Rock and roll culture made drums a man's territory, but long ago the drummers were women. In the ancient cultures of the Mediterranean and Middle East, as well as parts of Europe, before patriarchal Christianity put its stamp on everything, the divine feminine was worshipped in rituals led by women frame drummers. Then, the female body was a holy thing, rightly worshipped for bringing the life of humanity into the world. The goddesses of ritual were feminine beings writ large, the macrocosmic expression of the spectrum of female experience and possibility, and both women and men worshipped them.
In time, women were disavowed as holy beings and shamed for an original sin: the dispensation of self-awareness, the encouraging of self-knowledge. Childbirth, no longer holy or honorable, became our "burden" and its blood and pain our "punishment" (imagine, we were sold that lie, we fell for it! That the miracle of Creation, itself, moving through us in service to Life is a punishment!). Our deep connection to the tides of nature and our temperament for healing were criminalized. Men led ritual, and women who continued to practice the worship of the feminine, and all that she represents, were harassed, publicly humiliated, imprisoned, tortured, and killed in the most atrocious ways.
That history lives within us all.
More and more, I see women reclaiming the divine feminine, and more and more I see them doing it to the beat of a drum. Admittedly, I am one of those women. I've always been excited by drums of every sort: frames, kits, hand drums, drums of every type, size, and sound. The tone can be visceral, commanding, trance-inducing, alluring, enticing, awakening, and transportive. The beat of the drum resonates throughout the entire body, a pulse-beat, a universal tempo to which we all respond, willingly or otherwise. Though I have no training on the drum, I have a natural sense of rhythm that encourages me to converse with it. I often turn to the drum when I feel that there is so much to say that nothing can be said. The drum speaks for me when I falter. I put my hands to it and the sound reaches back into my body and my psyche, and further informs the conversation. I sit or stand, drum positioned between my thighs, and play until I am quieted, until my hands are no longer moved by the creative, expressive force so mysterious and beautiful, until being alive in this body once again feels like an honor. The drum banishes fear, shame, expectation, deception, and woe, just turns it to dust and sets it on the wind. The drum plants my feet beneath me and affirms my courage.
More women should drum. Drumming is good for us: for our hearts (synching the drum's beat to that of our most precious organ); our throats (saying what we cannot or do not say with our voices); our imaginations (dreaming our world into being); our psyches (healing the scars of history, both personal and collective). Our vitality and integrity is our gift to the world, and the knowledge and exercise of this reality makes women extraordinary beings.
Friday, September 28, 2012
Thursday, September 27, 2012
Fall
It astounds me how interconnected the seasons are, how shifting into one so profoundly calls up the other three. I am feeling the urge, as I do every fall, to lie down like a leaf in the deep forest, where no one treads, and become the soil. Just lie there as the fall deepens and turns to winter, as the snow comes and then piles up, foot upon foot, until spring awakens me again to the wonder of sunlight, warmth, and greenery.
The prospect of weathering another winter is wearying, yet I must prepare for it. Part of preparing for winter is preparing for spring. I was raised (I use the term loosely) in a California farming town in the San Joaquin Valley- that wide, fertile swath of land that joins Southern and Northern California. There, then, I was unaware of the seasons; though they, of course, occurred, the changes they brought were on a much milder scale than here in Western Massachusetts. There was less urgency, less need for the average person to weatherize their psyche.
I moved to Western Massachusetts in the winter of 1994, a record year for ice storms. I owned no parka, warm sweaters, hats, gloves, boots- no winter gear whatsoever. People told me that I would need to become a "snow bunny" to enjoy living here and to that I thought, "Fuck you." I longed for the beaches of Hawai'i, pined for the sheer cliffs, grand volcanic mountains, towering waterfalls, massive bamboo forests, and warm, wild ocean. I was miserable.
As the years passed, I acquired the appropriate winter gear that, at least, allowed me a modicum of comfort in a season I despised. Slowly, I began to accept that this is where my life was taking place, whether I liked it or not, so I'd better get with the program or I was going to become a bitterly unhappy, damaged person. I don't remember when I began to see myself as part of this ecosystem. It was years into living here, certainly. For so long I considered myself a foreigner, but at some point it dawned on me that adaptation was all that I had on my side.
