you fuck other
women?
“No,” I answer, “past... not any more...
different life now... happy.”
Sept. 7, 1992
Fine debacle of a music politics on Saturday.
Nigel having said show up to play, and put a
poster on the board with the same message.
Richard arrives and sets up on stage; William
lurking beside, then up with the keyboard. But
then John steps in and says we can play off to the
side; Michael concurs, “Yeah we’re gonna play for
an hour and see what happens after that,” and
Nigel caps it off with, “It’s just gonna be the four
of us. The guy wants to turn the canned music on
after that.”
I’m resigned to it, Richard dismantles, William
bullheaded stays to play. Good for him, Gary says
later. Okay fine.
Boring old rock and roll, it turned out,
uninspiring for dancing, listening, or playing. A
wave of karma rolling out, said Richard the next
day. Michael, the next night, apologizes and
profusely disavows any role in the strictures on
personnel, then or in the future. John mentions a
lukewarm apology to me, “Sorry about what
happened.” Nigel remarks how pissed off he was
that the DJ pulled the plug on his voice mike
halfway through the last number.
Hmmm, I wonder who the real culprit is?
Willing to give these the benefit of the doubt and
blame the DJ, or the wedding organizers whoever
they may be, it still smacks of a turnabout and
power trip...
That’s okay, I still got my guitar (Hendrix).
I told Michael that the experience sealed it for
me: I was through with rock and roll. I told John
that I realized I didn’t want to play that kind of
music anyway; instead I accepted the
responsibility to get together an act that could
play the kind of music I liked. Lars, Richard, Julie
were on same wavelength, at least. Michael and
Nigel say so too. Peter? Hank? Jane? What about
Dick P. and Dick K.? William?
1993
January 9, 1993
Morning after great jam. I will call it: Just Jam,
or Animal Nature.
In order of appearance: Lars, John, me, Phil,
Julie: two mouth harps, electric bass, drum and
percussion.
Phil waxing poetic on the evolving point of the
cosmos, here and now, thinking, playing music,
herb consciousness, all of us here ready and
waiting for the Aries tiger to come claws out to
wake us up to say, Oh, yeah, right, that’s what’s
happening, it’s the spirit of the sixties coming
back cycling around again, Jim Morrison and Led
Zeppelin doing acid in a Toronto apartment 1968,
or with sixty natives in Alert Bay playing on a
hollowed cedar log with maple sticks so that
everybody, even the RCMP and 80-year-olds,
were up dancing.
Lars spent New Year’s Eve in Dubois, Idaho in
a blizzard in a rundown 1930s motel, a cowboy in
a pickup truck waving with a salute saying,
“Howdy.” One TV station that night aired a show
about making African drums, dance, music: the
same video Nashira has currently from her home-
schooling correspondence course.
Like Phil says, it’s all coming back to the beat.
We’re warming up for next month.
It’s all happening now, Mr. Zepp.
It will keep the perfect time if we are relaxed
enough to feel into it, get into the groove of the
all-becoming, through us in cosmic unfolding
now here in the awareness boom of our own
making and consciousness-keeping: circles of
celebration, our sacred duty to carry on, act out in
the street theatre of the us and now, the who are
we today and tomorrow: to wipe the old
memories out where useless, so as to free up disk
space for the more creative functioning of
programs yet to be heard. Carrying on the energy
of youth, of what’s alive today, even with the
rhythms of ancient times, cutting through the
buzz and blare of advertising unconsciousness,
pap and blather obscuring who we are together in
the ongoing beat of the keys of right now, who are
you, what’s going now and let’s get to it: jamming,
of course, into the night if that’s what it takes,
universal language music. Fatala says: beyond
spiritual politics.
Market news and other diversions.
Animal dreams, rising sun.
Outside today, feeling nothing of the 10-
degrees cold because I’m relaxed and therefore
warm, beaming into the fresh sun of a sky rich in
blues and fir-green, bright with the mounded
buttocks and breasts of snow and shadow, a
brilliant overlay of starpatterned jewels, a cosmos
apparent in film before the eyes, shimmering on
an invisible blanket over the blanket of white
snow, while, like part of the overall symphony,
crystals fly horizontal in shimmering sheets,
passing flocks darting by dissipating in the
updraft breeze, another elusive shower sweeping
down from stirring branches, it’s the energy
constant that keeps the music going, the stirring
in the branches, the keeping of the beat, the sand
shaking or the bass skin pounding, rockin and a
rainin...
I want to hold too the clear consciousness of
clarity and space and time enough for all, of social
fabric in music which is metaphorical for all of us
relating, ritual the form by which to recognize it,
all in the sacred circle dancing, carrying the rock,
drinking the potion of our life, sacred fluid
together in veins interlinked, consciousness
behind the shifting scenes, it’s all a kind of body, a
common or linked consciousness behind the
shifting scenes of our life interactions, our
separate bodies merely limbs and organs and
cells of the moving animal that is our human and
of course, larger living and nonorganic life, the
earth our body, the earth our consciousness. I
want to remember this sense of unity and
harmony, I almost say purpose but purpose being
mostly in the awareness itself, of what this beast
is and to appreciate the wonder of its working. To
see in this way, the art in everything, the art of
everything, that it’s all an ongoing jam, a huge
street theatre, we’re playing parts even when
we’re unconscious of it, or partially aware, or
forgetful, vindictive, and other ways obscured-
mind human, which after all is the game we’ve
chosen, at some level, to play. All a large
computerlike draft, us the players in the unseen
program, all the more wondrous because we do
have the chance, anytime we wake up to the
moment, to enter the programming level and
modify, customize, add wrinkles to the brainfold
rules, shades of meaning to the patterns,
embellishments on the mother beat.
This is visionary: hard to maintain against the
play of personality, the separateness of our voices
when we talk and write and explore to the utmost
our personal and individual opinions and
variations. Again the music metaphor is relevant,
for the secret of harmonizing these individual
understandings is to play together: to allow with
tolerance and yet resonance the separate strands
to color the tone of the whole, to weave into the
hybrid code. To blend the obscurities of rhythmic
variation into the common ongoing underlying
pulse... pulse... pulse... of our common body
which is the sacramental understanding of
human unity, love. If this is cosmic purpose in
any literal or anthropomorphic sense, so be it. If
only symbolic in that way through our own
imaginings, that’s as well. It’s the tone of the
interactions and spirit of our lives together that
counts in either case, and if it be prophetic to state
it thus, so be that too.
January 15, 1993
It’s Friday again, it’s snowing, Lillian Allen is
rappin and rockin in my skull, and I’m sitting
down to work. I’m inspired by virtual reality,
holographic theory, psychoactive politics, and
ceremonialism. Looking to go to town to buy a
drum. Good, good... my blood is secretly boiling
for the next hot jam, the all-night ritual. It’s the
space that counts, the spirit, the mood, the energy
that sweeps along.
January 23, 1993
A special time—alternating chosen obsessions.
A best ever jam last night, second in a row to 4
a.m. after one to 2, and after two harps a bass and
two drums, and ten people last week, this week
fifteen: Phil, John, Walkin, Dick, Gail, Lars,
Richard, Michael, Peter, Nigel, Michel, Julie, me,
Nathan, Rowena. New heights of drum
performance as well as total music energy
experience and connection. Many peaks, and
everything from African jazz to “BeBop a Looda”
worked. Pointers from Michel today.
Once more a sense of all things possible, and
thresholds crossed. Still room for learning,
improvement; but the encouragement is there.
Bad news and good news. Not in static state
except for human condition and character
makeup, but in dynamic evolution, continuing
relative progress.
January 24, 1993
A long chat with Michel yesterday on
drumming and jamming: the need to be more out
there, present, expressive, not flat and holding
back, but dynamic: moving in and out of the
rhythmic base, with others supporting and being
supported: taking and giving space for solos: jazz
practice. Controlling beats and striking clearly;
keeping it together whether on the base or taking
off. Keeping the central pulse and the other’s
place in mind at all times. Using accents: but
using them for controlled effect; not getting lost
with them.
At the same time, he was affirming about the
potential, the power, the magic, the talent that
was there.
I feel a letdown now of personal criticism after
feeling so incredibly high from the performance,
necessary I guess as balance. Part of the
vicissitudes of ego inflation and deflation. The
bad news along with the good.
Revelation during meditation: that taking off
on rhythms is analogous to drifting away from
breath attention, the centered pulse of no-
thought, while meditating. Similarly, my life
seems to be composed of alternating states of
obsession in the rounds of baseball, writing,
music and reading, and daily chores, not often
enough returning to the central place:
contentment, breathing, centering, appreciating,
slowing down in the real sense of connectedness
and nonactivity. Robert Bly says, “We are leaving
our time now” to go to the sacred space of
timelessness. This happens back and forth,
relative to the movement; as in the jam,
remarking to Lars: “We are entering our time
now.” Shifting gears, altering states.
January 30, 1993
The time of the full black moon. Scattered
rhythms walking, four horses galloping together.
Modes of communication shared. Blake, Jesus and
the saints and angels of the ages, watching,
waiting on the street corners with the recently
dead. Meeting, saying haven’t we met somewhere
before? Tiger coming down from the mountain,
walking through the village. The log is beaten, the
barrels sawn to calculated gradations to produce
a harmonic convergence of all sounds, all possible
tracks around the web of light to cause it to shine
brightly and to burn off the shadow memories of
the past. Keeping the golden bridge open, and the
small tunnel under the river. Meeting on the other
side—is this individual understanding or
collective awakening? We produce a purpose of
present happiness: going naked together through
the garden.
This is music, what we see in one another,
standing before the fall; the avalanche is frozen in
mid-motion, outside the picture window. We
walk around inside, cleansed and getting ready,
milling around, while it waits for us to say the
word. Will we get around to it, the white and
formless tiger outside with its unfocused eye
upon us? The tiger is us. Its eye is nowhere, and
everywhere. Our eyes are but facets of its insect
intelligence, memory equaling gravity, light
equaling thought as it travels seemingly on a road
going somewhere, but the where is here, coming
back around. This is the “Burnt Norton” of the
New Age upon us now, the Mediatatio of the
present soul, its time come round:
You surround me with ears breathing
I hold you out in a widening ring
Closing down dark in a sacred circle
I draw one growing thing
The high sky of the blowing world
Shrinks to a spinning blue
Reverie corrals a billion souls
Chanting the one word, “You”
Is this escape or capture?
