Something good with their lives
2000
I was invited to go drum at a church in Northern Virginia some years ago. I was on the road, having taken the auto train up from Orlando with my donated almost new white Dodge caravan full of Ghana djembes and some extra goatskin heads, just in case I had to replace a casualty along the way. I also had a stash of my designer drum stands that everyone liked. They made it easy to drum for long periods of time without fatigue to your knees. That was the point of the meditation drumming; long trance grooves at relaxed tempos where the downbeat tone was the only note the people in the congregation had to play. It was an easy way to get everyone going immediately at these large gatherings. After our huge event in their nice large modern chapel, I was escorted to the home where I would spend the night. Her husband had attended the drumming meditation workshop, primarily because his wife had insisted- as was the case with a number of the couples in the church. Her husband obviously worked for the CIA. How do they think that regular people do not see that they are spooks? All of the men and most of the women in the congregation probably worked for The Company. As was his training, he casually interrogated me over the dining room table in their large beautiful home. I told him about my exploits with getting men to drum and he peered into my eyes with these bottomless pits of blackness and finally said dryly with almost a sneer,
“I’ve seen men do that before. When they get to a certain age…they decide to do something good.”
I enjoyed his convictions and his sense of superiority amused me. But my covert mission had already been accomplished. He had felt the drum in his heart. It would do it’s work on his soul long after I was gone.
excerpt: “History of the Groove” Russell Buddy Helm©2015 all rights reserved buddyhelm.com