Bliss And Drumming: The Slow Enlightenment Of The Hard Rock Drummer

From the blog BlissandDrumming.com, Clementine reads this piece.

From the blog http://www.blissanddrumming.com, Clementine reads this piece. *** We map out how we want it all to look, and we have a picture of the outcome. We create this picture based on the past, and it is through fear we speak. Fear of not having enough, fear of it not working out in the way we vision, fear of pain or sorrow, fear of change. I think I am supposed to know what the future is to look like. So I ask and ask and ask. In the past year I have been shifting to a different kind of prayer, a different type of conversation with the great unknown. I began working with a mantra meditation, and the words I focus on praise and thank. After doing this for several months, I suddenly found myself unreasonably happy. Something changed in my moments, and my moments have changed. I see that my prayers have been so one-directed. Now the energy is moving in another way.

From the blog http://www.blissanddrumming.com, Clementine reads this piece. *** Airports have lost their charm, at least for the time being. It seems as if everyone is discombobulated. Humans have forgotten their easy flow of being, and there is a kind of uptight scrabbling and agitation that sets everything on edge. People have been cooped up in their own spaces, getting their demands met in every moment, and I guess they’ve forgotten how to comport themselves with strangers. Not every impulse gets met immediately when you’re outside of your household, and people seem to have forgotten this as they bully their way to the counter or cut everyone off in traffic.

From the blog http://www.blissanddrumming.com, Clementine reads this piece. http://blissanddrumming.com/2021/03/the-question-of-not-enough/ ‎ *** I settled into life without the scramble of the constant travel of my music career. In the new stillness, I recognized within me a welling up, a kind of panic of not doing enough, not getting enough done. Without shows on the horizon, some mornings I woke in a kind of confused spin. Then, I noticed that in this confusion was a feeling of futility. I will never get enough done, so I might as well not even start. To witness this was a gift. Maybe there has always been this pushing, punishing dread of not doing enough, of not being enough. Maybe this has driven all my moments, and my impression of who I am. If I am not doing enough, then fundamentally, I am not enough. That’s a terrible feeling.

From the blog http://www.blissanddrumming.com, Clem reads this piece. *** I have spoken to many people during the pandemic who have made the best of the situation, and who feel guilty about the fact they are doing ‘okay.’ Our society has become a place in which to say that all is well makes us feel ignorant or guilty. I think it is important for us to recognize what is working and what is peaceful. There must be an energy that is in the center, a moderating well-being that is here between the poles of terrible and ignorant. By cultivating this feeling of ‘okay-ness,’ it expands. Feeling good is a generative energy. Our perception can change our experience, and our actions. We might realize this same field of the night watchman exists in our greater reality. Is there a kind of hum beneath the surface, a kind of steady rhythm of breath in, breath out, that the whole of the planet experiences at all times, no matter what the dire situation being experienced? Beneath all the chaos, is all well?

From the blog http://www.blissanddrumming.com, Clementine reads this piece. *** A young man started showing up late nights, a sleight of hand artist who would entertain the patrons with card tricks. I’m not sure he was quite 21 years old. He was quiet and pale, with a sweetness to him. His talent was astonishing. The customers would get overwhelmed with his mastery, and they loved it. When I describe tricks he performed, I am an unreliable narrator. My attitude with sleight of hand is of total trust. I want to be fooled. I guess most people watch the magician to catch the tell, to find the flaw and figure out the way the trick works, but I enter a state of complete surrender. I want the magician to succeed and leave me astounded.

From the blog http://www.blissanddrumming.com, Clementine reads this piece. *** I spend a lot of time thinking about the ways in which human consciousness is transforming. For one thing people even a generation back didn’t grow up with the idea of “global community.” This concept is new in my lifetime. Once we were connected, first through the ease of travel and then through technology, our minds began to change. We started to realize that events across the planet have direct effect on us. Cause and effect became something different. Global. This is a gift, I believe, as with this knowledge, we can’t help but eventually lose our provincial and self-centered ideas. We can’t live for ourselves anymore. We not only see directly how our actions affect others, we do this in the spotlight of humanity’s gaze.