My thumbs remember trees
My fingers point to blossoms
We walk inside these old, deep
woods toward new springs
In the end is the beginning. Adam in his myth
comes to the new time, the time for reborning.
The knowledge now is contained in the sphere: to
which all memory makes reference, pulled to the
center, holding around the starlike presence of the
whole. In our case, awakening earth, we can posit
a manifestation of our thought: so we sow, in
projection, in creation, in new dreaming, travels
to lands that walk beside ours. No need to kill,
though we still die. No need for unnecessary
suffering: only that it is necessary to suffer. Partial
truths cohere inside the sphere, and when they
seem to depart, the vision must enlarge to see the
wider layers that otherwise swallow the visionary
line of sight. So there is no real sight outward:
only a version of what it is like the long way
round. Or: beam directly up or down, the hotkey
to the past or future, the elevator of time working
at light speed to bring awareness to and from the
all. To create new metasynapses in the global
brain: beaming across the gulfs of left and right,
life and death, good and evil, separate and whole.
Throbbing in the wingbeat pulse of fluttering
reality, hummingbirds of creation all.
Molecules, star systems, electric rails
humming. All of these particles, swarming
together down the great river of: call it the all, the
becoming, the being in motion. Energy, a number,
quality and dimension, tag labels of a hundred
and sixty-seven tongues. Reducible at any node to
the code key reference, one through twelve, the
triads and quartet linkages tying down the
relations, each numerological sequence reflecting
a principle of affinity, of bonding to show distinct
qualities and as a way of entering the various
states available to us. If this goes nowhere visible
it is still along the tunnel, begun at birth and
before. Womb entry, tomb egress, paths of glory
and paths of stone. We walk, lightly shouldering
our load for the day, the provisions for a near
future. Monkish relations and nonrelations,
howling in the wilderness, quiet assention of
what goes down. Tomorrow, yesterday, today. In
this dreaming the breath rolls, universal in its
beat. The language gleams outward, and in,
holographic union achieved before it is even
attempted. In the fields of play: at work in the
subcells of the directed and in the skating
surfaces of the directionless. It all coheres because
it is of the same universe. In this way more is
possible. All is psychosinging, polyrhythm of the
whole. All the notes however dissonant and
patternless, all the conversations and revelations
and interviews and soundbites chattering, the
wordspeak monkeys hanging from the eaves, all
cohere in the jungle to come. There is a garden
waiting, under the snow of our white time. There
is an earth dreaming us.
The collective verities come home to roost. The
music they/we cluck all the livelong night can
stop at any time, or keep going: it’s all the same to
the cat outside eyeing the black full moon.
These nights and conversations do comprise a
glimmering, a shimmering resonance with what’s
being described around and about the brainpan
electric these days: Maya where have you gone, to
wait for us coming? How do we contact you now?
Or do we acknowledge your groundwork, your
earthworks, and ride upon your bones
respectfully to the church of your imagining: they
be crying on the altar, and rockin in the aisles
about now.
In reading, to have collected all the necessary
materials for a thrust forward into the outer
atmosphere of earth-consciousness. In music, to
have broken past the barrier to the drum; and
past barriers of expectation, performance criteria,
needfulness of form: to the openness of becoming
together. In relationship, to accept and appreciate
the grounding energy, the simplicity and
contentment of family and close personal contact,
frequency sharing. Resonance within and
between these tracks of being.
February 1, 1993
Monday, a new month today. I have a new
drum. At this point I’m ready for more
experience: a workshop with Olatunji maybe this
summer, other travel, publishing, achieving states
of happiness in everyday life. Is this yuppieism?
Could be. Phil says keep the planet in mind, the
suffering of others. Phil the bodhisattva. To
relieve suffering... how? Rinpoche says by
teaching enlightenment. Awareness, self-
knowledge. How to be naked in the garden
together. How to be. To be.
Michel has input on the drumming practice:
listen. Play out there. That is, loud and clear, but
together: on the rhythm, connected to the
common beat.
A series of late night jams, 2:30, 4:30, 4:30, 3:30.
With five, ten, fifteen, six players. All good, all
different. Is it going anywhere? Does it matter? It
goes... around. The sphere holds all the variations
together. It’s a music of physics, not of railroads.
It’s horses galloping together.
I plan, get excited. Run into people randomly
in Nelson, tell them to come: the Quebecois
woman, the New Denver guy, Lucy, Michael and
Rowin. A slew of people from the Slocan coming,
Ken with a trap set. It could be good. Sylvan with
his big bass. Jack with big bass drum? Tell him, at
least.
The search for common pattern, consensus,
harmony, the holding force. The ongoing, moving
force, allowing freedom within its gentle
boundaries. Not dogmatic, not rigid, not
unchanging. But dynamic, weaving, changing
and evolving together, with continuity of
tradition and resonance of each to the other. This
is political, literally on the level of teaching form.
How to be as a group, how to play together.
Synergy.
And I care about the quality of the experience
for others. Why? Because it is a group experience,
and I am not happy if all are not. Back to
consensus model, politics. Musical democracy.
Sylvan: You can tell a lot about a person, playing
music with them.
The comfort of many people playing drums:
all are welcome, even me. Some are better, some
worse. It doesn’t matter. The tribal mentality. All
have a part to play, even if we’re not all virtuoso
soloists. All can contribute, and enjoy the fruits of
participation.
I want to show off, and enjoy the experience.
This is natural ego, living. Plunging boldly into
the thick of life.
February 2, 1993
Drumming group yesterday, all five of us:
Sylvan, Jane, Lars, Julie, and me; also Sheila, and
Bronwyn. We had some good high spots, and for
me some disappointments: uninspiring solo, dull
roar of everyone playing, not really listening to
the quieter ones. However there were those few
bright moments, high-speed and high-energy
runs. The new drum is slick and fast, has clear
distinct tones amid the roar without
overpowering others.
I am human, limited, fallible, and I can accept
that. My powers are not godlike but finite. I am
mortal and subject to pain and suffering. I partake
of the human, the earthly condition. I have cosmic
understanding and partake of the infinite wonder
and joy and power of creation, of all creation; yet
also my feet are clay (aluminum, mylar; wood
and skin). I have a partner and a child, a stomach
and an ego, an asshole and a place of
disappointment and dejection. All of this is as it
should be, life on earth. We work with that,
tuning the strings of catgut or steel to sing the
harmonics of the whole.
February 4, 1993
Another day gone, another day closer to the
beat: and yet it reaches back, to the beginning.
This week I haven’t done as much rhythm
practice as I had expected. But my consciousness
has been there, my intention and my heart
journey. In this spirit, it’s all part of the music, it’s
all music. Rhythm, parts, ensemble with other
people and elements of my life. The stacking of
firewood, smoking of hams. The fixing of hydro,
mopping of pantry floor, washing of dishes. The
time spent with Nashira. In the African sensibility,
the occasion and social context plays its part in
the music. The dancers, the listeners. The
meaning of the occasion. The taking care of
details: the wordtalk; the walk; the rhythms of
sleep and waking. The dreaming, the daydreams.
The affirmations. The sweat. Release into body
understanding. The form practice too. The
floating into and with the beat.
The taping and reading, seeping into
consciousness. From now on it goes. It does not
stop. It’s the merging of the individual and body
and hand consciousness with the ensemble and
the larger ensemble of reality. And so I continue . .
.
February 5, 1993
Last day, the day has come. Am I making too
much of this, setting myself up for
disappointment?
I learned much from Chernoff, finishing last
night and this morning. Crammed also on Afro-
Latin rhythms, and circle philosophies.
From Chernoff, the movement from technical
virtuosity to social context, to placement in
pattern. The ethical and social dimensions of
music taking primacy over individual
performance standards: the latter having a place
determined by sensitivity to the whole, the sense
of the deeper movement of the music, and of the
dynamic connection of that with the ongoing
appreciation of those not playing. With the whole.
It is holographic, not enclosed. It opens to
resonance with the whole, live responsiveness to
the situation. And so I flow with the food
preparations, packing, getting ready, making
love, doing the dishes, typing...
In the meantime, the streams are collecting in,
now, as in the beginning of Woodstock. The
Rajneesh meditation tape in the background is the
soundtrack for this live movie in the making, this
even of our creation, and the media can do what
it will or not, that’s another part of the world and
not the central concern, which is the spirit of the
time and place and the gathering of us who
choose to come, resonating in speech and
movement of every moment, in the whole. Parts
responsive, ever open and responsive, answering
in kind, from individual expression and offering.
Mutual respect, gentleness, coolness of spirit and
warmness of heart. Thus the old men dance, thus
they play. They guide the changes smoothly,
sweetly.
February 9, 1993
My theory is that language is by nature an
illusion giving a semblance of reality, like the
bodily senses. So that to be truthful it is better to
use fiction, which claims only to present a parallel
to reality, an image, not an accurate overlay. In
this way I am truer by constructing worlds of
image and thought with the written word, the
texts and patterns of art.
And yet in explaining all this to Sarah, I could
use clear thinking and language to approximate
the concept which I believe in. This is perhaps the
key: to translate what is true for me, given a
common understanding between us. Some
ground for mutual truth, communication.
Between is language, vocabulary and style:
stories, metaphors, connections, a spiel of
revelation. As with Phil, whose expression is a
visual art form that expresses well his
understanding. All people have an ability to
speak their own minds, and to some extent
individual variations, interpretations of a
common reality.
In this way we can, like musicians, talk
together, even echo thoughts or play a common
beat, with individual tone expressions or timing
variations. The more interesting music is not to all
drum the same beat (though this is the way,
perhaps, for the tribal Amerindian) but to drum
around the same hidden beat, in the way of the
African ego. The European ego takes yet another
form, which is the display of individual virtuosity
supported by the hierarchical organization of the
band or orchestra.
February 21, 1993
Jam in Banff
A hot urban “male” funky rock bassline
energy with Doug flying and Maria at the
controls filing, weaving invisible threads, two
drum sets full tilt and high volume bass against
eggcarton foam walls, “songs of the blue
sarcophagus” (long and a little too narrow),
hymns to Aphrodite and Tristessa, D minor
fugues and a high-end break from Yves or Andy,
and Nick wired into headphones wild on the
drums at the end.
