Learning rhythm

You know when you see a group of people participating in some sort of rhythmic activity and one person is swaying the wrong way?  Or one person is clapping on the off beat?  Or one person is singing off key?

Usually they are overly enthusiastic, clueless as to the fact that they aren't acting in unison with the group, and white. 

I spent a good portion of my life being this person.  It took years of social conditioning for me to realize that I am functionally tone deaf.  

It's ok.  I've accepted my reality. 

I thrive on other forms of self expression, while appreciating dance and music and rhythm from a safe distance. 

I really consider it a service to all of humanity. 

It feels like watching a bird fly.  I cannot fathom how it lifts from the ground and soars through the air.  I cannot flap my arms fast enough to join it.  I can merely look up in awe.

This is my relationship with music, rhythm, and dance.

Once I started my graduate program I began to understand how this relationship developed to its current state. 

I took courses in multiple intelligences, brain development, and social/emotional intelligence that gave me the proper framework to understand my connection and my disconnection to rhythm.  I was learning a language to give words to feelings that I could never express. 

After studying the human brain and how it develops through childhood, I realize that I missed the window of development that would have connected the neuropaths in my brain to help me learn rhythmically.  

One of the most important lessons that I learned in this realm was that I have an internal desire, even a need, for rhythm.  It is scientifically proven that rhythm helps to create internal order in human beings. 

So now, at 32, I can't keep a beat.  But the innate need to identify with rhythm has still been written in my soul, just as it is written in yours. 

It's a universal language that every human shares, even if some of us dysfunctionally express it.

I think that I've always understood this truth about people and about myself on some level.  I have a deep respect for the traditional music of other cultures. I am fascinated by the art of dance, specifically if it is tribal and there are stories being told. 

None of this head knowledge helped me keep a beat or sing in tune, but it helped me understand a language without words.  

It helped me understand why I connect with rhythm, even if I cannot connect my hands to make an acceptable form for myself.

Even more valuable than the cognitive understanding of these concepts was the way that they translated in my life. 

As a part of a drumming circle in 2012, I was taught how to listen and identify the "spine" in the music.  I learned how to find the beat that was supporting the song and how to return to it when I get lost. 

I learned how to cope with my whiteness in public musical engagements, but more importantly, I remembered how to find my spine when I get lost in life.

I can't tell you how many times since then that I have been in the midst of chaotic situations, felt myself stray from the rhythm of my heart, and then reminded myself to find my "spine" and return to my beat. 

When I'm surrounded by the comforts of my daily life, I find my spine more readily.  I listen for my family, my friends, my vocation, and the rituals of my life and I realign myself accordingly.  

When I'm half way around the world, when my life is drastically different, it can be really difficult to hear, to align.  

I have to seek it out.  I have to, in a sense, fight for it. 

I have to quiet my soul and sit in the silence.  I have to listen intently.

I have to.

Because I know I need it.  And because I know that I can. 

I can because I know that it has been written on my soul, just as it has on yours.