From the blog http://www.blissanddrumming.com, Clementine reads this piece. *** The drum begins. I begin my journey on a bluff, overlooking the Pacific. Rolling grassy hills, the coastline rippling side to side, and the big birds delighting in the marine updraft. There is an opening to a cave there, to my left. The first time I entered this cave, a wave of fear washed over me because it was so dark. Then I remembered: this is my shamanic journey! Turn on the light! And light flooded in from above, highlighting the massive space. A soft dirt floor, ferns and the distant sound of water. A lower world where everyone I meet has my best interest at heart. For a couple of years, culminating in the past few months of the quarantine, I have been studying Shamanic Counseling with the teacher Isa Gucciardi. This path is a surprise in my life, and yet I also feel as though I’ve been making my way here the whole time. Photo by Claudia Meyer from FreeImages

From the blog http://www.blissanddrumming.com, Clementine reads this piece. *** For the most part, the past week of quarantine has looked much the same as it has for the past couple of months. The preponderance of birds, riotous flower bloomings, quiet streets. Then, a warm spell in San Francisco sending folks out to the parks. Overnight, it seems that facemasks have become obsolete, and big drunken parties of young people fill the grass. I don’t enter the park most days now, and walk Henry elsewhere. After months of lockdown, I can’t help but seeing that block-square grass patch as a big petri dish.

From the blog http://www.blissanddrumming.com, Clementine reads this piece. *** It was funny, really, and later it brought to mind the article we had both read about the spike in divorce rates after the quarantine was lifted in China. We had to venture out to the laundry. Harsh words were spoken after perceived carelessness. Then, escalation after a reconnaissance to the grocery. We had been doing well up until then, enjoying the time sequestered and getting to spend time together in a way we rarely do. As two working musicians/managers, we often go for months without being in each others’ company. This serves to make time together feel rather precious. Thus the longevity, and the ease with giving the other plenty of autonomy. Adding the outside world to our equation served to ignite a stress we’d each been feeling, and it all launched to the surface under the fluorescent lights.

From the blog http://www.blissanddrumming.com, Clementine reads this piece. *** We deep clean the house. We retrieve things from storage to sell. Now that we are out of work for months we start thinking about things to off-load in order to keep the lights on. We make tense financial plans. I order dry goods for just in case. We check in with family and send condolences to friends whose long-term plans have been cancelled, check in with the elderly neighbor. And then, I wake up into a day where time is all mine. I find waiting for me all of these projects, all of these dreams and goals and plans, as present as birdsong and the chimes of Peter and Paul. I spend time in the morning in metta meditation, with my mind on all those who don’t have the resources I have, those who are ill and worried and alone. Then exercise, on the bike that I’m always too busy to use. Then the window-seat, and a reverie of now.

From her blog http://www.blissanddrumming.com, Clementine reads this piece. *** I also see this in the people I work with. I see that sometimes they don’t even realize that the patterns of misery they are caught have gradually let go in subtle ways, and when I ask after a few sessions about these old ways of being, it’s almost as if they’re surprised I’m asking. Someone who has not been able to sleep for years, for example, when I ask how they slept recently says, “pretty good,” not with any kind of amazement, but more like a matter of course. Whey wouldn’t they sleep well? It’s as if they don’t quite remember the angst of insomnia. Remarkable.

As a special edition of the Bliss and Drumming podcast, Clementine reads this piece, recently published at https://memoirmag.com/nonfiction/laguna-main-by-clementine-moss/. *** Sharona bleats from a nearby radio and I close my eyes and imagine Sharona, object of adoration. I imagine Jim Morrison, on a beach with a guitar, writing about his LA woman. I love the Doors. I move to ask if Becky likes the Doors, but her back stops the words from forming, glossy and solid and resolute in the bright sun. It seems that every back, every face these days locks me out. The words stay in my throat. Forget it. I lean back on sinking elbows and close my eyes against the glare. Jim Morrison lolls on the beach in my mind, and I let go of the day and follow him down to this other world. Do women get to be so free, lounging, writing, owning their dreams? Who will write of me?