Off to the Rundle afterwards, after prospect
lookout on Banff Springs castle like two bull elk
pissing, a step away from death. In the Rundle
with coffee and hot chocolate and crinkle fries
and Chiko the Chinese sage saying fortunes for
everyone but me, moody. (I dream later that
night, an old man slices at the young maiden in
black with my boots, for the $5 Indian bracelet on
her wrist that Chiko just gave her). In the shop
window, “Roots” in white letters. Traffic goes by,
oblivious. No one has spoken of the actual jam,
except Maria, and later, Doug’s friend. But they’re
cold to people; they do it through music. Yet, it is
a present thing, always present. Communication
through word and rhythm and melody, turning
in, back in later through work, evaluation of
tapes, conversed replays, rehashed miscues,
setting up bridges. Breaking down walls.
Bringing it home to what the elders say, where the
sparks fly. Bringing it forward in new knowledge,
networking, not for happiness but deeper
satisfaction, needs fulfilled, pushing edges
forward together, into new realms of nowness,
together I say not just personal visions and studio
time, but somehow in the right now face to face
what is there to lose but the fear of going there, or
failing?
February 27, 1993
After another in a long almost unbroken line
of great jams last night, ten people again, Peter
running with me and taking it out there. A new
universe every week, out of the blue sarcophagus.
Getting beyond the need to stay uniform, varying
the beat within a constancy. This is the struggle: a
roller coaster running and swaying back and forth
from teetering on one rail to teetering on the
other, especially on one song where we hit the
Coltrane standard of everyone together on a
different beat. We got there with that one, me on
the shaky tambourine drone because it’s not the
individual virtuosity that is telling, but the
interplay and tension between the rhythms; the
place where the interest more than melodic is
rhythmic-harmonic: that is, the harmony of the
rhythms.
Increasing evolutionary understanding and
growth. Again, I say progressive.
Power at the corners of the mandala, strength
up the middle. Fantasies of recording, going
somewhere with it.
The dream of altered state going into music, a
spirituality then. And the dream of bringing the
music to that point: a workable energizing ten-
person true jam. Who says we can’t? It can work
every time because there is an overriding
philosophy or underpinning which says that it
can happen, and it proceeds from that basis. The
rhythm is the fabric that holds it together: I
learned this in Music 83 and the lesson continues
to be proven... beyond all expectations. We can
create anything together. Our lack of skill is
transparent when we first try to get off the
ground with it, feeling our way, verging on the
cone of power. Then it takes off and we fly: new
spaces never before heard or conceived off. To get
past the personal anxiety of holding a beat to let it
go sometimes and throw it in the court, and the
response of having it picked up, to come back to:
that is a current happening that is starting to
work. Listening to music is helpful along the way
to understand how these spaces and macro
rhythms can be structured, can flow together.
We’re missing William’s liquid mediator, the
synthesizer and electric organ.
Evolution, personal and communal: this is the
energy running through the core of the mandala,
the line of self and community, with family close
beside. As in the music, I’m increasing my focus,
understanding and appreciation of the primacy of
the group experience. However, I’m skipping the
political angle per se for the moment, the
revisioning workshop going on today, because it
is in those personal expression realms that I most
enjoyably, directly and engagingly participate in
community life. Community in the abstract is
meaningless but takes on life with shared
enjoyable activity: thus the music.
Family time is more valuable to me when I am
whole in the other ways, not hemmed in by too
many chores, easing off on self-pressure to flow
with the human connection. It works well this
week with Nashira time building, the block mode
of scheduling more effective than an hour a day
of this or that. This works with music practice too,
with more accomplished in five hours of group
practice than in ten of solo: though if I did both, it
might really take off.
I do not need to write philosophy. I need to
write philosophy. Philosophy has its own way of
writing itself in a form that hides it, clothing for
the soul, the body of thought. These
obscurantisms are like the constantly changing
rhythm, going to new places, unexplored
frontiers, rather than staying home. I am an
explorer in all ways: each moment, word, day,
year, jam... is a new universe. This is the theory
that carries on. Tomorrow, different. What is
pleasing in this: to think, to hear? To feel the flow
of it, onrolling. To roll with it. To float and swim
in those waves. To become one with the
movement. Of thought and writing, these are of a
kind with music. To play with other souls and
currents of thought in this way. To dance with
them, on to where we go together, our footsteps
finding the way. To bring new light into the feet,
not just the eyes. To broaden the doors of
perception past clichés of expression and
represented thought, to new sky. To pull new
lyrics out of the depths, to bring them on. The jam
will grow. It will take a balance of free expression,
sometimes humbling and sobering, yet freeing in
the context of control and discipline. A balance of
these two forces, entropy and organization,
matter and energy, gravitation and centrifugal
force: it’s what makes the world go round. To take
for my guiding principle the universal, physical
one of apparent linear motion that really forms
small and large circles of orbit: not fixed but also
onrushing, so that the traces left in space are a
spiral. To take for my metaphysical truths the
meanings afforded by physical truths and
patterns. To use as thought models the values of
the subhuman realms, survival and work,
relaxation and oneness, excitement and
energization, merging and exploding, traveling
through stasis.
The still center of the turning world. Laying
on the paint. Improvising live, on stage, lines
from somewhere. Psychomusic. It’s really
happening now. Freeing the creative dragons
from their media-forged chains, the prerecorded
songs, except as templates to grow new culture
on. Recording all of this thought, creating it as it
goes, and for what: not to hold on to, but to use as
a springboard to new consciousness. In this it not
only records the way but also plows. A sharp two-
edged blade of spirit moving, turning up black
earth to the light of day. To inspect the creatures
of the underworld thus exposed. To send some of
the luckier spores out of that grave world forever
to other stars.
Philosophy... or art. The distinctions perish
like daffodils in a killing frost. One image brings
them all crystalizing like cast-off snakeskin into
the museum of time, so that they and everything
can be seen for what they, we all are. Creatures of
form, thus of imagination. Because it is apparent
form that is the imagined world. The real world is
invisible to the human eye. Form is a convention
created by our interpretive senses. They need
something to entertain them, so they create it.
This is not literally true, evolutionarily speaking.
* * *
Now what to do, at play in the fields of the
Lord: free to create, or ruminate, play a game or
sing, work at an intellectual task or mime an
artist... be true to myself. Meaning what, when
the self is evolving forward into freedom?
This is a riff that comes unbidden: those wild
animals of possibility roaming through
consciousness and caught to hold and display
through these barwords, for the world to see. A
wild animal hunt in which all are subject to
extinction, yet all are immortal. The concepts are
fluid, the boundaries of form unfixed. Because
we/I have the power of the universe creator, the
power to say this is or isn’t, and has thus and so a
shape or size or other chosen characteristic. In this
homage to the Lord of life I say I am a humble
hunter, asking permission to bring down and to
table the flesh of gods. Later I will pay dues of
work direction, planned and focused form,
blueprint for visible construction that may stand
up to weather, public scrutiny, time fatigue,
interested minds and wandering souls in search
of nourishment. My responsibility in service, to
help the focus collective to hold what is a
refreshing sight. As in the jams,
to take a part in moving the rock.
Titles for band, jams, albums, songs:
Moving the Rock
Just Jam
Animal Nature
Dreaming Angels
Cowboys Against Extinction
Weaning Our Devil
The Trance
Edging Max
The Verge
Counting Sheep, Backwards
Future Inside Out
Clamdigging in Paradise
Preoccupations of the Chosen Many
Rare Birds in Cages
Politically Canceled
Wilderness in Oils
The In And Out Of It
Rainbow Train
Counting Down Dawn
Apples and Evergreens
The Jesus Stomp
The Existentialist Rhumba
Songs of the Blue Sarcophagus
Changing Planes in Midair
A Thousand Reasons
Tantrums of the Undead
Magic in Numbers
Process Makeup
Gearbox Breakdown
Telling it Like it Was
How We Got There
Chants of the Sleeping Army
An Ounce of Dread
I Was a Turquoise Changeling
Lost and in Love
The Breathing Night
Funk the Courthouse
Sinners at the Well
If I can write something, rhymed or not, for
any of these, I can start to get into
singing/chanting/rapping them. The voice can be
free, and the missing inner dimension. Bring the
singing in whole and the others will go. The
singer sets the tone. I need a melody perhaps, or a
rhythm with each. But not necessarily. This is
Doug’s trip, but in my style. There is a movement
out there. This is rap, ska, what’s happening.
There is a freeing movement of expression, of
exploration, of self-indulgence but with group
support, group-tempered. The shared experience
of creating art. Creating art, not just performing,
but group creation. This is the unique and world-
shattering message of the jam. We are at an edge
of world and human culture. The possibilities,
implications are not self-serving or self-gratifying
only, not little platitudes of stroking comfort: but
a vision and analysis of who we are in fullest
potential and what we represent and are part of
as aware and fully acting beings. Carrying
forward what with life’s energy we have
inherited, and bringing it forward not in stale
rehash but creatively remixed (Pound: “Make it
new”) fashion. And there is the more integrating,
synesthetic form of merger, of group
consciousness, group creation, process turned to
magical ends.
Listening, responding, moving with each
other and the entity that makes itself available to
us. This is a transcendental form we’re breaching,
that pulls us past our struggling individual parts
to ride the whole animal. To tour the wild
universe, riding together to parts hitherto
unknown. To do this not in abstract and
solipsistic thought, but out there on stage
together: and wider, with dancers. To give up the
limitations of personality that come up along the
way, to the purpose and spirit of the whole. Also,
to take some of those personal risks for the sake
of new vision shared: and sacrifice both in that
sense and in the reverse sense, of holding back
and supporting others to do that too. Not to
encourage the staid and laid back, however,
except as a relaxer: and that’s fine, too; homage to
the old folks at home, the golden oldies and
hymns of the past.