Now, with each seasonal shift, I watch myself, I observe the shifts that happen within me and see how they mirror what is happening without. My son exclaimed, two nights ago, "It's 7 o'clock and it's as dark as midnight!" Indeed, the night comes sooner and falls darker than it did mere weeks ago, and with that darkening I watch my mind shift into a deep introspection, I witness myself preparing, mentally, for the long, cold season of darkness.
Because I live in a New England farming community, where we are so subject to the seasons, I have come to see myself akin to the flora and fauna surrounding me, I have come to identify with both the farmer and the crop. The farmer, in fall, is pulling the very last good food from the field and storing it for winter sustenance. In winter, the farmer has plenty of time to ponder, plot, and plan in preparation for spring's planting. "What will I plant in spring?" the farmer is thinking, and, in a way, those "seeds" have been planted.
Like the farmer, I find myself drawing in my late harvest, choosing what will sustain me for the winter and what I should discard. I am acknowledging that winter, that season of fallow fields, is coming very soon and preparing myself to meet its demands. Here, winter demands that we submit to its will. Yes, we can find ways to play with its snow, its intense cold, the ice that forms on the ponds, but these are still a submission. Winter wins.
As fall deepens, I recognize that winter will, once again, have its way with me, and ask me to decide what seeds I will plant in spring, grow in summer, and harvest again next fall. One season can never stand alone.
Today, I watch the gray and white clouds move swiftly across a blue sky and feel the forest calling. I want to walk for hours, until I can walk no further, then lie down like a leaf and merge. I don't want to face winter standing, I don't want to have to be so strong.
The prospect of weathering another winter is wearying, yet I must prepare for it. Part of preparing for winter is preparing for spring. I was raised (I use the term loosely) in a California farming town in the San Joaquin Valley- that wide, fertile swath of land that joins Southern and Northern California. There, then, I was unaware of the seasons; though they, of course, occurred, the changes they brought were on a much milder scale than here in Western Massachusetts. There was less urgency, less need for the average person to weatherize their psyche.
I moved to Western Massachusetts in the winter of 1994, a record year for ice storms. I owned no parka, warm sweaters, hats, gloves, boots- no winter gear whatsoever. People told me that I would need to become a "snow bunny" to enjoy living here and to that I thought, "Fuck you." I longed for the beaches of Hawai'i, pined for the sheer cliffs, grand volcanic mountains, towering waterfalls, massive bamboo forests, and warm, wild ocean. I was miserable.
As the years passed, I acquired the appropriate winter gear that, at least, allowed me a modicum of comfort in a season I despised. Slowly, I began to accept that this is where my life was taking place, whether I liked it or not, so I'd better get with the program or I was going to become a bitterly unhappy, damaged person. I don't remember when I began to see myself as part of this ecosystem. It was years into living here, certainly. For so long I considered myself a foreigner, but at some point it dawned on me that adaptation was all that I had on my side.
Now, with each seasonal shift, I watch myself, I observe the shifts that happen within me and see how they mirror what is happening without. My son exclaimed, two nights ago, "It's 7 o'clock and it's as dark as midnight!" Indeed, the night comes sooner and falls darker than it did mere weeks ago, and with that darkening I watch my mind shift into a deep introspection, I witness myself preparing, mentally, for the long, cold season of darkness.
Because I live in a New England farming community, where we are so subject to the seasons, I have come to see myself akin to the flora and fauna surrounding me, I have come to identify with both the farmer and the crop. The farmer, in fall, is pulling the very last good food from the field and storing it for winter sustenance. In winter, the farmer has plenty of time to ponder, plot, and plan in preparation for spring's planting. "What will I plant in spring?" the farmer is thinking, and, in a way, those "seeds" have been planted.
Like the farmer, I find myself drawing in my late harvest, choosing what will sustain me for the winter and what I should discard. I am acknowledging that winter, that season of fallow fields, is coming very soon and preparing myself to meet its demands. Here, winter demands that we submit to its will. Yes, we can find ways to play with its snow, its intense cold, the ice that forms on the ponds, but these are still a submission. Winter wins.
As fall deepens, I recognize that winter will, once again, have its way with me, and ask me to decide what seeds I will plant in spring, grow in summer, and harvest again next fall. One season can never stand alone.
Today, I watch the gray and white clouds move swiftly across a blue sky and feel the forest calling. I want to walk for hours, until I can walk no further, then lie down like a leaf and merge. I don't want to face winter standing, I don't want to have to be so strong.
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