From the blog www.blissanddrumming.com, Clementine reads this piece. *** The Drover is like a cave, with low ceilings, brick walls and round stucco fireplaces built randomly into small rooms. The lighting is yellow and warm, and the chairs are low wooden ones with rounded backs that set you perfectly to the table. There is a vaguely Spanish feel in the big wooden doors and the beamed ceilings. Shortly after being seated, a dark mound of bread loaf arrives with the knife stabbed in its heart. It is piping hot and served with iced butter. The whole place smells like the bread. The smell of baking bread affects me deeply in a primal place and I have zero ability to deny its call . I can say that in every fantasy of home life I have ever entertained, the place has smelled like this.

From the blog www.blissanddrumming.com, Clementine reads this piece. *** It’s funny how naming something, really sitting and allowing the pain to rise and give it space and form, it’s funny how much gets released. In fact, when I look at how I felt then and how I feel now, I see just how much I’ve let go, just how much lighter my outlook. I sat in that studio and wrestled with all the darkness, all of those clawing beasts that kept me unhappy and confused and stuck, and I let them live in songs. And as songwriting goes, there must be a counterpoint to the darkness, and therefore sometimes you find redemption.

From the blog www.blissanddrumming.com, Clementine reads this piece. image source: https://www.flickr.com/photos/aussiegall/ *** And what kind of limitations do we project on others in order to keep ourselves feeling safe and knowing? I had a dear friend once who was 30 years older than me, and I was a chameleon, changing daily in my direction. Every time I thought I would shock him with some new revelation, he would register no surprise, no concern, just an open-hearted exuberance for whatever wonky idea I came up with. It was so nourishing to know that he accepted me, no matter what Clem iteration met him that day. How can we express this unconditional support for those in our lives? When we hear ourselves speak and we are speaking limitation and fear of change, can we catch the words and transform them? My friend wants a change of career or relationship, the young person takes a surprising turn of interest. When we express support for others we give ourselves a break, too, give ourselves permission to ch

From the blog www.blissanddrumming.com, Clementine reads this piece. *** It’s an intangible thing, this feeling of belonging to place. I have always reveled in being peripatetic, and my life as a musician is a glory to that. For years I have traveled down roads and spent time in cities new to me. I have played in all states but one, and as I arrive in each place my imagination runs wild. Perhaps this city will draw me in, ring a bell of familiarity and catch me mysteriously in its lovely web. The Carolinas, Minnesota, Sedona, Wisconsin, Chicago, Oregon… all have held this fantasy in my heart. What would be like to set down roots in a place in which I know no one, a place with no connection to any part of my life up until now? I admire the brave immigrant who moves to a place knowing nothing of it. I feel the thrill of discovery when I imagine that. Through all of that, sitting here, I realize how much I appreciate this land, this state, this coast as connected to something deep in my cells that feels like co

From the blog www.blissanddrumming.com, Clementine reads this piece. *** First off I will say, so there’s no misunderstanding, I love you. This is not love that needs something from you, or is some sort of burden or expectation you need to carry around with you. I love you with our common heart. Common molecules, common history, common planet, common energy. We are One. I know this is not a popular belief these days with so much side-choosing, but it’s a fact. My love for you is the same energy that lies underneath the love I have for my self and for my family and my pets and my place of manifestation. Love, at the core of myself, this energy shared with you. Also, I love your music. Your baked goods. The silly things you say and the way you make me laugh. Your capacity for compassion overwhelms me. Your ability to create beauty fills my heart with wonder. You are creative and magnificent and I am blown away at how you fix things, and how you help.

This is a short meditation to let go of physical pain that arises. Please visit www.patreon.com/clemthegreat for weekly meditations and other personal meditation and energy healing resources.

A quick 10-Minute Meditation! Check out www.patreon.com/clemthegreat for these to be delivered to your inbox weekly!