Author: basgallop

what does anyone make of our local drummer, haphazard slapdash every time you step out the front door
i like Matt’s idea that Indian Tabla players are not allowed to touch the sacred Tabla drum, until they can use their mouths and body to make every noise the drum can make.
I can see them sitting about in a circle, blowing Raspberries, else, ‘how about this one’, making squelch noises with a hand under their armpit
The trouble with drums is that theres utterly no way to practise quietly,
with most things you can work on it in your room, then tantarra the full fanfare of talent!
With drums, every belly flop, every missed beat, every heffalump fumble is awful audible for miles around
………….. from an old email, tom tom, muffle mumbled, but i guess, the gist is there
……………..
…………
When i lived in the caves in Granada (las cuevas de sacremonto), for a while i shared a cave with 2 turkish drummers, wild hair, calm, stern faces, wicked grins.
Making my way home in the evening, you could hear the call of the drums, ahead, above.
Walk on, past the gypsy caves, then through the hole in the wall, which was literally a rubble hole through 14th century crenellated battlements, above it crudely daubed graffiti, ‘ojo ladronnes’, sorta ‘beware thieves’

follow the goat paths, down skirting past the junky valley, up, on, towards the green valley,
always the sinous drum sound, repetitive, sometimes sounding nearer, sometimes further away, snake guile guiding me home.
look to the right, above the city, beyond the valley, across to the Alhambra, toad squatted on the hill, beyond even that the snow clad heights of the Sierra nevada

sunset, fulcrum of the day, drum, the heartbeat of the blood red sun setting in the west, drum, the rhythm backbone of the bone ivory full moon rising in the east

Turn the corner, there they’d be, squatted by the fire, pummeling out the mesmeric rhythm.
These two believed in making their own drums, a laborious process of strength, mingled with blood sacrifice.
The first step was to find the right type of tree, the right size, carefully selected, chopped down, harvested. next, the slow process of gouge, hollowing out the trunk, then slowly hardening and seasoning the wood.
The blood sacrifice, to make the djembe drum live, this was to kill, then flay a goat. kid gloves.
my friend made the grim, universal finger across the throat gesture.
I was very glad not to be around for that!
Once the skin was finally ready, it would be drawn taut, with ropes, across the hollowed trunk.
Brute heaving, theres a real bundled up force, a power in a drum, this which makes it sing so loudly.
Then all the time they weren’t pounding, they’d be heating the drum by the warmth of the camp fire, tightening the ropes, the subtle, supple adjustment of the tension, all to soften, modulate, perfect the sound

boom badda bing!

once i was trekking in the mountains of Slovenia, a beautiful land, alpine meadows, the clonkle tonk of cow bells.
waterfalls and hurtle fearful cataracts.
I was slogging diligently up one steep slope when a yellow butterfly alighted on my hand, groovy, within minutes, several more descended and refused to leave. hands cloaked with butter coloured butterfly gloves!

Obviously i know the scientific reason for they’re rapture, but nonetheless I tell people I ascended the mountain, in a cloud of butterflies, wafted aloft by the wingbeats of brimstones!

Elly and Jen are off soon
I was trying to think of books to recommend to them

all i can think of is ‘the continuum concept’ , by Jean Liedloff? or somebody
i’ve only read a couple of chapters of it, but it was very interesting, more anthropology than child rearing, how children are loved in amazon tribes, it had a great sense of wonder, basically it reckoned, babies should be carried everywhere and integrated into the natural rhythms of life, light and day, warmth and cold

I never read ‘spiritual midwifery’ by ina may gaskin, but it had some brilliant hilarious pictures of beardie hippy hill billies, all the women dressed like little house on the prairie

anyone any other suggestions?

first babes are a lovely miracle, but an obvious shell shock, what with the demise of the extended family and everybody only have friends about their own age, nobody has much a clue about babies nowadays
when we had Finn, i don’t think we even knew which way up to hold him, the gorgeous mewling scrap.
Sibéal was much easier, i employed the male survival tactic of accidentally sleeping through every and anything….

http://www.continuum-concept.org/cc_defined.html

wet playtime. rats

has anybody had any groovy dreams?
one of my dreams, yonks ago, i dreamt that somehow the 2 sides of my brain were swapped over,
i woke up thinking that’s odd! reached out to get the glass of water, always on my bedside table
but somehow, instead of going left , went right and bomped my head on the wall.

