The highlight of the month for me was a weekend away in Wiltshire with The School of Sacred Drumming, where I birthed my own drum and received instructions on how to make a rattle. This is part of a year long course.
I won’t go on too much, I doubt it will interest everyone. My experience was profound, from selecting the Beech wood hoop to the Red Deer rawhide which would make the drum skin and lace.
The rawhide was soaked overnight and in the morning when I retrieved mine from the water ready to start making the holes for the lace, I burst into tears. I was holding a dead animal in my hands, intimately in touch with it in a way that is impossible for me to fully articulate. Sorrow at death, joy at life, deep gratitude and curiosity, respect for that manifestation of Mother Earth energy that will become a new creation with new life and a voice different to the one it had before. It’s one of the most physically challenging processes I’ve ever undertaken, a nearly 12 hour day. Cutting the lace for the drum skin from dry rawhide was gruelling for me. It takes hours to cut in one, long, even strip like peeling an apple in one go. The lace represents your own life from birth to that point in time and as I wrestled with its inflexibility to stretch in places, it’s thinness in others and the fact it broke at one point, I was faced with lots of my own ‘stuff’, my own resistance to life, my fears, doubt and anxiety. I was also reminded of the joy of community, that it’s alright to ask for help and accept it. Although my lacing is uneven, not pretty, thick and thin and broken, I have an indestructible drum of immense strength.
