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.