Bliss and Drumming: The Slow Enlightenment of the Hard Rock Drummer

Bliss and Drumming: The Slow Enlightenment of the Hard Rock Drummer

By Bliss and DrummingReligion & Spirituality
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Bliss and Drumming: The Slow Enlightenment of the Hard Rock Drummer episodes

  • Here There and Everywhere
    From the blog http://www.blissanddrumming.com, Clementine reads this piece.
    ***
    I love a band. Being one of a small group forging a way through the landscape, experiencing days and nights together. The intangible connection outsiders intuit. The mystery of the moment after everything has been loaded and the van door shuts and what happens as we drive away. I love the animal protection that forms in a band, and the secret language that develops.
    This secret language – music – connects us in a profound way. The group sometimes comes closest together when attacked by the outside world, as a family does. We can struggle internally until something happens to the whole, and then we bind together, forgetting all pettiness. Buzz Osborne from the Melvins, when asked how to keep a band together for so long, said: Find a common enemy.
    9 min
  • The Power to Know
    From the blog http://www.blissanddrumming.com, Clementine reads this piece.
    ***
    I’ve been thinking about power lately, as I watch the world struggle. To begin such a conversation, I can only reference what I know. So who better to illustrate my thoughts about power than John Bonham.
    Bonham was a powerful drummer, no question. He was powerful in all the ways our culture references power: heavy-hitting, with an ability to let fly a thunder relentless and pounding.
    All true, but I would argue that Bonham’s real power, and the reason he is beloved by so many, is in the subtleness of his groove. The reason Zeppelin songs feel the way they do, that exquisite “something” that has been chased by rock bands for half a century, is the translation on drums of the delicacy of power.
    13 min
  • Better You And Me
    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.
    16 min
  • Parrot In A Loquat Tree
    From the blog http://www.blissanddrumming.com, Clementine reads this piece.
    ***
    My window seat lives in this little porch room off the kitchen. I imagine that one day the whole room will topple over in an earthquake, set on stilts as it is. We’ve got bedrock beneath us, and the house has weathered such rattling since the early 1900s, but still, I have a plan to leap into the kitchen and roll beneath the table should the shaking begin.
    You’re supposed to practice disaster routes so the shock of crisis doesn’t leave you paralyzed. I don’t go as far as leaping around in here and spoiling my comfortable perch, but I spend a little time imagining the tuck and roll before I forget all that and fall in love, all over again, with the breeze.
    13 min
  • The Delight Of Strangers
    From the blog http://www.blissanddrumming.com, Clementine reads this piece.
    ***
    I know I keep remarking on this, but the birds in the gardens outside my window are really going to town again, under the paused skies of the early morning storm. 6AM is our time, the pug and me. We’re fortunate that built into this small apartment is enough room for solitude, but it’s still nice to have the mornings to ourselves. We’re the ones who take advantage of the pre-dawn hours. The old man caretakes the after-midnight ones.
    Enough space is important, since this is our reality now, gratefully sequestered behind these walls most of the time. When I wake in the morning, it takes some time to remember that reality looks different than it did not too long ago. Now and then it dawns on me how profound of a shift this is, and I marvel at the changes. As the days unfold, now and then I remember that there seems to be no end in sight. That’s always a shock, the lack of the finite.
    13 min
  • Arguing About Death In A Laundromat
    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.
    14 min
  • Sheltering In Place
    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.
    14 min
  • Preparing Myself To Live
    From the blog http://www.blissanddrumming.com, Clementine reads this piece.
    ***
    Death is always on my mind, but in the best way. As we drag through the muck and mire of caring for an elderly relative, I often say to the old man, listen. Should it come down to you making these decisions for me, please just stick me in the cheapest, easiest place possible and leave me, go, live your life.
    I have spent years cultivating a way to be fine, anywhere. I lived for a year in a van, sleeping on floors and in truck stops. I have held my breath in showers in which I wore tennis shoes to be safe. I have had to slumber on disgusting green room couches and to depend on bathrooms that should have been condemned. I’ll be fine in a lo-fi rest home, for sure.
    16 min
  • Drummer As Delicate Flower
    From the blog http://www.blissanddrumming.com, Clementine reads this piece.
    ***
    This is where I’ve arrived with it all: peace, love, one-heart, common ground. A belief that separateness keeps us enemies, keeps us trapped in our suffering, keeps us simmering in a despairingly low vibration, keeps us choosing war and hatred. You and I are of the same consciousness, manifest to learn from each other. In fact, even the idea of “other” is mis-knowing, and keeps us in pain.
    Who wants to listen to all that baloney? Happiness writes white. Language falls short and words struggle to bring us anywhere. Walking with my vision on these truths is all I can do, I can’t convince anyone of it.
    21 min
  • Ode To My Friend, Time
    From the blog http://www.blissanddrumming.com, Clementine reads this piece.
    ***
    I have reflected some times, where the hell am I trying to go so fast? I have to be the first one anywhere, and where am I eventually going? Do I really want to be first? There is a vivid, funny memory in my mind of sitting in a living room with a group of children, and the adult saying that we were going to go outside to play, and leaping up and running outside to be first, only to bounce off of the sliding glass door. That’s me, on a spring propelling me to be first in line, no matter the consequences.
    20 min

About Bliss and Drumming: The Slow Enlightenment of the Hard Rock Drummer

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Clementine Moss is a dynamic creative force—a drummer, songwriter, singer, musician, and writer whose artistic journey continues to inspire and evolve.