Somewhere, out there, is a house. In that house are some stairs. Up those stairs is a door. Behind that door is a room. And in that room are some drums. Big, expensive, shiny and loud drums. They are my drums.
The drums are not new. The drums are not old. The drums are drums that have been broken in just right. They have the look and feel and presence of drums that have been around. They have a history.
They know me, these drums. They know what I am and what I want, and they know what I like. They know what I am trying to do when I play them. And they respond.
They know me, my drums. Sometimes we get along. Sometimes we don't. But they always let me know. They always let me try.
There are things in my life that only my drums know about. Secrets I have never been able to share. Words I have never been able to speak. Rhythms of fear and anger and passion and joy, of sorrow and suffering and love and loneliness, and only my drums can give voice to these things. Only my drums can cry.
And in this room at the top of these stairs, there is a wall made of glass. A wall made of sand and fire. A wall made of windows and pane. And outside these windows, is a view.
And this is my view is of many things. It is of an ocean that has risen. It is of a courtyard full of shame. It is of a canyon of concrete and steel and granite and sand where a hundred million stories move to the rhythms that are coming from my drums. And it is of a single white tree, standing anonymous and fast against the frustrated blade of a lover’s knife. Steel into sap. Initials into skin. Tempered steel, tempered hearts, tempered violence. Searching for a permanence. Looking for a faith. The view is of the fluid. It is of a movement of demand. It is a creation of the rhythms.
And sometimes this room is just a clean blank slate, a thought space that has no shape, a simple place to sit and play. Good stuff. Funk rhythms. James Brown. James Brown, again. Surf pop wired with tremblo. Early Ventures. Kitschy pop. Animals and Yardbirds and Hermits and Kinks. Little Latin Lupe De Lu, and then some soul, some K.C. jump and maybe a little blues. Bloodstreams full of cocaine. Joints that ache and creak. Charley Horses and shin cramps that stiffen to a 4/4 beat. Ice cold beer and coffee. Hot sulfur mixed with weed. Palmer, Toussaint, The Dead, Boz Scaggs, perhaps some Little Feat.
The view has turned sublime now. The view is what I'm sure, the eyes of a blind man would ask for, if given half the words. Half the words I've thrown away describing foolish things, like love and love and faith and trust, and trusting trusting girls.
The view is of the love that holds me. The one who never comes. The one whose eyes control.
My soul, whose touch I can't explain.
I've spent a lifetime in four short years, fighting off the pain. Fighting off the loneliness. Sleeping with my shame. Suppressing fear. Ingesting pride. Squeezing from my weary heart, a bleach of faith to stem the stain.
Consumed by the silence of love denied, swallowed in the swirl of dark thoughts, dark currents, dark worlds, my view is only upwards now, of the drums that drive my world.
These are good drums, I’ve set on fire here. Real drums, not junk, no toys. They know my limits. They know my style. They know what I contain. They know what I can do with wood, and skin and steel and tear. These are good drums, I’ve set on fire here. They always let me try.
And these drums are in a room now, in a house somewhere, at the top of a set of stairs.
Someday I will reclaim them.
Someday, again, I’ll play.
© 2014 Mark Rast
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