So I drum

A lot.

With my hands, straws, chopsticks, the elevator, the walls of the hallway I walk up and down everyday. It’s comforting, and I never seem to have a lack of rhythm, syncopation, and tempo in my head. It hit me today that I have not really played the instrument I studied/loved/lived for 10 years of my life, in many years.

No I don’t count the hallway walls as “playing”.

It was one of those things that, for a reason I can’t even remember any more, I just dropped. Monday, the usual hours of practice, the sticks held nonchalantly, my thumb toying with the layered upon calloused spots on my hands, a testament to the commitment of my technique. Lazy conversations in the pit, in the hall, on the stage, on the field, about where this career would take us, and what our end game would be.

Tuesday. Nothing.

Tools of the trade set down never to be pick up again. Calloused commitment fading to memory. Talk of money, of day-jobs, of maybe talking a few theater classes to pass the time.

And boom.

I live in Houston. I work at the Houston Grand Opera. I go to work, and draft, and plot, and talk with designers, and wear a headset, and carry a binder with lots of interesting documentation.

I talk to “the guys” about the benefits of HMI sources and L.E.D technology. I discuss the graphical, architectural, confrontational, and romantic quality of what I’m seeing on-stage, with the designer sitting next to me.

All of this world, vocabulary, and sphere of influence are, in the broad scheme, new to me. Really only 6 years old.

6 years since I existed in a very different world, vocabulary, and sphere of influence.

I went to a Percussion store today.

A privately owned place with a dozen or so practice/teaching rooms. I talked with the owner for sometime about my past, my present. And I put into words for him, for the first time, the story of how I came to be where I am. How I cam to live in Houston. How I don’t own a single stick, mallet, or drum.

He said “we should fix that!”

I said “yes we should”