Night mares, makes me think of teeth gnashing, sweat foaming white horses.
In the Czech language though Nightmares are called Nocni Moucha, Night moths, which i also like as it has the scarey fluttery, craving for light spirit
For a few years I got sorta Night Owls. Like when you startle wake and don’t sit up straight, but are rather Judo pinned to the mat, purely by the force of a thought.

when i was 21 I hitched up the east coast of australia, i got several huge 24 hour lifts from trucks. ozzie truck drivers are odd, flabby, cussing, hang dog depressed, but hey, they gave me a lift, so kindly too!
when the truckies eventually stop driving for half an hour, they eat steak, drink a couple of beers and pop a speed pill. as to make any money, they just have to keep driving.
Anyway we were driving overnight through the bush, i was sitting up in the passenger seat in the cab. half awake, half dozing. somehow subliminally I noticed a white shape drifting through the trees. like a ghost. waft swerving, shadowing alongside us.
Suddenly it was right in front of me. Smash. 50 miles an hour. the thing slammed into the windscreen, just there. the distance the computer screen is away from my face.
Yikes. I was totally shock awake.

dreamt of it for years after. I now think it must have been some sort of snowy owl, poor thing

…and some old words to go with a curious picture
………..
…once in Thailand, I visited a Golden Buddhist Stupa, way up on a hill.
to get there I shared a Tuk Tuk (one of the big ones. Jeepney?) with a rowdy bunch of teenage monks,
they were off for rainy weather retreat (a bit like summer camp and National Service, far as I could work out).
Shaven haired, a uniform of saffron robes. mucking about, illicit sneaky smoking,
else headphones on, singing along with their walkmans.

A tranquil temple, amidst the fluttering pennants,
a few wild monkeys flinging themselves about.
A giant, languid reclining Buddha, eyes closed in snooze bliss.
Big spinning prayer wheels. Thanka devotional paintings.
Rows and rows of lotus positioned deities, many under dust covers, like shrink wrapped production line Buddhas.
A view out across the jungle, vista of steam heat and trees…

Sunset, the place shutting up for the day, on my way out, a young ice cream seller called me over.
He was on a bike with a big box of lollies balanced on the front pannier, lawks knows how he pedalled up that hill!
Off home, he gestured I should hop up in front of him.
away we wobbled, free wheelin’, speedy whooshin’ turn and turn about the bends,
the sticky fug of tropics, cooled by the breeze of our own passing. yippee! (that and my ice cream numbed bum! the goose that laid the golden egg. Fab)

Spiralling, helter skelter, giddy reel, down and round, round and down. past the trees.

When we got down i bought an ice cream

…response to a thread
i guess the 1820’s one was when Byron died?

what have the greeks done for world civilisation
Brad Pitt in Troy!
…and Denis Roussos

all this talk of sofas……….

once when i was hitch hiking to Edinburgh, i dug out an empty Rice Crispies box and a marker pen
for to write my sign: Edinborough (frightfully middle class!), for some reason all the letters didn’t seem to fit, malice a lack of forethought, so my writing got tinier and teensier towards the end… and angled upwards!

………..
I got stuck by the roadside somewhere outside Newcastle.
Eventually a large white van pulled over. 3 oddballs in bobble hats.
pleasant fellows, no room up front with them, they said hop in the back. so I did.
Opening up the back of the van, plonk in the middle, there was a sofa, with a standing lamp besides it.
A proper living room!
Complete even with 3 ceramic ducks, arranged flying across the side wall

One of their friends, more bobble hat action, was sitting on the couch he said ‘we’re off hunting for mushies…. fancy coming?’