Of Life and Bad Metaphors

Last night when I was walking home from assisting a beginning taiko class, I felt something wet dripping down the side of my body. Lo and behold when I looked down, I realized that my water bottle had somehow opened up in my taiko bag, soaking everything inside, including bachi (which are somewhat water resistant if you catch it in time) and my cell phone and my metronome. Now, 24 hours later, the cell phone is barely turning on and not picking up any kind of signal. The metronome sounds awful when you turn it on--it sounds like what a metronome would sound like if you tortured it. I'm just glad because I was this close to bringing my new ipod along, which would have been in the bachi bag. Then I really would have been sad.

But really, when I got home, I just felt defeated. I felt like life was making a really bad metaphor at me by giving me a soaking. I mean, my metronome is broken, and my heart is broken. And my cell phone is all funky and can't talk to the rest of the world any more and neither do I. I feel like one of those cartoon characters who have their own personal rain cloud following them around. Everything just goes bad. I was even watching the football playoffs and choosing (at random, basically) teams to root for, and they all lost.

Anyhow. A couple of years ago, my office underwent a leadership change and things were all shifting around and people were getting cranky and upset because all the normal things were changing. Some people quit, and some people went a little crazy and then quit. I was kind of cranky too, because I like things to stay the way they are, but then I realized (for the first time in my life, really) that no matter what you do, you really can't stop things from changing, and that you sometimes just have to go with it. I also realized that when things change, you can totally use it as an opportunity to get new cool stuff. Ok, so yes, I had more work to do, but I was one of the first people in the office to get thier computer upgraded, and I ordered a bunch of cool pens and post-its and a chair that went up and down. And so do you know what I did today? I went and got myself this:


This baby not only keeps time, it plays different rhythms and allows you to create your own rhythms and it has a stopwatch and a backlight and a headphone jack and a bunch of other features I don't understand yet. I decided this morning that I will spend some time just trying to work on basics and rudiments and just developing technique. These are things that I would like to have in my arsenal, but don't necessarily have time to work on under the pressure of getting ready for a performance or whatnot. Don't tell anyone, but I'm actually thinking of composing a song--but that's just a nasty rumor and you didn't hear it from me. Uh-uh. I just need to work on getting me back in shape.