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I ran into an old friend from my writing program today. We hadn't seen each other in ages. She asked how I was, and what I was doing with myself and how my writing was going. I told her I was really involved with taiko, but that I hadn't given up on the idea of writing. And then she said something that really made me feel better about my state of not-writing. Something that made me feel that I didn't have to be so hard on myself for not writing. She said that I was really young when I started the writing program, and that it's really important to live. And that really hit home for me. I've been telling myself this for a long time. I need to do more living in order to return to writing. It was with such understanding and empathy that she told me this. I always looked up to her. She is actually a successful writer, published a couple books already, one of which she started in our writing program, and now she teaches here at the same school we both attended.

But it also made me think about writing. I really feel like I'm able to go back to it. We made some calculations and realized, with shock really, that it's been 10 years since we both started the writing program. I've done some living since then. Big things have happened. Life has delivered some promises, and broke some, and suprised me in many ways. It's broken my heart and filled it up again. There have been many adventures. She said your 30s are good years. She's lived through them, and is about to turn 40. When I first met her, she was about to turn 30. She says she's looking forward to her 40s. And these days, a lot of the people I do creative things with are in their 50s, and they seem happy and satisfied. I'm glad and grateful I am surrounded by wonderful people. I'm glad for all my teachers and all those who have inspired me. I feel like I'm on the verge of something here.

Today as I was driving to work I watched the thin clouds arrange themselves in the parched atmosphere, assembling for thunder, and though nothing materialized, I longed to be out in the dryness of a desert, drinking it in. I wanted nothing more than to stand in front of a drum, sweating away at drills. I wanted to pull the tacks out of Janet's old drum and rehead it. I wanted to be sitting somewhere sipping at coffee and working something into language in a notebook. I'm so close. I just need to sit down and organize my thoughts and bring something together. Yeah, I'm looking forward to the rest of my 30s. To the rest of my life.

I Have Great Students

They're wonderful. They like to play taiko, and they play it well. It helps me as a teacher to work with people who are so nice and enthusiastic. They give me great confidence. Before I started teaching I had a whole year to think and worry about being a teacher, and I hope I'm the teacher I want to be. I hope I can become something remotely like the teachers who have inspired and encouraged me. Having great students helps immensely.

Rudimentary

For the past few weeks we've been working on basic drills. We've got some time to breathe and focus on stuff like kata and sticking, and it's been really good. I love drills. I love it when they make you all tired and sweaty. Tonight I pulled out my drum practice book and worked on some rudiment stuff. Worked on left-handed doko dons, my favorite counting drill, paradiddles, pataflaflas and getting my left hand to play an egg-shaker. I've been concentrating on my left so much, when I played with my right it sounded wimpy. It was daylight when I first crawled into the chasm to practice, and when I looked up later, it was completely dark.

I feel like I'm entering a new phase in my taiko education. Up to this point it's been all about learn-learn-learn. I sucked up everything anyone could teach me, always wanting more. But now I think it's more about learning how to learn. How can I explain that? I think it's one thing to seek out others to teach you, but at some point you have to take what you already know and expand on it yourself. You have to seek out new things and teach yourself what they are and how to play it and how to interpret it to suit you and to use it as a way to express your own artistic goals. I don't know if I'm at that lofty place yet, but I'm learning it. Breaking away from Emeryville, while liberating and a little scary, has sent me down a new and exciting path. Playing with Maze is a challenge. There's the material, which is different and hard, and I don't get the sort of learning curve I would have gotten at E-ville. Over there, you would go over the same piece of material week after week, learning what the sticking is, and where your arm should be and where you should be looking and how to stand--you did that until it hurt. But with Maze, those things are more given, and we plow through things. They don't leave me behind when I don't get it, which is wonderful and comforting, but I guess the level and expectation is different. Learning how to learn.

