By: Allison Ballard
Sometimes I just do the best I can. I’d like to think that I am sometimes brilliant, but I know that sometimes I’m not even striving to be brilliant…sometimes I just buckle down, white knuckle through and do the best I can.
I often feel that way at the end of the academic year as I move through final classes and performances exhausted. I show up on time (hopefully!). I smile (at least I think I’m smiling!). I try to be organized and prepared. I try to stay focused and present…but one foot is already out the door as I find my way through those final, year-end commitments. In my mind’s eye, I am already floating around the lake, kayaking down the river, riding horses, spending time with family.
The funny thing is, once the classes and performances are over and I am actually out there on that lake or paddling down that river, I am usually thinking about taiko. I am either composing or arranging music or planning the next strategic steps we need to take as a group or envisioning new costumes or thinking about next year’s classes and performances or throwing drum sticks and a drum pad in my suitcase as I head out on vacation. Good grief. It’s hard to shut it down.
And of course I don’t really want to. Removing taiko from my life would be like cutting off my arm: an extremely painful loss that I would grieve for a long time as I struggled to readjust. Taiko is no longer something I do, it’s a way of being in the world. At some point, taiko became a lifestyle, part of my identity. I play taiko because it’s fun, but I am a taiko drummer because, well….because I am. It’s become a personal demographic, like being a middle-aged female or a Midwestern American. It just is.
Like most things that are meaningful, “doing” taiko as a job requires more than just showing up and drumming or just showing up and teaching…it requires an investment, an extension of myself that needs to be balanced. And counter-balanced… I don’t want to shut the down the drumming, but for a while I am happy to not be expected to show up and drum at a certain time and place. I am happy to not be responsible for guiding a group through a process. I am happy to float around the lake, soak up the sun and splash out random rhythms with my hands in the water.
Dong, doko dong!