Dumbo's Magic Drum

I don't know what it is about expensive gadgets but I just can't get into them. Its not that I'm thrifty and I know this because I routinely go broke buying books. I also know its not because I have priorities in other places because I spend a lot of time with the inexpensive gadgets that I do have. I think I'm just content. I've never really bought into advertising and I openly laugh at the notion of spending more than $100 on a pair of shoes that do not also have rockets or hidden daggers attatched to the soles. I just don't need the frilly stuff.

The reason I bring this up is because my new tambourine just arrived this past week and I've been merrily playing it for a few days now. It wasn't expensive. It is not a Remo frame drum or anything even remotely brand named. Just a little wooden tambourine with a goat skin head and some aluminum jingles. I already have plans to henna the surface and make it pretty. I'll probably name it and I imagine that it will end up being a part of "the family" for many years to come. But its just a cheap little tambourine to the rest of the world.

About a decade ago I rescued a little aluminum doumbek from certain destruction. The vinyl was never glued on properly so it was mightily discounded on account of it being just so gosh darn ugly. Nobody would ever want to play a fugly little drum like that, not when entire egos are based around just how awesome and spangley, pearl inlayed or hypercolored a drum can be. The vendor was about to just toss it out, it really was fugly. I offered to buy it and they snatched up my offer. I took my little fug drum home, dressed it up with yarn tassels and an old Inian anklet. I gave it a name and a place in my world. I burned incense in front of it, rubbed resin and ritual compound on the inside of it and used it in just about every trance ritual I've ever drummed in since. I joke about how ugly it is because the peeling has only gotten worse. I've changed its "clothes" several times over the years, added stone beads, shark vertibrae and whatever else caught my eye. In my opinion it is a very well loved, trusty, hearty companion. Because it isn't a little play boy drum it can go out into the woods with me, it can be played in the smoke of a fire circle and it survives the changing temperatures of night and day. I love that drum and I play it more than I would ever feel comfortable with playing something more aesthetically pleasing. There is not another drum like it out there.

Now we come to my zills. These are probably the things that I laugh at the most in other people. I cannot take a dancer seriously if they don't know how to treat a pair of zills. They are wicked, evil devices of psychological warfare designed to be knocked against one another in a Bacchic cacophany thats part torture and part ecstasy. Most people who play the cymbals treat them like Dumbo's magic feather; they swear by the largest and most expensive name brand sets out there. (Oh how posh you are!) Seriously... if you can play the zills well you can rock any set out there. You can take a clunky little cheapo set from ebay and turn them into heralds of the apocalypse if you know what you're doing. I do not view my zills as extensions of my own ego; which is sizeable enough as it is without magic bits of holy metal strapped to my fingers.

I suppose what I am getting at here is that love, dedication and the ability to look past the exterior of things can yield gold. It is the skill of the musician, dancer, person who makes the instrument, costume or whatever come to life. Paganini played the violin in jail without access to a lot of replacement strings. If you have passion you can make incredible things out of the seemingly ordinary.

~*Spoon*~