It’s a new kind of music, that’s what I’m
getting at: and also a new kind of politics,
socializing, way of being in community. That
works both literally and as a model of how to
interrelate, communicate and evolve together:
both in the bounds of an individual song, in the
movement of a jam session from one plane to
another, and in the macro development of the
practice from week to week, year to year. There is
a magical and organic, not simply chaotic and
random, process at work here. A thread of getting
used to each other, even when the exact definition
of personnel changes in the details from time to
time. This new music is roots-based, African and
shamanic, rock and folk, jazz and blues, Celtic
and Slavic, it is all music together. Blending all
possible forms into a pleasing whole; all
instruments, types of voicing and lyrics, modern
also urban funk and reggae, soul wails and
psycho-psychedelic, bringing it all together 28
pages or 2.8, just so it says it and says it again and
keeps on playing. It’s a new music and as such a
reflection and also a motivating seed force in a
new world birthing. Group consciousness in
action, work and play together in joyous spirit of
release and common understanding, taking care
of needs of each other as we may become
sensitive that way, not the steamroller to hell but
the swan boat of natural movement: we are a part
of the whole, and it is not practiced riffs but
honed readiness that will bring us into that place,
and through it to discover what is beyond, and
beyond, and beyond. For why else would we
bother traveling, if not to see what we may see?
* * *
Still I go on, to move this rock of forty-two
years a little to read the moss that’s grown there.
To comb the lichen-encrusted surface for traces of
spores and to fingerprint them for color-spectra
planets of origin, to decode the messages they’re
singing to us. It’s a poem singing along the silver
wires of thought between those spores and me,
from their progenitors or between them and me. I
converse with those spores because of the way the
grass turns green tomorrow, or next month. It
rides all night, and this day is night somewhere,
why not here?
Jam anytime, honey jam. Words of madness,
of magic, of timeless dreaming, come to me now
in this hour of empty rhetoric; steep my boiled
ears in the brine of kindness not normally
understood but now curdling formless in the milk
of generation. The entity has gone now, the birds
fled south. The grass still slumbers, beaten brown
and holding time damp, clouded, mysteriously
uncombed and forgotten. Not to worry about the
fuckups, by the way, it’s not all grace. There are
missed spots, other realms of metaphor,
mechanical messes, treeplanting trips to trip on,
slash to burn. Fires to rage through the world.
Reptiles to reckon with, starships burning.
Wrecks on the ocean floor, starfish-driven now.
Sharks prowling, greeneyed and soulless. A killer
at work somewhere, now. Pain and wasted time,
childbirth and disease, maimed limbs and dashed
expectations. The time rolls around and the globe
smiles on, or suffocates, depending on the aspect
chosen, the color on the brush. Spiders walking,
spinning, biting down. The other side of life,
death of this beauty and loss of its children.
Tragedy for those who choose crying.
Abandonment of the jewels and retribution in
ashes and mud. Bark bruised; sap running into
the earth. Volcanoes rising. Continents crashing,
stars blowing up in our faces. A new race of
dinosaurs, chasing the old into the galleries. The
door slams shut. The shovel scrapes dirt, hits
wood. A sound is made, another. The music
begins again.
March 6, 1993
Great bursts of revelation from reading Yatri,
Talbot and McKenna. Especially Yatri, the sense
of, it’s okay not to be in that pure realm, because
I’m on earth to do it here, to apply the truths of
the transcendent, to enjoy the time here and make
the best of it, to incorporate spirit in body and
spacetime. Also to keep the light in mind, mind in
light: the dual movement, out/in, in/out, not just
the paragate, go-beyond movement. Incarnation,
reincarnation, like breathing.
The jam was perfect for this lesson, in its
imperfection, its plodding frustration, its
acceptance of our limitations. Yet with faith in the
process, we (Dick, Walkin and me) were able
finally to break through the underlying gross
layers and move out into the celestial spaces.
Some of the earlier stuff with Julie, and Peter and
John worked well along the way.
I have a new patience for daily chores, for
social stagnation, for our weaknesses as
individual people. Because we all have talents
and riches to appreciate as well. “Welcome to the
Jam,” I tell Sarah as she’s talking of anxieties
before facilitating the Co-op AGM; and when I
explain in this way, she answers, “Welcome to
Love.”
Yet I have more resolution also to work on the
technical level to improve the music, both
personally and for the group. Through practice,
and learning songs.
* * *
More on that jam: it was like, you can’t force it
to be great, or together, or in a groove. If the
energy isn’t there, if people are tired, or sick, or
not ready, or there’s no bass... on the other hand,
with patience and faith, it did get there: where the
heart’s desire needed it to go, in that
unpreconceived form, to that unexplored place.
At play in the fields of the Lord.
Also, to have the physical skills honed
beforehand, and enough sleep under the belt, can
only help. Also expectation of success, along with
the openness to whatever happens: other people’s
types of music, a bad time for whatever reason, a
good time in an unexpected direction or aspect.
This time wasn’t so great personally as a
performer, expect for the usual few high spots
interspersed among the sitouts, the plodding
onebeats, the predictable dronebeats, the
predictable tangential flying outs. I learned some
valuable things by playing softer, hearing the
accordion for instance, and in the end letting Dick
come out even further on piano keyboard. Also
room for some better, more sustained improv
singing on mike; supporting Walkin by holding
mike for him while he improv’d, in contrast to
boycotting his solo standards. And standing out
in the road for a final hour’s gab with Walkin and
Dick, down to earth this time in contrast to the
usual rap with Phil. This time jokes: “Flowers
don’t harm the ozone if they’re grown in
dogshit”... and talk of earning a living by growing
dried flowers... raising mules and donkeys in
heat. Earlier Walkin’s saga of crossdressing in the
badnews biker bar in San Jose, stumbling on a
Texas shorthorn in a pasture in the night high on
mushrooms, being chased around in circles,
grabbing it by the horns...
April 15, 1993
Friday night jam, waylaying myself toward
the derelict fringe (“No, man, the cutting
edge!”)—Peter and William—before going in. A
mistake, though it proved a great jam in the end
(despite a rough vocal on “Fire on the Mountain”
and a really botched try of “Jammin” to a
promising blues jam begun by Peter... Lost my
composure then, back to little boy blue; recovered
however and later had a smoke with Peter on the
porch and we came back in and he served up “All
Along the Watchtower” to raves of “best ever”...
A good one-of-a-kind group: John K. sans hair
and beard (I recognized him only by the harp),
Michael from Nelson, Gorm around 11:30, Julie
around midnight, Peter, William, Walkin, Al, Gail,
Lars, Richard, Dick. But I stayed an hour too late,
the last hour marginal anyway but for one worthy
song.
Lessons: from previous week, learned not to
get caught in the endless variations but to be
more steady, with more assertive one-time leads
returning to basics. This time: warm up playing
before smoke, and then easy on it, to stay
comfortable; forget the fear. Also, re. Julie, Lars,
and others: listen more, modulate volume to
blend into whole sound, that’s the best. When
everybody is heard, and my own part is
unobtrusive yet contributing—there, and yet, as if
not there—especially on minor
percussive/timekeeping.
Haunted all week by that local version of “All
Along the Watchtower.”
June 8, 1993
A little retrospective after a rare week off,
usual high/low session the week before with Lars,
Julie, Richard, Walkin, in which I thought I heard
some comment by Richard about my dominating
the play, and later a joke in the form of a heavy
metal name for us, “Overlord and the
Underlings.” I laughed aloud before I realized the
barbed jibe, and heard finally a comment to
Walkin, “Wait’ll he has his coffee.” Afterwards I
approached Richard and said, “How did it go for
you tonight?”
“Oh, all right I guess. It had its moments.”
Someone else: “Oh, Richie didn’t have a
religious experience?”
Richard: “A little bit of satori... “
Me: “That’s why we’re all here, right?...
Anyway, somehow I imagined you were having a
hard time with it.”
“Me? Oh, I don’t think so. If you don’t reach
satori it’s nobody’s fault but your own.”
I was left to ponder that one. Later in the truck
home Julie said she’d heard nothing of the
comments I mentioned, felt the music was great,
my playing was fine. But she pointed out there
might be an element of competition among some
of us sometimes, naturally as artists.
Reading Bob Moses later was helpful to focus
on some bad habits: flitting from one rhythmic
feel to another, or playing with a soloist like “both
trying to get in the same end of a canoe” rather
than staying with the internal hearing and
providing the structural support.
June 10, 1993
After volleyball, talks with Lars about jam and
competition, my fatal mistake trying to tape
Gabrielle Roth for him (taping over the original
instead), and thoughts today about imperfection.
Not so much an issue of competition with others
as with oneself, limitations, the spirituality of
imperfection. Am I caught in the Western,
egocentric model anyway, where Alzheimer’s
effectively ends purposeful life by consignment to
a mental Third World of subsistence rather than
growth?
I posit one model of purpose, being a process
of improvement, growth and learning, cultural
advancement on an individual as well as group
level. Striving, with desire for, ultimately,
spiritual perfection, complete transmutation of
physical essence to metaphysical understanding
and achievement, awareness of completion.
All this available in the meantime in love.
Also in momentary plateaus of smaller
achievements, relative perfections, stages of
advancement. Yet these highs feed the whole
cycle which also produces lows. How to tap into
the process yet retain an equanimity of
nonattachment? The question, to bring it full
circle, I discussed to no conclusion with David,
who had brought me the Roth tape. There is a
lesson here symbolized by that tape, I guess,
which I botched trying to hurry while finishing
manuscript corrections to get to volleyball.
Now, this apprehension of unity, this aesthetic
sensibility put into some kind of recognizable
form, as here, represents a kind of perfection or
completeness.
Enjoy the highs as available; learn past the
lows. Use the lows as object lessons to advance
both to greater achievement potentials, and to a
distancing sense of equanimity. This is what life is
all about, so go for it, get into it: the groove. There
is the beat to get back on, the group pulse, merger
with the greater whole. Individual perfections are
meaningless out of this context anyway.
Here is a resolution of the two models. To
enhance the expression of the common
experience. To trade and share opportunities to
shine the light we share. Even in the “individual”
art of writing: to express the common truth. Not
to “show off” for the sake of individual
aggrandizement, but for expression of natural
exuberance as it spontaneously manifests through
the individual. Thus it’s not so much the extent or
type of expression per se which is at issue, but the
intent, motivation, tone-coloring, underlying
theme or rhythm which is crucial.
June 28, 1993
In Friday’s softball tournament I go 3 for 4 at
bat, and we win 15–12. The Friday night jam is
great fun, at the time. Saturday’s tape tells a
different tale; and I’m wasted from the 10:30 p.m.
coffee and 3:30 a.m. wine and little sleep for
today’s game. At bat I go 0 for 3, leaving five
stranded, in a 14–12 loss.
undated, 1993
Am I only a lowlife at heart, son of a
horseplayer, devotee of baseball, local jammer at
the hall with the boys of a Friday night? Now
Henry, Jack, I hear you callin. Walt, Percy, Edgar
in the wings, warming up. Tipping the bottle,
Patrick and Trevor, shufflin cards. Hold on, I’m
comin.
