If there are any "failures" among my 40 new adventures, this would be listed among them. However, I didn't get into this "new adventures" business to beat myself up, so I'm not going to look at it as a failure, rather an adventure for which I just wasn't cut out to succeed.
I LOVE music. My world would be incomplete without it. I'm amazed at the power of music and lyrics. They can move us to tears or bring a warmth to our heart and smile to our face. I am constantly in awe of how songwriters never seem to run out of new songs to write. How can that be? How can anyone even write a song in the first place? The idea of actually creating a song out of nothing is as inconceivable to me as is the idea of deriving the quadratic equation to some of my math students! (OK, to ALL of my math students.)
Having said all of that, I was blessed with absolutely no musical ability whatsoever. None. Zilch. My parents had me take guitar lessons as a child for several years, and it was a total waste of their money. I am as tone deaf as Helen Keller. In my several years of guitar lessons, I was never actually able to tune my own guitar. That task was always left to my instructor. I simply don't have the musical-ability gene anywhere in my body.
I think that's why drums have always seemed so appealing to me. No tone, no pitch. Just rhythm. I was pretty confident I could handle that. So, early in my "40 new adventures year", I began taking drum lessons from a very patient, generous co-worker, Ben. For the first few weeks I was pretty optimistic. Ben taught me a simple pattern, and I found myself playing "air drum" at every stoplight as I drove my daily mom's taxi routine. My goal was simple: I wanted to get good enough at drums to play a single song during the worship portion of our weekly chapel services at school. Ben agreed that it seemed doable. I was even optimistic enough that I purchased a set of drums off Craigslist, as "air drums" just didn't cut it for practice. That's pretty much when my bubble burst.
Ben said, "Great, I'll come by your house and tune them for you." WHAT?!?! Tune my drums?!?!? Are you serious?!?! I wanted to cry. Yep, drums must be tuned. Who knew? Of course, that blow was quickly accompanied by ever-increasingly complex patterns that involved hand-foot coordination of which I simply seemed incapable. The nail in the coffin came when Ben and I agreed to take June off from lessons, due to some mutual schedule conflicts. He told me to practice and get back in touch with him in July. Well, those drums simply didn't call out to me AT ALL during summer break. I truly believe that if someone has a passion for something, you simply can't keep that person away from that passion. I obviously didn't have a passion for drums. The drum set served two purposes this summer: 1. collect dust, and 2. entertain the 2 year old foster boy who lived with us (who, by the way, had far more natural talent on the drums than I did). So, when the school year resumed, I confessed to Ben that I was throwing in the towel on the idea of playing a song with the worship band. I told him I was grateful for the lessons and new experience, but that drum-playing simply didn't seem to be my calling. He was quite understanding.
Failure? Maybe. But, at least I DO now know what a hi hat, a crash symbol, and floor tom are. And I have seen what drum music looks like. So, this was not a true failure. I did have a new experience, and I enjoyed it for the most part. It reaffirmed that music is not an area in which I'm gifted, and that's OK. By the way, if anyone is in the market for a decent (and recently tuned) set of drums, I know where you can get a good deal on one (seriously)!
No comments:
Post a Comment