Rock Your Boat Baby

“Rock ’n’ rollers are....the noise makers, the law breakers, the bottom-bashing fornicators.” 
                 - from Pirate Radio
 
“And we make no apologies for it.”
                 - from SuperFly Clint Piatelli

A while ago, I caught Van Halen perform on the Jimmy Kimbal show. The band shut down Hollywood Boulevard and performed live, in the street, on a huge stage. A true rock n roll event. The song aired was “Hot For Teacher”. 

Crowd shots showed 6000 people, none of whom were shaking, head banging, dancing, or otherwise moving. They were all standing still, smart phones held with both hands overhead. Not even their heads were moving, lest the vibration shake their camera and ruin their footage.

I get it. Those 25 and under have grown up in a culture where virtually everything is video recorded; where the message is that it's more important to digitally capture what’s happening than to viscerally experience it. And, truth be told, if us fifty-somethings had access to smartphones when we were young, I’m sure we would have responded similarly. 

But at the same time, I know that we are missing something when, in the midst of the magic of music, we, by conditioned default, choose physical immobility over movement, focusing our attention on the recording of an experience rather than the living of it. When we choose the more primal choice of throwing our bodies and our hearts into an experience, we create opportunities to profoundly shift ourselves. When we instead placate ourselves and become little more than a glorified witness, we take ourselves one more step out of it, and lots of us are more than a few steps out of it even before we hit the “record” button, because we have become desensitized, guarded, and otherwise disconnected from our hearts, virtual strangers to our deeper selves.

I’m not admonishing or criticizing video recording. Personally, I love being in front of a camera, and I love capturing footage. I’m simply sharing an observation, opening a path, and questioning normalized behavior.

Maybe it’s a question of balance, of mindfulness, and of passion. Capture a little footage, but never forget that we’re here to throw ourselves - body, heart, and soul - into an event. Into Our Life. The phone as video recorder has become another distraction, maybe even an experiential replacement, for our minds; instead of being in our heads, per usual, we can be in our phones. Maybe that even offers some real time relief from being upstairs so much. 

I’m offering another way to live beyond being talking heads. Drop into your heart. Way down. Allow yourself to Feel The Music. Connect to a full body, full heart, full being response. Maybe you can do that while you’re recording, but the footage is gonna be damn shaky. Can you live with that? What’s more important? A stable recording, or having a booty-shaking-heart-quaking-physio-emotional experience?

Even though we drummers are sitting down, we move our bodies as much as or more than anyone else on stage. Maybe that’s one reason I am so physically and emotionally connected to music, why I can’t sit still when I hear a song I love. Maybe that’s why I often sing, regardless of where I am, when the music talks to me. I’m just talking back. I’m having a conversation with my lover. I’m making love, fully clothed, in my car, in CVS, wherever, with Mistress Music. 

And I don’t even have to change my underwear when I’m done.

 

©2018 Clint Piatelli, MuscleHeart LLC, and Red F Publishing. All rights reserved. 

The Lessons of Hedonism

Precious gems, minerals, and Mother Earth herself, are all formed by heat, fire, pressure, upheaval, and complex cataclysmic processes.

So, in many ways, are we.

My privileged and beautiful existence has been starkly punctuated by plenty of trauma. Trauma that has partially molded me, formed me, and shaped me, into who and what I am today.

It’s taken me a long time to wrap my arms around that; to fully embrace the traumatic events of my life, not under a veil of cynicism and anger, but as a process of transformation.

Strongly hedonistic by nature, my mercurial proclivity is fundamentally drawn to the indulgence of pleasure, sometimes regardless of consequence. Give it to me, give it all to me, and give it to me, right now. Fuck the torpedoes. 

The hard lesson remains that life is not all about that endless pursuit of pleasure. Although I never want to lose that wanderlust, it does not define me. It will not continue to be The Tarot of My Life. I’ve tried that. The journey is fun. Then it’s not. I know where it ultimately leads, if given full, unbridled reign. And it’s a dead end.