I know everything, I know nothing: the song
of the mystic. I know I’m capable of everything,
up to a point: the same point or level in
everything I do. What I don’t do, I probably
could, up to the same level. Know thyself: and
what do I know, but myself?
Style, personality is all. Form is all: because it
is secondary, an individually distinguishing
substance clothing the spirit that is common to
everyone. “Humanity is ONE SPIRIT,” the paper
at my window proclaims. So useless to bother
with in detail, except as we might be reminded to
honor that truth, when we forget and start
carping or harping at our ego’s behest. So let’s
enjoy the positive differentiation of our separate
little selves, and make the jam together by which
to join multiplicity back into unity. That is the
mystical search, as in lovemaking, and other
forms of aesthetic and spiritual communion, or
physical through accident or orchestrated form,
as in sports or random encounters touched by
spirituality.
I know myself and what I want to say and like
to talk about and what I am capable of creating
and sustaining and where I want to put energy:
so on these paths I will walk and continue to
explore, not trying to out-Emerson Emerson or
out-anyone-else anyone else, but to honor these
influences and sharings of spirit-cum-personality
coloring and be unafraid to express the fullness of
my own particular spectrum; being also unafraid
to use forms of expression I receive from others.
I don’t know what life has in store for me. I
don’t know how I will perform in health, or arts,
or relationship; or how I will sleep tonight. I don’t
know, I don’t know. It feels good in some ways to
say that; like Sarah, last night, saying of the
philosophers, let them fight it out, I’ll wait till I’m
eighty-five and ready to die and see what I know
then. In the meantime, why bother?
I am with the utmost reverence (to the strains
of Barking Pumpkins in my ears, thanks Frank)
contemplating the sacredness of the moment in
motion, the eaves of splendorous time mounting
to eternity...
Oh come now; nothing is that reverential. I am
here in morning time reliving in a thought the
hours of tossing and turning last night before
sleep, the realm of lying in state, the brain at rest
and yet in movement while the body’s normal
activity state is suspended... I am nevertheless at
your disposal. This sickness of aimlessness can be
turned around to march in the right direction, if
one be so disposed. The difference between
genius and lassitude: harnessed energy?
Submission to the unconscious currents of whim?
All language fails. Each sentence leads to another
and might, at some more propitious time, be
sanctified or scythed or both at once. What does it
matter, in the face of the Upanishads, the Vedas
and the Tao Te Ching? Very little; yet here I am to
say my obeisance. To renew the pact. To illustrate
with a picture from my dream: an old dodge, a
‘49 truck body cut and placed on a newer frame
from a Plymouth car. Brain rot today is rather
abstemious; so let it go, until another day. I am
sorry. Come again, please. Now I am going to
wash my nails; sweep the porch; air the curtains. I
am on my way to buy lunch at the delicatessen. I
step on a dead cat inadvertently, I assure you. Hi,
Samuel. Wake up, out of that can, now, will you?
Join your voice to mine. I’m on my way to
Frankie’s, later on. Come over for a jam, hey?
September 1993
Wondering how I did at the jam, if I turned
people off with tuneless singing or self-conscious
drumming; yearning for positive self-image,
praise and strokes, good dancing, basking in
public appreciation and fellow feedback... as if the
music groove itself was not good enough!
September 16, 1993
Nashira’s birthday today. I awake at six, get up
at six-thirty, make coffee and walk down the
driveway, slowly. Halfway, a squirrel skitters up a
tree, halts as I pass. But I stop. It scolds me as I
look pointedly at it. I scold back, jamming. The
scolding proceeds, back and forth, each varying
tempo a bit on impulse, call and response. The air
is thick with dying leaves, damp earth, end of
baseball season. Clouds hang thick around the
ridges and peaks. The fence stands nearly
complete, apples near ready for the plucking.
Cucumbers hang beside me in their vines of tan
leaves, waiting.
September 19, 1993
The Death of the Friday Night Jam
Nigel is there, plus Scott, Walkin, Dick,
Richard. How you doin, I say to him. Good, he
says. And you. Good, I say. Well, that’s settled, he
says. The others go out for a smoke. I play on
Richard’s conga with Scott on bongos, rockin till
the others come in and sit to wait and see what
happens. A slow, slow Walkin song; a token
instrumental bop jam; then “Bad Moon Rising,”
and I help Scott roll in the piano; but halfway
through “Me and Bobby McGee” and I’m gone,
for good.
Peter arrived as I drove away; and Lars, I
heard, later for a couple of hours of boredom.
Saturday up in glorious fall color and sky to
Meadow Mountain lake for fishing with Nashira
and Nyle and Sarah, corn and fish feast with Lars
for supper and hatched plans for a band, our kind
of music, by invitation: Julie, Scott, Dick on
keyboards, Richard.
September 24, 1993
The jam is dead. (Long live the new band.)
I become bored with conventionality. I must
be original in style; otherwise, I might as well
play rhythms for Elvis Starbuck. Isn’t that better
than nothing? No. I’ll go my own way, find
creative alternatives within myself and with help
of others. The important thing is to trust the
positive nature of the creative impulse. A way
that rings true to everything that is central for me.
Nothing forced except the discipline of doing it.
Taking it dead serious and also with a grain of
salt. For this the timeless of night, of winter, is
especially conducive.
October 25, 1993
I went to the jam Friday night, late, thinking
they might have needed me, or that I might be
missing something hot, though I didn’t really feel
great, or gung ho about playing. They were in a
pretty good groove all right, a pretty tight circle.
Jay and Ellen dancing, Scott on the piano and
djembe, Michael and Peter working out, Lars and
Richard and Walkin... but it seemed like a closed
circle. I made some tentative efforts, got into a
slow blues groove at one point that killed the
dancing, a nice reggae number led by Scott
singing, and a good rocker and a Michael
standard. But then Michael switched to bass. The
drummers couldn’t get off the ground. Julie
arrived. I couldn’t get out of myself, into the
music. Peter packed up and left. Michael
followed. I tried a couple little beats on the conga
and gave up, myself.
The moral of the story, if you don’t give it your
all, don’t bother. One person holding back energy
can drag down the whole group (just as,
conversely the previous week, I felt primed and
ready and the whole thing took off, Michael
agreed, best ever).
At volleyball Sunday, I thought I did feel
ready. During the game I mused about how it
didn’t matter anyway, maybe, because it’s
competitive, not cooperative, it’s everyone for
himself. Then my energy faltered and I got
discouraged, along with everyone else on my
team, about the poor play of a new player, Cory, a
dumpy woman who couldn’t do much of
anything, and that discouragement rubbed off on
the other team as well, so that the whole thing
pretty much ended up a bust.
And so I’m supposed to let the sweetheart
sing, but she only sings the blues.
November 7, 1993
A day of mourning the death of the jam
(again). Why?
Walkin sings, prophetically, give it everything
you got, give it your best shot, and still I hold
back, withdraw as Lars says, waiting for another
outlet to focus my energies.
It’s no big problem, only my problem if I make
it one. No remedy but to remedy it, to go on into
the great and small time and space and... no, not
fuller, but even emptier of personal
accomplishment and aggrandizement and
identity. L’homme sans qualites, my tag. All
things and no thing. All roles and no role. All
skills and no skill. That is my path. One I tread
like the line between the light and darkness. The
line between genius and madness, elation and
depression, immersion and detachment,
absorption and boredom. It’s a trick of the mental
and emotional and spiritual body, to float free yet
attached to the body of this world.
The work whether social or aesthetic is carried
forward in subterranean motion, the spirits
nudged forward on their path of destiny in this
costume, this time around. I go forward to new
light, riding the winds of motion. New gladness,
shedding old skins of lives lived to their various
ends of incompletion. Ready for the new
incarnation as of the moment. This philosophy
my byword, my guiding light.
November 9, 1993
I am afraid that I cannot live up to others’ or
my own expectations. That I am not competent
enough, and therefore not worthy, not
worthwhile. Alone, I have only my own
expectations to meet. Given enough time I can
work up to it. With others, the passage of my time
is marked, I am accountable for my
accomplishments, I check in and compare myself,
and I come up short. Maybe I project onto others
my own high standards of expectation, and feel
inadequate, judged poorly. With such an attitude
I’m bound to fail: jam evidence.
So what can I change?
I can realize that others don’t actually have
such high expectations or harsh judgment of me.
That on the contrary, others are pleased by what I
can do and think well of me. Or, even it they do
have high hopes for me, I have the ability to live
up to high standards of achievement; that my
talents are, if not grandiosely excellent, at least
competent and adequate and worthy. I should
just do the best that I can and not worry about the
rest. Sure, objectivity and self-evaluation are
useful, along with receptivity to feedback from
others. I should take it all objectively and without
paranoia or ego attachment.
I take heart from the image of strength within,
gentleness and adaptability without: “this is the
way of achievement.” It characterizes my life, and
my “Quaker” image to others. With this kind of
self-concept in mind, I can refine my interactions
with others: not being all yielding and gentle, nor
being rigid and brittle; but soft on the outside,
firm on the inside. A good model for jamming: the
strong central pulse; interesting variations with it.
And for my basic life activities: to have a strong
core of purpose, but being able to work with it in
my fullness of life in a flexible way.
November 11, 1993
Lars phoned and told me about the jam at
Richard’s 50th—which I had chosen to skip— and
it all came crashing back again. “The best music
ever with that group,” is how he put it. I told Lars
I couldn’t jam anymore for a while, at least,
because it just wasn’t working for me. All this just
as music is taking off in several directions: but is
it? And is it coincidence that it is now I need to
withdraw? How much of this is a pattern for me
of withdrawing from group involvement, and
how much of that is justified as truly inadequate
for me, as contrasted with ones where I just don’t
cut it or am afraid I don’t. It’s only the latter
category that I want to weed out.
It’s important to have the perspective of
“Good Times and Bad Times.” Most of the times
we had were good. My expectations were for
perfection of understanding and thus were shot
down. This is useful knowledge. I can be glad of
the negative influences as they drive me each time
to look for perfection in creative ways only I can
accomplish: yet not at the eventual and total
exclusion of all social activity because, like
politics, it is “imperfect.” So are we all, even in
our individual artistic productions. Sociability
teaches well-rounded tolerance and likewise self-
forgiveness.
