The beat that binds us together

On Friday night, I attended a new Irish Session at Atomic Cafe in Beverly. When I arrived with a friend, there were five musicians crowded around a small dining area, playing banjo, bouzouki, guitar, concertina, and fiddle. Four diners sat at the edge of the group, sipping coffee drinks and tapping their feet while listening intently to the music. They applauded vigorously at the end of each tune. The only person I recognized was the fiddler leading the session, and she generously invited me to pick a few tunes that I knew for the group to play. It soon became clear that this was no novice group and the others in the circle knew just about every Irish tune in the book (or shall I say in thesession.org, the comprehensive online database of Irish music?). Yet they gladly dived into the run-of-the-mill Irish classics that I chose--Road to Lisdoonvarna, Morrison's, and Boys of Bluehill, to name a few. And there we sat playing for nearly two hours, strangers to one another, yet connected deeply through a shared knowledge of tunes, and bound together in rhythm and pitch.

On Saturday night, I set down the fiddle and ventured into a world of musical connection that is a bit more mainstream, if you will: the night club. I always forget that this operation exists just down the road from my home....

After a stern look from the bouncer, who scrutinized my ID as if I were criminal suspect, I followed my friend through the double doors, where the trance-like beat and flashing lights transported us to another dimension. We found our place among about sixty other dancers on the floor and began to move. My racing mind slowed and soon turned off, while the pounding bass took its place in guiding my every move. I saw one familiar face in the sea of strangers: my neighbor, who smiled and danced his way over moments later with drinks for my friend and me. He glanced at the guy accompanying me, then somewhat quizzically back at me, before we lost ourselves once more in the beat. And there we all were, packed even tighter than we had been in the small Atomic Cafe session, all driven by the same beat, twisting, bouncing, shaking as one body.

I surrendered myself to the moment in joy. Yet, there was something very different about this second night of music. A different kind of surrender ruled the night club, a kind that leaves little space for the higher self perhaps. Everything was taking us out of ourselves: the pulsing beat, the flashing lights, and the alcohol coursing through our blood. Somehow we had been fully present the night before at the Irish Session, while letting the tunes carry us together to another place.

When the music at the club stopped, the dancers poured out onto the streets, where trance-like bliss faded into inelegant reality. The bouncers tried to disperse the crowd, visibly nervous that trouble would spark up near their establishment. One man began to yell that he wanted his knife back and, on the sidewalk, two small mobs of buff young men with women in mini skirts began to shout at one another, while two men lunged for each other in the center, fists swinging.

As for walking out of the Atomic session? There had been an exchange of email addresses and invitations to other local jams, compliments on tunes well played, and recommendations for new tunes to learn, amidst a sea of smiles and shaking hands.

Reminds me of teaching. Two different lessons can seem so full and joyful while teaching. The true measure of the nourishment I have given my students is how they behave in eurythmy class that afternoon, or how they treat each other at recess.

Finding God in Hell

Last weekend, I attended the fiddle event that I have been hearing about since long before I ever held a fiddle in my own hands: Fiddle Hell. Organized by the Reiner Family, Fiddle Hell consists of three days of fiddle workshops, jams, and concerts at the Concord Inn in styles ranging from Bluegrass to Cape Breton. Well over one hundred fiddlers with a wide range of levels were in attendance. Over the three days, one only stops fiddling for the essentials: food, bathroom, and perhaps a little sleep.

I attended a Sufi workshop last year about turning, a prayerful practice of the whirling dervishes. We spun all day, with a few breaks for instruction and meditation. Spin until the whole world goes away and all that is left is your center--the Divine that lives within you. Fiddle Hell was comparable. You fiddle until the whole world goes away and all that is left is the feel of the bow in your hands and music pouring over you...voila, all that was left was the same Divine presence that we had whittled the world down to by turning at the Sufi workshop.

On the second night of fiddle hell, my friend and I stumbled upon a serious Irish session in the Inn's pub. The energy pulsed through the walls and spilled out into the bland hallway of the hotel. We found a place next to a drunk-looking older fiddler, took out our fiddles, and I looked on with awe at a picture of what Irish fiddling could be. I breathed it in and decided that one day I will be good enough to participate in such a session.

After several tunes, I picked up my fiddle and wandered across the hallway. I could already hear the slow lull of a waltz reaching out towards the Irish jigs, like two patterns of waves that meet and transform one another. I followed the sound of the waltz and entered a tiny room, which seemed to cradle its five inhabitants with a deep crimson wallpaper. I inched in and began playing along to "Planxty Irwin." Here was my community, at least for the next two hours. I recognized a middle-aged woman sitting across from me; I had sat next to her at a jam months ago at the Harry Smith Frolic. I was playing mandolin at the Frolic and remember watching her, mesmerized with a hint of jealousy, wishing that I could play fiddle too. Suddenly, I felt that in this little room, covered in a blanket of red, fiddling alongside the happiest and calmest of musicians, I was filled to the brim with all the joys one could ever want from life.