Pleasures of the flesh: oh baby, do I love those. Pleasures of the ego: well, those feel damn sweet. Pleasures of all of that which is outside of myself; you will hear no complaints from moi. But all of those have a shelf life. And a rather short one. Which means that, if unchecked, my life simply becomes about looking for the next buzz.

These days, my life is no longer just a vehicle through which I can satisfy my desires. My life is expanding into a vehicle through which I can take those experiences and teach others the lessons I’ve learned, the insights I’ve gathered, the wisdom I’ve gleaned, and the knowledge of self I’ve stepped into. 

I’m glad to have been there. I’m grateful that I know what it feels like to go way too far. I’m thrilled that it has taught me so much. I bask in the wisdom that, such precious lessons are meant to be shared.

We teach what we most need to learn.

Ay-fucking-men.

Many of us go through life never embracing such wanton desires. Many of us never know what it’s like to push the envelope so far that it no longer resembles an envelope. If I’ve been on the other side, it’s because I’m meant to share the joys and pitfalls and wisdom of such a traverse. My journey is thus not just a vein attempt at self-pleasure. It’s a also a tool to teach something to the world, so that I can contribute something to the lives of others. 

The message I keep getting, over and over again, through all my recent upheavals, is that Life is now asking me to Go Big. To share even more. To Step it Up. 

The last two years have been a barefoot walk though fire. Like gems, like precious stones, like the very bedrock under our feet, I am constantly being formed by fire, by turmoil, and by upheaval. By the embrace of mother earth and father sky. By the very heavens and by the very ground itself.

My metaphysical experiences of both crying aloud whilst burning through a volcano, and smiling hysterically as I careen down a smoothly paved road in a Ferrari whilst getting a hummer, have taught me more than I ever realized.

Rumi said that “The wound is where the light enters”. I would add that, once the light enters, it becomes our calling to beam that light back into the world. Only then, can we truly connect. Only then, do we create from our hearts. Only then do we love in the way of the divine. 

©2018 Clint Piatelli, MuscleHeart LLC, and Red F Publishing. All rights reserved.

Brethren

Over….thirty years ago

I found myself a tribe

At a college outside of Philly

That had an Augustinian vibe

Corr Hall, t’was the incubus

A dorm, just for Freshman men

The bonds were formed, tight as fuck

It’s been one wild ride since then

Sophomore year, most of us lived

In Sullivan Third Floor West

Those who didn’t, just came on by

Always giving us their mayhemic best

Our dorm wing, oh baby did it reek

Of beer, of pizza, of pussy, of dope

The Boys Were Back In Town you know

And mama, we pushed the envelope

Third Floor West was a bastion of testosterone

A seething cauldron of Mayhem, Noise, and Madness

I played my drums at 2 AM

Fuck ‘Em if they wanted to rest

We partied, we laughed, we were very naughty boys

We even formed a band

The Albino Skunks, my brainchild

The Best Band In The Land

Skullduggery! Debauchery! Tomfoolery! Outlandishness! 

That was our stock in trade

But we were all so genuine and lovable

Man, we had it made

Mole, Murph, Charlie, Harry, Hawk

Coons, Billy Bud, Mike, Cage, DoucheMan, Prep

Bobby, Timmy, SuperFly, Triple Jay, Andy

Who did I forget?

The next two years, The Skunk House was the epicenter

A Total Dive of ill repute, scandal, and fun

We defaced her walls, nearly burnt her down, 

Billy Bud painted giant murals to the envy of everyone

Today, years later, my life’s sweetest sugar

Is that we still make time for each other

The dance we do

Can not be described

By any other word but “Brother”

In every group 

There has to be

A romantic, a poet, a soul

One who will always say The Unsaid

To help us ROCK AND ROLL

“I Love You KnuckleHeads With Every Fucking Fiber of My Heart.”

     - SuperFly Clint

        March 15, 2018

©2018 Clint Piatelli, MuscleHeart LLC, and Red F Publiahing. All rights reserved.

Christmas Eve At Cusa's

There was a period of my life where I recall a consistent series of very special Christmas Eves. It started in the mid eighties and continued all the way to about 2001. These nights are like a series of living snapshots, frozen in time, etched forever in my heart and mind.