One thing I wonder about is my contribution
to team chemistry. Am I a winner, a loser, a
motivator, a leader? Sports results, like jam
results, are mixed. I’m somewhere in the middle,
as I am with my social skills in general. Maybe
that’s a source of frustration. That is, in some
areas (academic, athletic, aesthetic) I’m at least
above average. But in the social realm perhaps
only midrange or lower (with a broad range,
anyway). So I have a self-concept or image based
on one set of criteria that breaks down or is
undercut in the use of other criteria. Hence my
attraction to my working class jobs in California:
real people, basic social skills. A levelling process
of the other inflated criteria. (“Everybody has a
heart; let’s play sandbox,” sings Youssou n Dour).
At least I can realize from this discussion that I’m
not in the great scheme of things, inept: but just
competent, and a bit deflated as a result from my
own grandiosity. This is ultimately healthy, the
grace of Lars’ phone call a reality check on my
isolated mountain-climbing. Just do it, forget the
elevator shoes.
One thing comes in clear: it’s not enough
simply to feel competence or self-confidence with
my own worthiness in the cosmos, or in my
partner’s eyes. I also seem to a need a nurturing
social context in which I feel worthy in my
participation. What I have to offer has to work
beyond the level of self-confidence to affirmation
and positive feedback from the group. I realize in
looking at group members in detail that I’m
intimidated or suffer from inferiority feelings,
pecking order stuff, from certain people, just as a
matter of personality. It’s not all a matter of talent.
More a matter of personal style, personality,
coolness. X is a loner but still projects an arrogant,
critical air. Y is pretty mellow but hairtrigger
sensitive. Z too seems moody: so (like me!) I get
the feeling I can’t take risks.
I realize that music (like sports) has been a
prop for me these last few years, like social
drinking or smoking; but really it’s just another
form of social communication both directly and in
the broader context of the musical setting. I’m
really no better off that way than verbally. Still I
long for the grail of the music magic, group
process glorified and lifted (at its best) to the
status of art.
Musicians can be, like writers, good at their
art while inept at ordinary social interchange. In
this I need to recognize mutual tolerance and
support, along with the real element of social
interaction on the level of scene context. And in
the pursuit of good music, it will help to pay
some homage to the pedestrian pieces as well as
to the virtuoso jazz and funk masterpieces of
inspiration and individual and collective
spontaneous fluid genius in the group mind
passing before us. I need to regain the perspective
of spiritual event and homage; also of sport; of
conversation; of worship, work and play. If I am
rededicated and choose this tribe in full
nakedness of initiated humility and pride of
group spirit, it may yet work out.
Yet I can be circumspect, mindful of personal
needs and directions, and of fateful changes as
they come, and of balance in my other life needs,
and maybe just come every other week; or stop
smoking, depending on what works; or forget the
jam and go play at Henk’s; or just drum solo... it’s
still a fluid work in progress.
November 14, 1993
B. B. King is totally himself, in fullest
expression. That’s the genius. We see all of him,
nothing held back. Like Jimi Hendrix. It’s the
courage that gets us, that awes us, to see what’s
possible when a man of genius (and great talent
could be the word, too) lets it all show, gives the
great gift of all of himself.
Put everything into it. Risk everything. Trust
the process, the product. Let it happen. Do it. Do
it. Do it.
December 7, 1993
Jam to Santana Milagro with the high energy
and the snow falling down random scattered
actually quite gentle flakes and Nashira says how
can you type so fast, I say by practice and she
says no, I mean how can you think of what to
write so fast, and I say the faster you type, the
faster you have to think to keep up with it, see the
mind is jamming with the fingers are jamming
with the music, this a new art form perhaps, it’s
kind of like music but there’s no audience to hear
both, though there could be, it could be totally
orchestrated and recorded to keep the sequence,
cues for keeping on the beat, lyrics even for the
instrumental solos and long jams, I’m just the
amanuensis of the bardo world, of the chthonic
gods speaking, I’ll stay up here and watch the
farm from the depths, in case of any eventuality
like the breaking loose of the geldings from their
corral of otherwise pedantic horseflesh, insidious
in their inertial dependence on the japes of
stableboys and the servants of Kali who wake
only occasionally from their lethargic stupor to
feed the poor creatures, who then become manic
in their greed, mob the poor boy and send him
back to the nabobs in the manor crying: “Natty
needs an orthopedic specialist, he’s limping.” As
if this weren’t enough for the already swamped
overseer of duties pastoral, the querulous clerk of
affairs proceeds to reprimand our heroic
rapscallion of a dutiful Sistine artist of horsedung,
quoting the Talmud and throwing caution to the
proverbial and ubiquitous winds, invokes the
vernal wombat spirits to come and chastise our
xenophobic countrymen in the guise of one soul,
stableboy named Hart. His yellow eyes dim; he
closes the lids halfway and intones the mantra
he’s learned in his dreams from the thousand-
year-old Zen master . . .
1994
August 13, 1994
Another pitfall: bringing unfilled expectations
and ambitions from other musical or nonmusical
venues to the Friday night experience,
inappropriately. It’s a cosmic learning crucible,
teaching necessary unattachment to specific goals
even musical. Certainly improvements can be
worked for, or realized by simple advice: Listen to
each other.
It’s a process of letting go of ego, image, value
judgment, permanence, well-defined goals. It’s
also a place where you find out who your friends
are. To experience intimacy and separation, and
the resulting emotions. To let go, and to welcome
in: people as well as musical inspirations. In the
end, those who continue to work and play well
together, to stick with and support each other, to
have patience for extending give and take, stay
longer. Peter left early: then Nigel; but Julie, Lars,
Hans, Dick and Walkin stayed with it, with me,
and in the end it was just Walkin and me.
“It’s not a matter of bad or good,” Walkin said.
“It’s all good.”
“But what do you do with feelings that it’s not
good, especially when they come from other
people? How can you still feel that it’s all good?”
He pondered this awhile. “Why not?” he
finally said.
We ended up on the road outside talking
about trucks, tires. The jam, I’d expressed to him
in the basement, is like another woman. It’s easy
to get tempted into sexual fantasies with an
attractive woman, even when you know you have
a stable relationship with someone and you’re not
going to pursue anything else. Like bringing to
the jam these fantasies that it’s going to go
somewhere—like where?—to performance,
recording, stardom, riches... the perfect
relationship just over the horizon? Get real.
As for putting myself, my emotions, out to
these people, my quasi-friends, it’s a little scary
and also presumptuous of me, but what the hell,
it’s a little more genuine in the way of friendship
than these alien beings showing up for a silent
weird starship trip each Friday night, and going
back away into the night none the wiser but for
the music. On the other hand, there’s some value
in that approach, too, as compared to
overanalysis and heart-on-sleeve antics.
August 17, 1994
. . . and yet tonight I’ll dream again, of Laura
or another, and another, and another... and none
of them will be satisfied with me in the end,
because I’ll be driven to go on; changing the
rhythm to yet another variation; leaving the
structure to others and refusing to take my own
responsibility for holding it up for the sake of the
common music made possible only by this
consensus.
August 22, 1994
When playing “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star,”
not to alter the fundamental rhythmic structure;
or, to vary but then to return; or to transform the
one song totally, but not to do it to on every song
played. A lesson, as music usually is, for the
structural, behavioral patterns of one’s life.
Control and freedom each allowing the other,
for overall balance.
Total control being repetitious and boring.
Total freedom being chaotic, uncommunicative.
Freedom in the context of a controlled structure,
offering interest, variety, a spirit of play and
creative energy, yet responsible and responsive to
the integrity of the whole piece and whole
ensemble. Control or repeating elements in a
mostly free piece, offering purchase, familiarity, a
place to engage the listeners’ attention.
Another jam metaphor: making love, how it’s
different every time. Lots of other parallels, too:
listening, with touch. Taking turns. Riding waves
of inspiration together. Joining spirits together as
one. The core of creation, ongoing.
September 27, 1994
Fall Faire full of drumming: Thursday night,
introducing the big drum, and having good
drumming around the circle with William,
Richard, Julie, Jane, Louisa. Friday a performance
to a very sparse crowd and no dancers except
Ellen and Pippa; a dress rehearsal of sorts. The
end of Lamba fell apart, the other pieces were
okay but a little rough. The set with Jane and
Megan for Ellen’s dancers went wonderfully,
though only a third or fourth dancer emerged
from the tipi womb to daylight.
Friday night, the Night of the Living Jam:
multigroupings passing through from neohip
hempsters on drums, to William’s symphonic
sound system, to the Michael and Peter show, to
Jesse and Ryel and Aaron, to the hard core jazz
beat drummers at the end; Mara energizing the
whole affair with shakers and rattles and smiles
and tales of operating a Montreal cafe featuring
Bob Dylan and others in the late sixties.
Saturday Julie and I again suffered from
performance fever. Lamba this time had a rough
beginning; I settled into a good groove by the
end, but then stumbled to the break when Lars
leaned over to me and said, “Six minutes.”
Alpha’s rhythm also was rough, breaking apart in
part B when I fell off my attempts at the fourth
variation. The tempo was just too fast and I
couldn’t catch onto it. We started in again and
again I tried it unsuccessfully, but the group
maintained and I found an easier part instead.
Aconcon and Triple Overtime were fine for me
but now Julie took the turn of losing her way.
Finally, Koukou worked, with Michel standing in
to solo; we did it quite fast and it worked well.
But Michel complained there wasn’t really space
for the solo, so we did Aconcon again for him to
join. Again, however, Lars blew a whistle for a
break to higher speed, and I took it for an end
signal and broke it off—too bad. After a bit of a
break we got into an impromptu Fanga with
Richard and Jonathan, and Michel on the big
drum, and Dee shaking and starting to sing. That
was hot, with Michel throwing in breaks to go
again. I managed the sequence of Fanga parts
pretty well back and forth, sitting on the ground
with another guy’s ashiko.
