Drums & Girls

Drums are the inanimate musical objectified manifestation of Girls. Because, how I feel and think about Drums, is pretty much how I feel and think about Girls. 

 Even the word "Girls", which I consciously chose over the word "Women", is beautiful to me. It speaks to an innocence and a purity of beauty that the word "Women" does not have. It has nothing to do with age. It has to do with a very personal and intimate literary and emotional charge. 

Drums and Girls: I love them both. Unconditionally. They speak to my heart. They ignite a passion and a fire and a wanderlust. They are both so fuckin' beautiful; powerful, magnificent creations that capture my imagination. They are both wonderfully complicated, and at the same time, incredibly simple. All you have to do, really, is Love Them With All Your Heart; With All You Have. Simple, but not easy. Just like a lot of life.

Drums and Girls are at once primitive, and of this age. Sexy as fuck. I am at once their equal, their master, and their slave. I walk beside them. I walk in front of them. I walk behind them. What's the fuckin' difference? Because, no matter where I walk, I am devoted to them; to their energy, to what they bring to this world, to what they bring to my life.

At about the same time that Girls became really important to me (around twelve), so did Drums. Drums provided a "Motherly" energy; a feminine, unconditionally loving, nurturing, caring, responsive, powerful sense of belonging; something that I never felt before I started playing. Drums gave me an emotional anchor, an emotional outlet, that saved my ass. That saved my life. 

 I was a pretty awkward adolescent. So I didn't have much play with the opposite sex. But, when I played Drums, I got a response. When I spoke to them, they listened. And they spoke back. I gave to them, and they gave to me. That dialogue changed my life. 

But there was more. It went beyond me and drums. It extended to the world at large. Other people, who heard and who saw me play drums, who heard, who saw, who experienced, my energetic cries of passion and fire and love; those people spoke back to me too. With smiles. With dance. With love. With something I never got from anybody else when I put myself out there. And so, I fell in love with Drums. The same way I fell in love with Girls. How couldn't I?

If you have ever seen me play drums, you know what an emotive maniac I am. I don't so much play the drums as I do make love to them; as I do make love with them. Which goes a long way in explaining the look of joy and ecstasy plastered on my face whenever I play. Especially at a gig with a band. 

As much as I love playing drums for the sake of playing drums, when I do it with a band, with other people, it ramps the whole paradigm up to another quantum level. To a level I can't get to by myself. Ultimately, I connect. 

Drumming with a band is like making love to Girl I'm in love with. 

Yup. Just like it in fact.

 ©2017 Clint Piatelli, MuscleHeart LLC, and Red F Publishing. All rights reserved.