Continued from Drum Circles – Part 1.
When last we left our intrepid hero, he had fainted at the thought of a neighbor’s drum circle. We rejoin his Sisyphean struggle moments later…
I open my eyes. My wife stands over me. “What happened?”
I’m not sure how long I’ve been out. I’m sweating and my heart’s beating a mambo. “Must be something I ate. I’m going to lie down.” What choice do I have? I have to pull myself together. I stand and slow the tempo of my breathing with several long inhales and exhales.
“Is it this?” She points at the ashiko, now centerpiece of our dining room table. I knew I couldn’t fool her. “I don’t want it either.” She frowns. “What are we going to do with it?” She regards the drum as though it holds talismanic power beyond its inherent ability to trap anyone who touches it in its circular rhythm.
“I don’t know. It’s been known to attract-.”
“Don’t say it.” My wife holds the next word in her mouth like a tablespoon of cold oatmeal. “Hippies?”
“Yes!” Finally. She gets it.
“They never wash.”
“And they wear dreadlocks.”
She starts to gag. “We have to do something about it.”
“It’s good to know we’re on the same team,” I say.
“What about the invitation?”
Yes, what about it? The question lingers for days. As the day of the drum circle nears, neither one of us can decide what to do. Should we decline? Pretend that we have another engagement? Feign illness? All reasonable responses, but something stops us. Meanwhile, the ashiko stands on the table where my wife left it. Neither of us has the courage to move it. Worse, I notice that if I go several hours without seeing or touching it, a strange ache jabs my belly.
The night before Drum Day, I dream again. I’m sitting cross-legged, holding a djun djun. My hands have a will of their own, patting and slapping the drum’s taut surface, and rebounding upwards in an endless cycle. On either side of me, another drummer sits, mimicking my actions, and next to each of them another drummer and another until the circle completes itself. A crowd watches us, smiling, nodding, swaying to the sounds, their eyes on me. I’m happy. I’m drumming and I’m happy.
In the midst of this revelry, between palm strikes, I have a frightening realization: I don’t know what I’m doing! I look around. No one seems to care or notice. I become conscious of the actions of my hands. My worst fear becomes reality. I lose it. I lose the rhythm! My fellow drummers stare at me, then at each other. The crowd does the same. It’s wrong. It’s all wrong.
Our makeshift audience, reeking of hemp, whispers and points fingers. I’m the drum circle laughing-stock. Like Icarus, I’ve flown too high. The syncopation crashes around me. There’s panic in the circle. I wake to a horrid noise.
Boom! Ba-ba-boom! Ba-ba-boom! Ba-ba-boom!
On and on. Over and over and over again. I check for my wife. I want to wake her, alert her to the danger, but she’s gone. I rip back the covers and bolt towards the stairs, slowing as I descend. It could be a robber, but I suspect not. I peek into the living room. Worse than any break-in, there she is, sitting on the floor, banging the djun djun without a clue.
She must hear me gasp, because she shoves the ashiko away from her, hard enough that it topples over. I race after it – I have no idea why – and grab it before it smacks into the wall. We stare at each other.
“What are we doing?” I say.
“I know,” she says. “I don’t know what’s happening to me.”
My trembling hands place the drum on the coffee table. “I have an urge to buy a rain stick,” I say.
“I want to shake a wasembe.” She buries her head in her hands.
“What’s happening to us?” I stifle an urge to cry. In only three days, this ashiko has shaken our world. “This is no ordinary drum.”
“What are we going to do?”
“The only thing we can do,” I say. “Go to the party.”
While we sit in silence, both frightened of and drawn to the drum on the table, the first streams of sunlight flow through the cracks in our blinds. It’s D-Day: time to invade a drum circle.
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