I have had drum-related dreams in the months leading up to my epiphany, but they did not make any sense until after. The details of the dreams, the scene settings, and the languages spoken varied. But the core actions taken by myself and the surrounding cast remained the same. One such dream follows…
“Thanks for giving me a ride, Keri. You sure you’re not put out by waiting for me? I can whistle up a ride home, after all, I’m not alone here. And an hour is longer than you think.”
“I have a podcast to catch up on. You’re good.”
“Well, I don’t want you sitting in the car, come inside.”
I look past my friend to the nondescript building. I know what’s in it, and I am uncomfortable. “I dunno… it feels like trespassing, you know.”
“It’s not trespassing if you’re invited.”
“It’s a temple. It will always feel like trespassing to me.”
“You feel too much. And it’s not a temple. Just a place we have… stuff happen.”
“Cancer Moon. Guilty as fuck. And that sounds like a temple on the LD to me.”
We fall into silence as I get out the car and lean against it considering my options. My friend joins me to further cajole me into going inside. “It’s gonna be a hot day. And I don’t wanna come out to find you dead from heatstroke. Take your weepy ass inside, you filthy Gentile.”
They don’t wait for a rejoinder but immediately start for the open door. I sigh my last futile opinion and follow them. (It is hot out.) Once inside the foyer, I note the room is larger than what the outside dimensions hinted at, but I do not realize I am dreaming. There are several drums of various sizes and shapes lined up along a far wall. Chairs and tables are placed randomly. Some have poker cards, some have dominos, and some have strange spiral discs that I have seen before but do not immediately recognize. The room is informally haphazard and I release the breath I did not know I was holding.
“Yea, so, hang out in here. There’s a chest with water there, and around this door are the bathrooms. It’s not a restricted space so no one will challenge you for being here.” They follow my line of sight. “There’s only one rule about the drums. Put ’em back when you’re done.”
“Eh? They’re not forbidden? I’m surprised. And that rule seems unusually spare.”
“Yea, well, I know you. You’re not gonna pull out a drum disrespectfully, kick it around the room like a football, or try to put a hole in a skin. So if you wanna play one, then play one. You can always listen to the podcast later.”
They have a point.
They leave to do whatever it is that was important for them to do. I sit down with my headphones at one of the tables with the spiral discs with intention to play with them while listening to the podcast, but a particular djembe in the far corner keeps attracting my attention. I sigh, acknowledge that I won’t likely get free access to a drum for a long time, and turn off the podcast.
It’s an old thing, but it’s a well used thing. I can see where the players’ knees have polished the body from the intimate grip, and where the feet have worn a depression in the foot of the drum from repeated lifting and propping. The skin is held taut by honest-to-goodness cords, and those cords have frayed apart and been repaired longer than I have been alive. It was old. It was ugly. It was comfortable. I almost cried to touch it.
“Well, hello there. Nice to meet you.” I traced the rim closest to me. Memories of drum playing, some by me, some witnessed by me, threatened to wet my eyes. “Do you mind, Good Sir, if I were to have the comfort of your presence for a while?” How silly of me, to be speaking to an old drum as if it were an old man. I actually paused for a reply that no drum could speak.
Instead, the edge of the drum seemed to be pushing back into the cup of my hand palming it. Like a recalcitrant cat that has decided not to kill you today, or a pleading dog too prideful to lower his head to you.
I did not drag the drum, but picked it up and carried it to the nearest chair. I apologized for my lack of skills, and admitted it has been over a decade since I last physically had a conversation with a drum. My thumbs quickly found the key spots. My nails found where to slide without gouging. And even my pinky rings found a place to tap gently against the rim.
I played and lost myself to the playing.
I don’t know when I started singing, or what song was flowing from my mouth. But it was a good song that went with the sounds from the good drum, so I made no attempt to hinder either and let what music came, come.
I don’t know when I closed my eyes, but slowly I was surrounded by counter-rhythms and refrains in harmony. I thought perhaps I wasn’t alone but I trusted my friend to come interrupt me when it was time for them (or me) to go.
The drum let go of me and I realized how dry my mouth was in the humid silence that followed. A muffled cough to my right snapped my eyes open and I saw in horror that I was surrounded by at least eight men. Some were seated and some were standing, but all had drums with them, except for one who had taken a chair in front of me, but was seated backwards to face me.
Behind them all, was my friend, who was clearly not afraid and had a trickster’s grin twisting their face. I vowed to finish the corkscrew of their jaw if I somehow got out of whatever trouble I was deeply installed in.