Square dance time rolled around and as usual,
I found myself out by the fire stoned with the
ranks of youth along the firelit benches, playing a
low lone drum to accompany William hunkered
over a snarly good rhythm guitar groove, new
cowboy style. Later he manned the Indian yells at
the big bass drum, while I inserted Afro-offbeat
bass notes at the other side of the fire. There were
some real fine dance grooves along the way, with
the transient youth rank and file sometimes
bouncing and sometimes wandering off into the
darkness, sometimes passing glowing joints
(William complaining, “Someone’s getting high;
everyone’s gettin high but the band”). Louisa
noted we were all playing on one side, and
should form a circle. A few of us moved over—
Michel, me, and a third guy playing my drum. At
one point, after the Indian chants, I noticed he
was gone. Looked around for my drum and it,
too, was gone. Asked Michel and he said the guy
had just kind of backed away, still playing... . and
gone off into the night.
I looked all around the circle a couple more
times and then was convinced the thief was gone
for good. Went around the far perimeter of the
circle, out to the road, heard Jean say a couple of
vehicles had already passed her going out, and
basically gave up, other than considering calling
the RCMP. Figured, while wandering the empty
field, that my abortive music career had been
fated to end quickly. But then Julie showed up
saying, “I think I’ve found your drum.” It had
appeared again on the opposite side of the circle,
beside a yellow plastic chair.
* * *
While selling tickets for supper, I quipped to
Julie, “So when are we gonna get some therapy
together?”
“Huh? Oh, well, I just had a good talk with
Dee and she gave me all kinds of good advice
about what to do about nervousness up there. To
begin with when you’re nervous it’s because you
think everyone’s looking at you and the first thing
to realize is they’re not. It’s just a big ego trip.
Plus, when you’re feeling like that, all the energy
is coming in toward you. You’re making it happen
that way. The thing to do is turn it around and
send the energy out. To be giving energy to
what’s happening.”
Like Olatunji says, Service.
Other insights I had afterward: feeling yucky
about seeing myself perform poorly, as through
other’s eyes I realized that was just a projection,
an imaginary one. People could also have
experienced the opposite, as some actually said.
But even more importantly, as Walkin says,
there’s no need for a good/bad judgment (about
music, or about personal evaluation); it’s just
what is. Self-acceptance. Yes, there is a place for
objective evaluation, learning from past to future.
But objective is the key word: not feeling yucky;
or rather, making use of a transitory yucky feeling
for evaluative purposes but then moving on, not
taking it on as a stuck personal judgment of
unworthiness.
* * *
So, what are some things I learned from the
weekend’s music?
I was more comfortable with some rhythm
parts than some lead parts (Koukou, Aconcon,
Alpha, vs. Lamba, Alpha variations.)
I was comfortable with my own lead part on
Triple O.
The solo drum part for Ellen’s dancers, or
Fanga with Michel and Dee, worked fine because
I felt less in spotlight of public scrutiny at the
time; none of that artificial, hyperconscious
pressure not to screw up. Of course the irony is
that the greater the pressure, the greater the
chances of screwup.
The whole group was, Michel thought,
“tentative” in our playing, until we really got
underway in a groove.
It takes a high degree of social tact to feel the
place for monotony or variation around, say, the
drum circle fire. Also the most exciting
possibilities of all for high-energy event, fed by
the spontaneous uniqueness of the moment.
Higher energy yet would have been appropriate,
as with the building energy of Lamba; the
performance encore with Michel and Aconcon,
when Lars blew the whistle and I stopped,
instead of gearing it up higher; or with the Fanga
jam after Dee telling Michel she wanted to do a
singing call and response.
Working on tightness is good but not with the
price of perfection anxiety. Though the temptation
is that it can pay off—the all-or-nothing gamble.
The possibility is that performance anxiety can be
overcome psychologically or by building
experience, and not just the easy way of avoiding
it by external changes of form or format (such as
by not performing). Another tip would have been
to practice in that spot. Or to imagine the so-
called crowd as just friends and relatives (which
they were), or the music as background, as Ellen
appreciated it. Or tapping into the “cool green
place inside” (Body and Soul); or the woods
behind my house. Or, Julie’s other solution, the
golden vertical thread of centering energy...
November 24, 1994
No Present
There is no present.
All is past and future, the one becoming the
other.
Consciousness is a vector of acceptance.
To Be > To Become
And not to freeze there in the new become,
but to keep on becoming.
It’s the jam theory of reality and of awareness
and of being.
The present is a useful illusion of presence in
time: of self-solidity in space.
Just as concreteness, in words or sense
perception, is a useful illusion by which to
maintain the entertainment of the body.
I see the concreteness of what has been, by
which to jump forward; or, by which to define
what is coming.
This can be a curse, or a useful foundation: it
is up to the judging free will to decide that, not to
let the pattern drag down. But to use it to build
on: deer trail blazed by droppings.
As in any religion, this focus is the same as a
one-god. A point of consciousness. Most posit the
present, the all-present. They gather the past and
the future into the now. That is a useful illusion. I
would rather empty the present of the past and
future, of self and world, of any meaning or time
at all.
Why?
Because to dwell in the present is to be stuck.
To be more than vegetable is to move. That is our
animal nature, to move in space. To be human is
to move in time. Following thought, forward, to
new awareness. By building up awarenesses as
they come: perceptions, idea links, flashes of light:
building up, or sensing and letting fly by. There is
no letting: they fly by.
To be human is to move in time. Is this mantra
stuck? It’s part of a spiral. Human time is spiral,
cyclical and ongoing. We are not part of the
animal zoo, the caged pacing, if we choose not to
be. If we choose to become other, if I (and I do)
choose to let newness of experience enter freely at
all times. Not to build my own cage of thought or
even religion, even this one: this, too, will be
temporary, a season of ideas.
Let us move on.
There is no letting;
we move.
There is no we;
it moves.
There is no it,
only moving.
There is nothing to move,
only movement.
There is no time,
only timing.
No presence,
only continuity, change, growth, spiraling life
energy cascading into new space with new forms,
new exchanges and interaction.
Words are only words. Yet they are useful, to
move the mind forward. Not in themselves, but
little thought vehicles, individual and linked like
express trains on errands of consciousness,
buzzing in a hive of understanding.
Why is this valuable?
Because otherwise it is easy to become mired
in the dripping honey, the cells of wax.
December 16, 1994
Jammin Shammin Dance
The hall is abuzz with the throngs of the youth
come to see the big band from faraway Spokane,
yet the band is cool with cigarettes on the outside
deck, drums at the ready, cookies proffered by
our furry host. The scene is alive, and we eat, and
we dance, and the beat travels through the spine,
surrounds us and spins us on and on . . .
Plain and white the ceiling, unadorned the
paneled walls. A simple, unfinished plywood
floor. Shapeless, really, made for basketball. Nice
cedar doors in front, which Phyllis the local
watercolor artist found in the nick of time from
the second-hand store. Lighting by Ray of Flash
Landing fame, yet nothing special for this night.
Simple white, though they did bring a strobe for
the special effects.
On this occasion, a particularly desirable mix
of funky beat and ready folks, primed to start
dancing and not stop until the music was over. A
song written even for us: “for the Kootenay
ancestors.” The hall took no notice. It held us,
provided shelter. We shook the rafters, the joists
and windows. The sound meter went off the
scale, so they turned it down a little. It’s not so
much what is seen, a whirl of color and motion.
It’s the music, what goes on inside.
They shook us, they drove us to dancing
distraction. We hopped and bopped, with the
African drums beating up a bitchin jamaican heat.
We drove into it, into the blessed night. The walls
of the hall shook right out, the roof and floor
bounced, full of blessed bodies shaking.
We bought it all, got down good and funky.
It’s the drums, y’see, the African drums, they got
that reggae beat all beat, pumped with sound so
you’re up and down and all around, jitterbugging
no matter what, or a slow walk from the juice bar.
Dancing, slithering to the imperturbable beat,
jammin with the shaman.
Sherry especially, with her tan collection of
African tomtoms, giving an irresistible icing to
the cakewalk underpinning provided by the
organist, the regular drum set, the bass and her
new hubby, the lead guitar. At the break they sat
together so chummy smoking on the front deck,
digesting the wicked cookie laid on them as well
as on a half dozen others of us lucky fools.
We had the dance to beat all dances, here at
our own little hall.
1995
February 4, 1995
Last night, best jam high ever: a new plateau.
Blossoming on drum while Nigel does likewise
with voice, and the group with organic sound:
“Singing Trees.” Jacob, Scott, Peter, Lars, Walkin,
Richard, Dick, Nigel; and Jan watching, dancing.
A high-energy tight group effort totally with it on
every note, “My Generation.”
This a heartfelt song for us old men. It began
in an interesting way. Peter had suggested the
drummers lead one, so we tried a samba-based
jam, which kind of moved around all loose and
unformed. I said at the end of it, “Give us another
chance; we’ll do a tight samba rhythm and keep it
together this time.” Meanwhile Walkin had
started “My Generation” on the other side, the
first few notes. I cleared with him to do our
samba first, or possibly we could work it out with
his vocals and chords.
So I set the beat with the d g d g D - D g - g d g
D - D - pattern and kept it going pretty
consistently with appropriate variations during
the song, and some solo embellishments here and
there that threatened to chop up on me but I rode
the energy wave through them and held the pulse
down steady while Nigel wailed and all joined in
hot and fast and earnest and bold.
* * *
This morning on awakening Sarah said,
“You’re glowing,” as I looked at her and out the
window, with the fresh sunny air and the blue
sky and the awakening trees with the energy of
the peak experience and the samba in my blood
still racing smooth and cool, and then I got up
and made coffee and put on the Who with their
original version and made pancakes with
strawberry jam and peaches and maple syrup,
and heated water for a shower.
Last night I walked down the long trail
through the starry woods stopping frequently for
gazes upward and outward in the dark thinking
about Lao Tse, Buddha and Christ: the poet, the
philosopher and yesman, whatever that means.
And the trees whispered to me, singing, “We are
the long drums.”
February 5, 1995
Day of the Long Drum
Much personal stuff arising around
responsibility as a participant for peak experience
of the group—a difficult challenge, when also
holding the intention of growing as individuals,
stretching personal limits of creative expression.
I felt some of the tensions as ego issues
involving the hot young drummers, the blond
guy with dreadlocks, and the darker guy with a
scarf. When they stopped playing, was it my
fault, their frustration; or just tired hands, or
running out of ideas, or dancers stopping . . .
