The Beat by d.c. beemon

Panasoni0 SD video cam

A t(as published in the Doc Kountz Literary Journal)

By Dave Beemon

I woke up and smelled the ocean down below on the road. The yellow curtains parted gracefully, and I saw that the trap window had been pulled open from the bottom. It’s called a trap window because it’s on rubber runners and the whole thing keeps the heat in, cold out.
I was in a trailer home.
What a chain of events, I thought.
This situation was all about the water that had got into my head behind my inner ear causing partial deafness for two weeks. I traveled up the New Hampshire seacoast to visit Doctor Vic Schultz. We used to play in a rock band together. He was the bass player. I was the drummer.

Rhythm is such a bizarre phenomenon.  Mickey Hart said in his book that it’s a human thing and that it stems from the heartbeat.  That’s where it comes from.  In fact, maybe millions of heartbeats that go way back in history, back to the dinosaurs.  Except that maybe the giant lizards don’t count because they were cold-blooded.  How could rhythm ever come from a cold-blooded thing?  On the other hand, why not?  You need to be fairly cool to be a drummer or at least know some musicians.

“What is this stuff?” I said to doc Schultz.
He blew snot out of his nose and his eyes got wide. “You don’t wanna know,” he said. “Just drink it.”
“Couldn’t you get into trouble giving me this stuff?”
“What? We’re buds. We’re college room mates man, and you know how it goes.”
“Yeah, you could be a serial killer and I wouldn’t tell the cops.”
“Exactly.”
“That’s what college is for.”
“You’re damn straight. It’s called finding your REAL family.”

What a work of art she was, literally. I could see her back covered in tattoos as she flipped the bacon. 
“We didn’t have sex, did we?” I said to her.

Straight quarter notes played right in the center of each note; that’s an awesome beat.  That’s really the essence.  Everything revolves around that center.  That’s why it’s so important to have a bass player who understands that because then half of the battle is won if you--the drummer--understands it too.  If you can both agree on the middle, then it’s a victory right there.  Because everything else radiates off of that middle.  When you syncopate, you play off of the middle.  What’s syncopation?  That’s when you play on the upbeat, not every note, mind you, but some notes, which causes a kind of cross the grain feeling, but it doesn’t work unless somebody, you or the bass player or the tuba, or the tenor sax or the trombone or the washing machine or somebody is playing or at least understanding where the center of the beat is even if nobody’s playing it.  It actually sounds better if nobody is playing it but everybody is feeling it.

I have had dreams like this, frequently, where you’re in a house with strange people and your family is out there somewhere on the periphery, and a dog is running around with your glasses on his head and you are trying to get down from the roof but the ladder has broken rungs and then you try to sing something but you can’t come up with the words…
This was different. The tattooed lady was really out there cooking bacon and I was digging the smell and the smell of the ocean down on the road. You couldn’t smell the ocean now because of the bacon. And I could hear! I could hear the sizzling of the bacon.

She said, “You want to stay for a while?”

And I said, “Why not?”

DSLR - Lumix GH2

14-140mm 4-5.8 lens

Leica 25mm 1.4

Nikon 180mm 2.8

Nikon 50mm 1.8

Olympus 50mm 1.8

Assorted lenses with adaptors

Earthworks OM-1 omnidirectional mics

Audio-technica AT897 shotgun mic

Sennheisser Wireless Lavalier

Assorted Lowell Pro lights

Marantz PMD661 Portable Digital Recorder

Assorted SLR cameras and lenses

Panasonic DVC 30 SD video cam

A trombone

A vintage Strat

A really crappy out of tune upright piano