Step AWAY From the Couch

Not much time to blog today, as I have to run off to a staff retreat, but wanted to get this down. In my last post I hinted about how I had tons of hard work coming my way, and last night all the hard work suddenly hit me and boy, is it a lot of fun! I have a million things to learn, and another million to work on. Last night alone we worked on shekere (I'm going to spell it with an 's' today), a couple of six-patterns, a funky-funky song, and a new twist on the traditional matsuri. Just last night! I'm learning how to toss the shekere (in time) while stepping on the downbeats. I was practicing the tosses while standing over a couch in case I dropped the shekere, and after a while she looked over and asked me, do you want to step away from the couch now?, and in my head I was like, you mean we can't take the couch with us to performances? But really, it's a lot of fun. And the six patterns are way cool. I'm starting to like this whole six pattern thing despite all the stressing out I do here on this blog. She was teaching me this new pattern and then left me on that groove while she played shekere (you see how things connect and come together?) and then she was playing some other patterns and I had to try to ignore her, but at the same time I was thinking, that sounds so cool! And then we worked on the matsuri piece, and while the patterns are familiar, the kata and energy is all different. I have to do this really fast movement and I don't know how she does it so fast. I wacked myself pretty good trying to get my hand in the right place at the right time, but eh, par for the course. Oh, and I have to come up with a solo for that. And then funky-funky song. I know that one day we will be able to play it and make it sound good, but it's gonna take some work. The work will pay off, but I'm so not there yet. Ack! And I have to have that sherkere stuff down by tomorrow, and work on my horse-beat and be able to solo on that tomorrow and also work on a couple of other songs! I'm telling you, it sounds really crazy right now, but I love it!