It’s that time of year again: summer festival season. It starts on Memorial Day, sometimes earlier, and can extend well past Labor Day. Up in Seattle, it’s Northwest Folk Life; in Austin, South by Southwest (technically March, but it’s always a hundred degrees in Austin); and in Louisville, Forecastle Festival. This is just a sample. Pick a city and you’ll find a festival, and where there’s a festival, you can bet you’ll find a drum circle.
Drum circles. The thought of them keeps me awake at night. They inspire the same dread that pioneers crossing the prairie felt seeing Apache warriors following their wagon train, or that French aristocrats suffered at the insistent thud of the guillotine as they waited in prison. I shiver and torque the blanket into knots.
“What’s the matter,” asks my wife.
“I just had a nightmare.”
“Mayonnaise?” (If you’ve read my previous posts, The Compliment Plot and The Cake Auction, you know how I feel about this toxic waste.)
“No, not quite so bad, but almost.” I gather myself. “Drum circles.”
She yanks the twisted blanket back her way. “Go to sleep.”
“But they take up the whole sidewalk. You can’t avoid them.”
“Seriously. Go back to sleep.”
Easy for her to say. She’s not trying to push through a haze of spliff-smoke, battered by the odor of unwashed armpits. She’s not facing a crowd of out-of-time Max Roach wanna’-bes who haven’t bathed in days. I groan and roll over. It’s going to be a long night. I try counting maracas, but it only makes my stomach hurt.
Hours pass. My thoughts wind in tangled spirals. I fall asleep, but it only gets worse. In my nightmare, a hundred amateur percussionists sit cross-legged, calves locked onto congas and bongos, slapping goat skin with fingertips and palms, repeating the same dull rhythm with earnest intensity. A young Salome, barefoot in a tie-died skirt leaps and twirls across the center, shaking a tambourine. The tattooed skin of her neck shows through the enormous tunnels carved by her gauged earlobes.
I want to shout, “Stop!” but I can’t speak. I want to run, but I can’t move.
A dreadlocked Rastafari stands, his hairnet the color of the Jamaican flag, bulging with slithering stalks he hasn’t shampooed in months. He raises his hand. Mercifully, the noise ceases. “Bring me the eardrums of Robert Glover on a plate,” he says.
No! They can have everything but my eardrums. I’d sacrifice a limb before I offered my hearing on the altar of park percussion. I try to escape. The piercing body odor of hippies attacks. It’s too late! I’m surrounded.
I wake up, shouting and kicking the covers away. My wife opens her eyes. Satisfied, I still have a pulse she flops back to sleep. I sit up in bed panting. No one can help me now.
More nights pass in the same horrid state. During the day, I can’t concentrate. Projects at work go unfinished. I grunt responses to greetings. The specter of an impromptu drum circle haunts me. Everywhere I go, I scan every corner, every inch of sidewalk space.
It’s my wife who brings it to a head. She walks in holding a package. “Frank and Liz can’t make our housewarming party, but look what they left.” She pulls out… A drum!
I freeze.
She opens an envelope and reads the card. “It’s an ashiko. It’s a kind of-“
“-drum.” I lean against the wall to stop my fall. Call it what you will, it’s still amateur rhythm hell.
“They invited us to a drum circle at their house. They have one every month.”
Who are these alien creatures we’ve moved in beside? Under their suburban shells, their bodies house drum circlers. She places the card on the table. “I’ll have to write them a thank you note.” She leaves to get pen and paper.
My spine slinks downward, sliding until my backside touches the floor. My eyes close. My head lolls from side to side as consciousness departs.
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