Why Are You Passionate About Your Passions?
It's interesting to me to find the things in life that are so ingrained that it becomes hard to articulate your feelings about them. For some things, it's an easy task: I like to eat cereal because it's crunchy, filling, and gives me an excuse to ingest large quantities of milk. In other cases, it's a far more difficult task and I have found that to be increasingly true when it comes to talking about music.
If someone asks you to identify what you like about a song, an album, a band, what have you; you can point to the instrumentation, the vocals, the lyrics, or the overall tone to name a couple things, but even then, there are dimensions to it that can't be as easily expressed. What brought this to mind recently was a conversation I had with one of the guys who I've had the privilege of performing with as part of the Sam Brown Band as well as Menteur. We were talking about what we had been listening to lately which segued to what I liked about drumming.
In an earlier post, I mentioned that drumming felt instinctive and was fun, which is still true, but I feel like only covers some of the ground when thinking about what I like about drumming. Writing about drumming has helped me think about that more as well as how a lot of what I do is tied in with drumming, but I keep discovering more and more ways to articulate why it is that I love drumming. In the conversation I referenced earlier, I realized that another aspect of my passion is that rhythms are everywhere, in every type of music. I've tried for along time to listen to a little bit of most kinds of music and that's largely because I can glean new and interesting things from any kind of music to influence my drumming.
The same could certainly be said for most, if not all, instruments, but then it goes back to that instinctiveness that I feel for drumming because I am constantly putting things I hear into a melting pot to go along with the myriad other influences on my musicianship. I don't pick up on the same aspects of guitar or horn music, but I can make those connections between percussive elements and rhythms. My point, in general, is that music is a beautifully complex animal that I am only beginning to really understand after sinking my teeth in it for over ten years.
I hope everyone had a great and safe New Year celebration and that 2015 is already treating you well! I would also love to hear from you about how you would explain your passions; be they musical, literary, athletic, whatever they are, you can post in the comments here or shoot me an email. I hope to make 2015 a big year for Run and Drum so check back soon for updates!