“You okay, Miss?” The player to my immediate right had leaned in to quietly ask me the properly polite question.
It was very hard to swallow. My chest stung and my throat continued the desert my tongue hinted at. “That depends. How deeply in shit am I, and what kind of amends is going to be expected of me?”
Most of the players laughed warmly. The drumless man in front of me only smiled, and even then, his smile did not reach his eyes.
I wiped the cooling head of the djembe with the edge of my shirt, the only cloth I had available. I turned the drum this way and that, to make sure I did not add any damage to the well worn drum and to wipe away any lingering sense of my self that I had added to the instrument. Content that I had cleaned up after myself to the best of my abilities, I held out the djembe to the drumless man.
“I assume this is yours, Sir?”
He did not move from the chair, nor did he release his grip on the chair’s back he was leaning against. His mouth tightened into severity.
The player to my right leaned towards me and smiled. “Don’t worry about him, Miss. He just mad the drum sang with you. Jealous as an old hen, he is, and he ain’t ever heard anyone sing that well with his drum.”
At the stress of ownership, many of the other players chuckled at the drumless man’s lack. The drummer to my left placed his hand on mine and caused me to lower the djembe back to the ground between my knees. “That old fool should know that we don’t always choose the drum, but that the drum chooses us. And it’s clear, Miss, that that drum, has chosen you.”
The grim drumless man remained still and staring at my face. He reminded me of another drum player I accidentally upstaged. She took offense that I, a drumless person, was going to play “her” drum in her stead because she didn’t feel “led” to play in the church band that morning. How quick she was to accuse me of using demonic practices to sound better than her!
“You’re talking of drum spirits, of which I must admit ignorance. By all rights, I shouldn’t even be in here, even though this room is open to the public and…”
“Who told you that!” The drumless man speaks! Angrily! …shit.
“I did!” My friend finally speaks up from the back of the room. “This room is open to those we invite, and I invited her!”
The drumless man starts to turn so he may hurl his overly stocked invectives at my friend, but is silenced by the oldest man in the room tapping his cane twice on the bare concrete floor.
He stood a few inches than I am tall. His head was covered in a wrap of white cloth and tied with black beads. His dark brown skin is mapped with wrinkles of age and exposure. Split nails testified to a lifetime of hard work and hard living. White and brown cloth hung loosely over his thinning frame. Layers of bead and shell necklaces obscured his neck and chest while similar bracelets armored his forearms. Looking at him, I realize I can’t quite see him despite him standing next to my very clear (but still obfuscated) friend. I start to realize I’m dreaming. I look at his clouded eyes and the realization is lost before it could even seed.
“Have you heard nothing?” His blinded eyes were focused on me, but his ire was clearly directed at the drumless man. “You are arguing over what can be stolen, what can be broken, what can be destroyed, and what can be replaced. Vessels come and go, but spirit remains. And the drum spirit has chosen her. What matters the shape of the drum in her hands? When the spirit of the drum can sing with her just the same? What did she steal from you? What will she walk out of here with that you paid for? That djembe was here when you slapped it as a baby and it will be here after your body has rotted in the grave.”
The room felt stretched and my fears of trespassing increased. “I should not have come here.”, I muttered. I felt trapped by the surrounding men even though they have shown nothing but kindness to me.
I laid my hand on the head of the djembe to steady myself. To my horror, the skin split apart at the touch. A thin wispy ribbon emerged from the hole which seemed to open into an infinite darkness. It wound around my right hand with a touch that seemed very familiar. Tacky and warm. It reminded me of drying blood but I was too horrified to understand why this would be a comfort.
The blind black elder was suddenly standing in front of me. He lifted his too long, hand carved, age stained cane and it became a black quill barely longer than the length of his hand.
He says two words that I can not understand, but he says them so gently and soft, that I am no longer afraid.
He taps me with the quill on my forehead, and the dream falls out from under me, plunging me into a deeper sleep.
Though I have had that dream, or variations of that dream, for several months now, increasing in frequency and intensity as December approached, I did not remember them with any pressing sense of importance. I knew there was some vital communication folded between the fear and the relief, but once the ribbon emerged from the drum, I lose coherence and the dream falls apart.
But now…
Now I have more questions than I started with again. And the lead question continues to remain, “What community is this for? I am an Outcast of One. Who would take in this bastard that I am?”
But here I am. And hope remains, despite all efforts to kill her off. So… we’ll see.