For a long time now I haven’t been wild. I got scared of my wild… it takes me to uncomfortable places and makes me feel things that I would rather not. I don’t think I even tap into it in my writing – unless it is in a very controlled, detached way. I buried it, gave it a headstone marked ‘Dead passion’ and stopped dancing, having sex with unsuitable people, drinking too much and playing with fire. I was a much safer Bridget.
Then someone gave me a drum.
I’d said to my friend James, often, that drumming brings about change, it changes the energy. ‘Keep drumming’ I would say when he had a crossroads or a dilemma to work through. But I only knew about it theoretically. Had never practiced it.
Then someone gave me a drum.
And now I feel sick, I am still shaking two days later and I feel very uncomfortable. And although it might have something to do with the amount of alcohol I drank, I know that it’s mostly because I have been re-awakened by the drumming energy. I wish I hadn’t touched it, had left it alone and not become acquainted.
‘I have been mesmerised by you. I couldn’t take my eyes off you.’ said a girl after I had finished playing for a while.
‘You have such a feel for the music.’
‘Such amazing rhythm.’
‘I thought that you must have been playing for years.’
My ego was huge… And so were my wrists.
After playing for a couple of hours I happened to look down at them. They were swollen with leaked blood. I panicked and moved quickly away, thinking that I was going to die. My greatest fear as a child was that I would bleed to death from cutting my veins. And now after just one drumming session my deepest and oldest terror was surfacing. I showed the swelling to other drummers and they smiled and said ‘It happens. Don’t worry, it will soon subside. Just don’t play again until it goes.’
‘No one ever died of drumming.’ said Lucia, putting it all into perspective.
I told myself that I would never touch a drum again.
Standing in the half-light of the fire that was blazing in the front yard, watching the guitarists and other drummers, I felt a longing. Someone brought out some shakers and we shook a while, but it wasn’t the same.
A young drummer that I had earlier been playing next to and who had examined my wrists, turned and looked at me and motioned me with his head. I walked over. ‘Do you want to? Let me show you.’
I said that it was not possible for me to drum, my wrists were in such a bad state. ‘Don’t worry.’ He took my hands over his shoulders, one-by-one to the drum and placed my body behind him. ‘I will help you.’ And he sculptured me into position and told me to just use my fingertips. He held my hands gently and guided me over the skin and we drummed together. And we drummed together.
I can’t remember how long we had been moving in rhythm before I felt him stroking my palms, running his fingers along mine when we came to rest on the skin, but it seemed a natural extension of the connection, the intimacy created. And I wasn’t surprised when later, after the drumming had finished and the fire was dying that I sensed him behind me, felt his fingers moving down my back and found him feeling for my hand to place his own in.
And now, having written this, I still feel sick and shaky. I thought that writing the energy would have moved it through my body, but it hasn’t. I have come so far outside of my comfort zone, further than 1,600kms ever took me. I have unmasked myself, made myself vulnerable and entered the shadowed garden of intimacy: my second biggest fear. I have performed and been wild again.
And I can’t go back.