Louisa remarked, “Sometimes it works and
sometimes it doesn’t.”
Not content with group grooves, droning
steady trance beat, I need to add personal
expression, to push it away from commonality.
And encourage others to do likewise, of course;
but there’s the challenge of progressive music,
jazz or polyrhythms, to honor the central pulse; to
play it or around it so others can still feel it and
tap in.
On the positive side, some really great positive
times drumming, singing. And even dancing I
could feel the controlling power of personal
creative expression to affect the group chi.
Nashira and Bronwyn danced, Rowin a lot, Pippa
and Ellen, Gary and Corol, Rachel and Carol,
others. A hot scene at times.
Someone jammed a whiskbroom in the heater
vent, destroying the thermostat probably.
Back to positives. Real fast riffs, soloing off
each other, good fast group grooves where it goes
beyond the rails of thought to open to
spontaneous spirit. To feel good about progress,
for instance, from last year. The risk of drugs to
push or transcend normal limits: scary,
uncomfortable, and yielding unexpected results.
A mixed blessing, needing care and respect and
control.
Julie evaluating, same as always, mixed: “too
much racing energy of the herd.” Her creativity
released in space, vs. mine in speed. Hers in
playing with space, mine with color of tonal
emphasis over a background of sound.
Evaluating my own contribution, I wonder,
did it enhance or hinder the group experience?
Some of both. As we all are subject to,
conscious or not, by contributing more or less, by
supporting or distracting or dragging down, or
whatever our personal form of attention-getting
might be: sabotage, anger, meekness, conformity,
display, chaos; or order, beauty, sadness,
excitement; every emotional quality available to
the music.
“Forget your sadness, and dance.”
Yet even the dance can control.
When in that space of superconsciousness of
personal power, to use it wisely yet somehow un-
self-consciously, releasing control to creative
spirit. To flow with it not willfully, but with
intentional opening. A tricky balance, aweful to
behold.
I put myself on the line to go further, to take
us to new places. And, with balance, to step back
for others to take a turn too; lots of that. I can
keep it steady, innocuous yet live—but when
really live, it has to be more. We have to be more
than group robots—a group of fully realized
individuals. The “My Generation” song of Friday
night was in that category, group completion
through heights of collective/personal expression.
Really, the issue is to get out of the way and let
real creativity take over... like political leaders, in
Caldicott’s phrase (or was it her quote of
Eisenhower?). It takes being sensitive, committed
to the group, still willing to take responsible risks,
soloing with the pulse, and playing what you
started with or what the others are keeping up.
In a moment of honesty, I realize an
unconscious motivation for the repeated failings.
Maybe I can’t accept my self-image as competent,
good, well-liked, proficient, inspiring, and so feel
compelled to sabotage my own performance with
failures. Then I can retreat into my childish role as
a nobody, loathed and scorned and left out. The
question of marijuana is secondary: it only
amplifies and reveals the real underlying
problem.
Do I lapse into father failure that way?
Or see it as the one escape from my sober
mother?
Hugh Elliott from the neighboring house
didn’t sleep, appeared at the door when it was
over and remarked: “The real Africans from the
jungle would have been horrified to hear what
was passing for rhythm.”
* * *
Changes, this year:
To have pushed the limits, and beyond, of
personal capabilities, conventional boundaries of
music, rhythm, form, sleep and group
functioning.
To be awake to needs for better
communication, listening, sharing of leadership,
giving of ego talents and accepting gifts from
others.
To be aware of needs for greater personal
closeness and heart connection.
To realize that shortcomings have value in
pointing the way to further growth.
To appreciate, despite shortcomings, the
growth of potential, talent, energy, and
participation, relative to past years.
To have realized a plateau jump in the event in
dancing, community members present, voicing,
instrumentation (percussion, digeridoo, flutes
and clarinet), outside participation, youth
participation (local and outside), laid-back
organization, range of emotional charge, technical
virtuosity, range of musical styles.
Inspiration to carry forward the spirit of the
drums, the ongoing beat, these lessons and
growths and potentials, forward into every area
of my life and toward the next long drum, next
year, that much further ahead. To focus conscious
intent and opening, twins of creation.
February 7, 1995
I see: ranks of throbbing dancers, bouncing
forward in unison, to the beat we’re keeping:
Duncan, Axel, David and Jay, me on the shaker
for this last piece in six-eight time. My hands are
in trance to keep the subtle motion steady, the
chickle net ticking against the hard round gourd,
tapped up against my hand, down against my
leg, alternating on the up and down beat feel
because it’s a two motion in the three feel, going
Up down up Down up down Up down up Down
up down in a pattern of twelve: emphasizing
sometimes the one of every other bar of six. The
others are playing a steady three on conga, a beat
that began earlier with a different combination,
Duncan on shaker while I was playing drum with
a D d G d g D or steady three; then when Duncan
went to djembe I took the opportunity for my
turn on shaker.
Jay put up a counterpoint with a timbale-like
stickwork on my old Egyptian doumbek and his
djembe; others were steady and rolling with some
good solos on top from Duncan. The dancers kept
coming, ranks of six or three across, bouncing
forward, arms outstretched and down, pelvis
thrust forward, chests undulating. Toward the
drummers, supplicating, offering praises. All
heads steady, eyes open and blank into the trance
of the steady pulse. Bare feet on the shiny floor, a
wall of mirror behind me. Faint smell of floor wax
and honest sweat. Rigid with discipline, yet
breathing into a relaxed, repetitive drone on the
shaker, as I warmed to its insistent chackaka
chackaka chackaka chackaka... legs bent slightly
at the knees, leaning to my left to play on left
hand and leg with the shekere in my right hand,
across the drum still dangling, totemlike around
my waist, a silent beacon in the call to the dancers
hopping forward with their feet planted in
unison, heads nodding, mine going too,
sometimes sideways as if saying no, counter to
the rhythm and really saying yes, yes, keep
coming.
I see Jane, Giselle, Tamasine, Jennifer, and men
and women I don’t know. There’re no favorites
here, no weirdness before or after.
“You might have to dance, if it doesn’t work
with the drumming,” Tamasine had told me at
the start. “Since you haven’t been here. Maybe get
Duncan or Jay to show you something simple,
and let those guys do the overlaying.”
“Sure,” I said. “I think I’ll be able to play
something to fit in.”
But Duncan and Jay had no preconceived
notions of what to play; they let me wing it just as
they were doing, whatever sounded good as a
basic accompaniment to the movement of the
dance: something in four, or something in six.
Actually I was the one to point out that we
needed a six rhythm for a move Tamasine
demonstrated with the count, One Two Three
Four One Two Three Four, after we started with a
rhythm that didn’t work, in four. But I did make
an effort to stay steady and basic, and the
discipline was helpful in maintaining the
consistency of each piece, with occasional minor
variation, and others coming in and out around it.
Once the initial rhythm was demonstrated, I’d
pick it up and keep it, and the others would play
around more with it. The result was, by the end,
“a really hot session.”
February 18, 1995
I almost didn’t go, but after a little rest in bed
realized I wasn’t actually sleeping. I almost
flipped a coin but went with my intuitive decision
arrived at standing still a few moments in the
living room, while Sarah drew cartoons of “The
Circle and Square Dances” and “The Creation of
the World in Eight Stages.”
Anyway, I did go and it looked bad and I
almost left when by 9:30 there was still only Dick,
Scott, and Dan from Cooper Creek. The rest had
been invited to a party for Beam’s brother Franz
who was leaving the next day for Switzerland. I
never met him; he showed up later drunk talking
to Jan by the kitchen counter. Also later, a
digeridoo. Anyway, a classic jam with good
cohesive driving energy and balance.
Highlight was a good rhumba beat.
Nigel: voice, kazoo, tambourine.
Peter: lead guitar
Nowick: djembe, junjun, yew drum, congas
and percussion
Richard: congas, djembe and percussion
Jesse bass
Jacob: piano, flute, pennywhistle, bamboo sax
Scott: trumpet, electrified acoustic guitar
Walkin: harmonica, percussion, acoustic
guitar, voice
Dick: accordion
Jay, Susan, Betty’s cousin, Beam, Jan: dancers
February 23, 1995
Jay Lamb’s tips, via Jonathan:
A groove expands: but instead of letting it
dissipate, ride it back down to the simple core
again, and go to the other side of that, what
happens next.
How do you decide, then, as a group, when to
end it?
Telepathically.
This gets back to “the Real People” of the
Australian desert, and their mind-reading.
March 31, 1995
Jam Liner Notes
I know nothing and everything. It’s all up to
the movement, the flow of the moment, the jam to
determine, because in the steady-state universe
the big bang is everlasting, that original energy is
onward impelling, and the hands and brain cells
simply respond; and if I speak of nothing else but
the all and nothing, the that and the this with
nothing recognizable in between, there’s always
the TV, novels, philosophy, crazy art, metafiction
or meditation to fill in the rest. What’s the issue,
where’s the rub? Let us face facts. Not irrelevant
facts of my dreams or fancies removed from the
present moment, descriptions of the Buddha even
or of his admirers and minor spirit replicates, but
of the now and the now to come. The not-concrete
for a change, the not-showing, but the all-telling,
the cerebral reality of this moment, the abstract
network of thought that is more concrete in its
way than all the showy show that we call the rest
of the world—let’s take a break from all that and
contemplate the now, the moving now of the
mind in its moment, the meditation joined
together and articulated together and thus
shared. Let us speak of it not in reticence or
shame or negligent duty, but out of a wonder and
respect, for it carries us to ride with it in harmony,
with its music and to its tempo as it runs me, that
energy not that I make, but that makes me... not
far, but near. Every one of these elements in
concert, working and playing together as a
binding skein, a woven maypole ribbon-dance
coming around to the pole that stands in the
center.
About the Author
Nowick Gray continued his study and practice
of West African and Afro-Latin rhythms,
instruments and styles, becoming an
accomplished performer and teacher, while never
losing the love of improvised music in eclectic
combinations. He has produced three volumes of
instructional rhythm studies, Roots Jam, with
accompanying audio tracks, and a set of free
djembe lessons available on YouTube. He still
enjoys jamming whenever possible with the
improvisational band Strange Moon.
To connect further, go to:
http://djemberhythms.com
http://nowickgray.com
http://cougarwebworks.com/discography.htm
http://strangemoon.homestead.com