Drumming

"Dear Dave, Please to be describing drumming."

Thanks for the great question!

Playing the drums is a multi-staged experience, much like the launch of a rocket.
There's the initial physical part, the coordinating of limbs, rolling of joints, loosening of spine; it all quickly becomes a single effort. The thing that has excited me about drums is that it's almost as much a sport as it is an instrument. The style of playing matter a lot of course and so for me the more physical and intense the better.

Mentally the feeling of the sticks vibrating in my hands up into my head is soothing and meditative, after the first stage of boost the second stage has an almost centipede feeling where all the mental and physical parts don't really need to be thought about or calculated and a groove is struck. Finally the world disappears around me like a reverse Cheshire cat in the third stage, pummeling becomes pulsing, thought becomes feeling and the world stops completely around me. Completely at one with the physical, emotional and thoughtful parts of the universe there is nothing that can come close to the spiritual place this feeling sends me.

The only thing that's missing from this for me is: that connected, communal joy that I feel when The Groove is locked down down by the entire band - when the Whole becomes greater than the sum of its parts, when every instrument becomes a drum and it's all clicking like clockwork. I don't even know if most others experience that the way l do. But I know you do.
I love - and miss - that feeling.