AN AWESOME TEEN

by Connie Cook Smith

(The event described below took place during half-time at the last basketball game of the 1962-63 season in Canton, Illinois, when I was a freshman. I wrote it up as an essay assignment three years later.)

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1966...

Ah! As the song says, what a day for a daydream!

Everything is gold and blue and green and crystal clear. A power mower hums hypnotically in the distance, and the scent of new-mown grass drifts languorously on the fresh spring air.

Suddenly, classroom activity is a routine bore. I gaze out the window and sit back and sigh as my mind takes flight to my very own never-never land.

One of the latest tunes bounces through my thoughts. It has a heavy off-beat and just the right touch of cymbal. But if I were playing it, I’d toss in a little more tom-tom. That low, cool tone of a deep drum echoes in my ears, and suddenly, I remember...

1963...

The vast, darkened gymnasium looms before me, and the din of the crowd swiftly decreases. On either side of me is a dark sea of curious faces, contemplating the coming spectacle. The flickering flames of fire batons cast weird, gigantic shadows. The silence is complete.

Suddenly, a crash like thunder cracks the heavy stillness, diminishes to almost nothing, then rises to the boiling point of sound. The best timpani roll I ever played announces our ensemble! The drummers beside me take up the booming beat, and the fire batons twirl slowly through space.

Then faster and louder we play; faster and higher fly the batons. The deafening crescendo of throbbing drums is drowned out by tidal waves of applause -- not once, not twice, but three thrilling times! Yet nothing exists but drums and fire – the former filling every crevice, every corner of the cavernous room with a jungle pulse; the latter casting eerie, whirling hot light.

Suspended in the timelessness of the world of sound, every being hangs breathlessly onto each thudding note, until the final rhythmic roar echoes into oblivion. A hundredth of a second transcends the gap of sudden silence to an explosion of a thousand clapping hands, the lights flood the room, the bell rings – the bell rings? Oh, good grief, the bell IS ringing! It’s time for my next class.

I vaguely wonder what happened in class while I was "away," then I get up and shuffle down the hall at least an inch above the floor. All around me I hear percussion – banging doors like rim shots, pencil sharpeners like ratchets, laughing voices like the ring of the glockenspiel. And always, the plodding feet, beating out the rhythm of life.

That night at home, I mechanically open a book to start the assignment, but I find myself staring dumbly at meaningless pages. Trying to recall the instructions, I unconsciously begin tapping out a tempo on the table. I suddenly realize that I’ve discovered a new beat, so I pound away on the table-top for fifteen minutes, hoping that some other distraction will soon present itself.

I have, by this time, definitely decided that the assignment is the nastiest thing in existence, and therefore, I avoid the whole book like the plague. Luckily, Terri calls, my fellow drummer, and what begins as a discussion of the assignment ends up as a friendly argument over the values of rudimentary drumming. To settle the matter, she carts a drum to my house where I have one already set up, and off on a lark, we enter a wild world of noise.

The entire day turned out to be one long daydream, a beautiful variation from the mediocrity of routine. I slept soundly that night, oblivious of all responsibility and at peace with the world. Oh, and incidentally, I dashed off the abandoned assignment in study hall the next day – it turned into this essay! – and the teacher never knew the difference. I got an A!

(The fellow performers of my percussion composition, "Bwana Beat," were Terri Lawver Avery, Dave Lewis, and Eddie Hogan.)

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If you'd like to hear this composition which has evolved into 9/8 polyrhythms and more -- thanks to my dear husband and partner Mark Smith -- we recorded it before he suffered brain surgery and called it "Drum Dialogue Between Earth and Humanity."

I play Mother Earth on timpani, Mark plays argumentative humanity on trap set -- and we don't mind saying, it's a thrilling drum duet that crescendos to conclusion in ecstatic synchronicity! You can get it on our "Prairie Dolphins" album, on CD or cassette tape.