I think my new challenge is to figure out how to contribute more. It's less, do it this way, and more, how do you think we should do this? I need to have answers. Need to figure out what I think is interesting. I'm trying though. I think that Janet gives me nudges in the right direction. She doesn't tell me outright, but I think she opens up opportunities for me to come into my own. Maybe she's not even doing it intentionally. But she gave me my own taiko class and the opportunity to be a leader and to develop my own sense of direction. She has never told me how I ought to run the class or what material I should cover or anything. I have to figure that out on my own. And she so generously gave me that drum to finish and put a head on. That was a saga in itself, but now she's given me the opportunity to put heads on her other drums. It's not exploitation or anything--it's something I want to do--first because I need to start to repay the kindness of her giving me my own drum (which is my own concept, not hers--the only string she attached was that "Maze could maybe play the drum"), but also because I'm finding that I love working with my hands and figuring out how to make equipment and stuff. I made my own down stand a month ago. I remember when she was teaching at E-ville, she'd play her own drums and didn't want the beginners to play on them (because they tend to pound the hell out of them). But now, I get to put new heads on her drums. That's kind of an honor, I think.

This is something new for me to think about and work on. How do I move from being a student to being my own person? It's a new chapter-- a good one too.

Pushing

Today before rehearsal I got a call from Janet saying that she'd be late and that she wanted me to lead the others in drill. Cell phone coverage sucks, so just to know that I heard her right, I was like, drill? You said drill? And she said yeah, drill. I drove straight-away to RCW, less because I thought I'd be late, and more as a chance to think about what drill I ought to be doing. We had a nice discussion last weekend, and I figured that oroshi (drumrolls) would be a good drill for us. It's my most unfavorite drill, but really good for you if you're a taiko player. Oroshi is good opportunity to work on kata and strength and (my least favorite part) kiai and energy. I was also thinking, so why'd she call me? Was it because I'm always early? Was it because I teach a taiko class? Was it because she thinks I can actually lead the rehearsal? Such responsibility! Such pressure! Good pressure, mind you. I felt very responsible and humbled. I felt so kohai.

Anyhow. The others were a little late, and Janet was not as late as she thought she'd be, and we wound up doing oroshi. I don't know if I was the best leader, but I pushed them. I think my problem is that I push myself really, really hard, and I think that I can push others as almost as hard as I push myself. But is that right? Is that ok? I don't want to go into my own life experiences, but you can't always expect others to push themselves as far as you would push yourself. You can't think that just because you can go so far that others can too. Sometimes as far as you can go isn't as far as someone else can go. Sometimes you can do more harm than good. I've done this. I've gone that far before. And while at rehearsal tonight I pushed really hard, I felt a great responsibility, thinking, oh, maybe we should stop because so-and-so is not playing and instead stretching her arm out. But then I was like, oh we can so do this. Just a little more--let's just finish the drill--I know we can. But are you gaining anything when people start to drop out? Is it ok to do that kind of pushing? I mean, I've been pushed that hard and when I came out on the other side I felt stronger and I felt like I was a better player. Is it ok to expect the same from other people?

Inward...and Beyond!

Spent this last week doing nothing related to taiko except thinking about it. It was good. Sometimes you need to back off the constant physical part of things and think about the mental and theoretical of it. It was also good that I was concentrating on work stuff, since we need to bring in this new class and a part of that is making about a billion photocopies in the xerox room, which provides plenty of time for inward thinking. Today it was just me and Janet and we talked some, and she gave me lots to think about. Also we worked some on chekere, which was my request, so there's more to work on. Also working on becoming a better taiko player. She always tells me nice things about me, but really, I want to become even better. There are always those things that are not always explicit in playing, or performance or solos. The little tweaks we all make in ourselves that make us better players, or better teachers, or better PR people, or just better people. I need to work on those things. All of them.

I've also been taking on some equipment-maintenance projects for Maze. I like it. I made my own down stand the other week, which sounds complicated, but wasn't. I think that in a lot of taiko groups the equipment-person just rises to the sruface like grease in soup, even if they didn't actually set out to be the equipment-person. Did you know that during college I was a "maintenance technician," which is just a fancy word for handy(wo)man? My dad, through example, as well as teaching us, showed us kids how to interact with and tinker with the physical world. We've joked about the merits of duct tape and wire, and how you can fix anything with those things, but really, the mystery of how things work, or don't work, and how to fix them is not as shrouded as you'd think. The world is a logical place, and having someone to show you that logic is, well--magical. Anyhow, I took on some more down stand-making projects as well as taiko reheading, which, after my own taiko making experience, sounds like fun to me. I might actually get to use Janet's space at RCW when it become available, which I'm sure my downstairs neighbor is totally thrilled about, even if she doesn't know it yet.