Coming Back To Me... SeanGeek

When it comes to playing music, I have a fair amount of insecurity. It still feels like a fallacy when I say that I am a musician. I see musicians as true royalty. They create emotions and feelings, or more properly, turn our own emotions and feelings on. They concisely shape stories, crafted in small dense time capsules of 2½ to 5 minutes long. Each of these songs have the ability to take you back in time, to key moments in our lives, awakening all our senses in pure recollection: your first crush, your first rebellion, your first adult moment, your first win, your first loss. The pure craft of creating all of those moving parts and making them fit together into that perfect song that can purely capture a single moment in your life, is pure genius and pure madness. Am I a musician? I sure hope so, but those are lofty heights.

(And please don’t get this confused with the other “musicians” out there that are created, packaged, produced and put out there, that have all of their parts scripted for them. I am talking about the real musicians that master their instruments AND craft their own music, creating masterpieces with their own two hands.) 

A few years ago, I made a conscious change. Although I had played a variety of different musical styles I had yet to play heavier music as a frontman. Although I began as a drummer, and I did front another couple of projects, I had more often been the drummer and singer in bands I was in. I found a heavier band to audition for and decided to take a break from drumming. I was going all in.

During that time I played on my kit less and less and gave it up altogether. I could always come back to it later. I rocked out, learned some new skills, played a lot of shows. Hell, the band did very well for itself, too. We actually got up to some good up there.

Now it was time for another change. The band had finished what it had set out to do. Now it was time to get back behind a drumkit again. Logistically it was still an issue. I picked up an electronic kit despite an initial strong aversion to it. It would allow me to play and not blow my kids and wife out of the house

.

I was nervous and afraid to try this out. I likely had accumulated a lot of rust. Before I had taken my hiatus from the drumkit, I had finally been comfortable enough to say that I was a darn good drummer. Now I would be back to square one.

I stared at the new kit, butterflies fluttering in my stomach. I took a deep breath, stepped behind the kit and then sat down. I held the sticks in my hand, popped in my earbuds, queued my music player, and turned the kit on. Here we go. 

The first few minutes were a little awkward but soon the magic took over. I was able to handle the standard beats and then some more complicated stuff. About twenty minutes in I found my groove and began playing instinctively.

I played for an hour. I wasn’t tired. I was wired. I was awake. I was alive.

I was back.

~SeanGeek