Maybe I am ruined

for other teachers. For other styles. For other classes.

I drove 1 hour and 25 minutes to a drum circle north of Boston last night. In the pouring rain. Thanking God for antilock brakes as I hydroplaned along the highway.

It was false advertising.

This wasn't really a drum circle in the traditional sense. Drum circles are when you gather and someone starts a rhythm and everyone jumps in and plays along and there is sometimes chaos and sometimes an amazing groove, but always the freedom to mess around. In this case, there was clearly a teacher and he was teaching us rhythms to play and pretty much wanted us to stick to what he was teaching. I tried playing around with the rhythms a little bit, experimenting with playing inside them. But during the break, the teacher came over and told me that I was taking over as the leader when I did that and it meant that he couldn't change the tempo.

'Sorry' I said.

So for the second half I just played what he told us to play. Except when I didn't because I was bored out of my bloody mind and would have gotten up to leave except that the room was so small I felt it would have created a scene to do so.

On the way home from the drum circle which was really a class, sort of, I called Sidy.

'I just want to tell you that I am so glad you are my teacher' I laughed.

$20 in gas. $10 to get in. 3 hours of driving in the pouring rain.

The first time in a year that playing a drum wasn't fun.