A Circle of Drums

Five days now since I got stood up by a woman I should've known better than to ask out on a date. Five days too, since I got word I didn't get that job I hardly wanted but so desperately need. Five days since a "friend" I don't know posted on facebook she was going to the drum circle in Coconut Grove.

I had had a few beers and wallowed in self pity, stuck with the incessant chatter of the voices inside my head which patiently explained, "these are the days" and "this is the way things have always been."

I see Nikki's post: as if to say, "You know, this is what I'm doing. Nothing much. Just the usual."

Nikki is a Fine Arts grad who runs and event; sometimes at her house; sometimes at an outer venue. "Words and Wine" is an open mike, spoken word event. She has a tattoo of her favorite poem, not by Wordsworth, or Cummings, but by a very dear friend, that takes up most of her back. She has a Chihuahua that is jittery and curious, and which she carries as her baby, nestled in her arms.

And she was going to the drum circle, because this what you do, when you're young and art matters.

When you're young and art matters, you seek out the forces that transfix and transform.

When you're young and art matters, they do.

I'd been meaning to go to "Words and Wine" for some time. But honestly, I can't even afford the bus fare, and I don't write poetry anymore.

I want to write scrips, but I'm stymied by the form. I want to tell stories, but I have nothing to say. I want to feel alive, but feel dead inside instead.

But this day, I needed to get out of the house. This day, I needed to step outside of myself, away from the voices inside my head.

And so I punched a few keys on Google and found... the address and the time... and ate a big plate of shit, as I rummaged the net, to all the familiar places, the ones and the zeroes I call home.

Then decided: "Fuck it." I need to get out. I got there 45 minutes late. By the time I left, it had started to rain. I showed up with a six pack, a book, and a journal (just in case) not knowing what to expect.

A full pack of cigarettes. A clean pair of jeans. A black corduroy jacket and a t-shirt underneath. An open mind and a prayer barely realized, I step off the bus, see Nikki and her date, introduce myself as I thank her for her post, and stood outside the circle, to see what is what.

A drum circle is the truest form of communal spirit and communication you can find. It is an expression of a vast consciousness searching out and speaking directly to you. It finds its expression in the rhythm you create or the dance you articulate, and tells you, you are not alone.

I stood outside the circle, listening to the rhythmic voice, watching the dancers fill the spaces in between.

Now there are parts of me that are closed: that are guarded and are jaded as disappointment has taken its tole. There are neurons that do not fire, and so no longer listen to the music of the spheres.

So here is what I noticed, so obvious it hardly need be said. The drums: where they came from, I do not know. But the drummers were nearly all men. And the dancers were nearly all children... and women: young, old, and in between.

There were hula hoops aplenty. There was grace, and what I can only describe as possession.

There was one middle aged woman, graceful, a dancer in leotard, trying something new: a way to express herself with a pair of hula hoops, refining an art she was creating for herself.

A few days prior, I had seen on Youtube a dancer with a multiplicity of hula hoops and a command of her instruments that defied logic or belief.

This was not that. But I understood what she was getting at, and it was the creation of something uniquely her own, born in that moment, finding supplication and release.

The men continued to drum as a younger woman entered the circle. She was tall, thin, with long hair that went down to her hips. Dressed in Indian garb, she shut her eyes and allowed herself to be possessed. She shimmied and she shook. She undulated and swayed. She was beautiful: a Goddess who served her subjects by filling them with desire and the energy to enjoin her to continue to do so.

I stepped from outside the circle and joined the ring of drummers within, determined to beat those drums and pray for release. She danced for two hours as I beat my hands raw, and then, mindful of the rain, and the long walk I would have to make underneath, I got up and left.

There were children. Beautiful children: completely unselfconscious, reminding me what has been lost and can be so easily regained.

The event did not transform me. I am no mystic warrior. I do not commune with those gnostic gods of pre-consciousness who act as guides through the unfamiliar terrain of self and inspiration, past the demons of doubt and that remorse, which is at times extreme.

But you could say I walked up to the gates of Heaven. I walked up and strained my neck to see just past that guarded rail. What I saw will have to do for now.

Like a thumb tack on a world map for the places you mean to go, the route is obvious. It's the getting there that is the trick.