Between the ages of about twenty and fifty-three, a group of us celebrated Christmas Eve At Cusa's. Cusa is my oldest and dearest friend. We met in high school, and have had a platonic bromance ever since. We get each other. Even when we don't. We've had our ups and downs, our periods of distance, our spells of not even talking. But we find our way back to each other. Because he is simply too important not to be in my life.

On Christmas Eve, a gaggle of us would gather at Cusa's house and celebrate the night before Christmas with not-so-reckless abandon. We would be up until three or four in the morning. We would exchange gifts, celebrate our relationships, drink and eat until we were full, and share our love for each other. The night was all at once too quick and seemed to last forever. 

I would usually get there early, living a scant fifteen minutes from my friend, and help with the prep. Cusa's mom, affectionately known as "The Fairy Food Mother", would make enough grub to feed a small army. Cusa's pad was the bottom floor of a two-family house in Boston. Upstairs would be a gathering of Cusa's family. Downstairs, his friends. The two crowds would eventually mix. Our crowd would roll in anywhere between 8PM and 2AM. It was a festival of love, every bit, if not more, as joyous and special as Christmas Eve as a kid. 

Come to think of it, it was way more enjoyable than my Christmas Eve's as a kid. As a youth, we spent Christmas Eve at My aunty Philly's house in East Boston. As great as it was to see all my cousins, aunts, and uncles, there were serious drawbacks. First of all was a severe lack of space. The apartment was filled far beyond capacity, and smelled like fish (the traditional Italian Christmas Eve dinner). It was butts to nuts all night, and, until I was old enough to leave the place on my own with my other cousins and go for walks around the neighborhood, (at about fourteen), the place was positively claustrophobic. 

Space was at such a premium that the only bedroom in the house (with the only room with a bed you could lye on when you got tired, which happened at about 10:06 when you were eleven and younger) was used for all the coats. So if your were tired, there was literally no place to stretch out, with coats piled high and deep. There was no room at all to play, or move for that matter, which is crucial to those in the single digit age bracket. I can say, and I speak for most of my cousins of approximately the same age, that Christmas Eve was, at best, a mixed blessing.

Once Cusa invited me and my twin over his place and we could actually leave my aunt's on own volition, however, Christmas Eve became a very special and wonderful event. One of those rare nights you look forward to all year.

Between the mid-eighties and early 2000's, it was my favorite night of the year. Most of my close friends and eventually my siblings and nephews were there, and the atmosphere was light, loving, and joyous. Exchanging gifts under Cusa's tree at about midnight was the highlight of the evening. Watching those you love open gifts you picked out, just for them, was magic. I run with a very creative, imaginative, artsy tribe. One year, our friend Ron surprised us all with full color, poster size drawings (from his own talented hand) as all of us dressed as the superheroes we created - based on own personalities - that Halloween. Another year, Cusa gave all the guys fully functioning Blow Guns, complete with graphite projectiles. 

At about that same time, our Christmas Mall Mayhem Day was at it's peak. Ten or more of us would spend the first Friday of December at a mall of our choosing, spending the whole day there, sipping Sambucca out of a  water bottle ("I Thirst!" Was the cry if you wanted a blast) and buying gifts (mostly, for ourselves). I built my vast library of Christmas CD's at that time as well. And Christmas Classics like "A Year Without A Santa Claus" (Heat Miser, Snow Miser), "It's A Wonderful Life", and "A Christmas Story" played on a loop in the background on Christmas Eve At Cusa's.

There was something Magic about that time of year. There is still something Magic about that time of year. There always will be. Give me loved ones. Give me a space to Celebrate ourselves; give me a space to celebrate our love for each other; give me you open heart, your open mind, your truest self. And I'm one happy camper. 

©2017 Clint Piatelli, MuscleHeart LLC, and Red F Publishing. All rights reserved.

Drums & Girls

Drums are the inanimate musical objectified manifestation of Girls. Because, how I feel and think about Drums, is pretty much how I feel and think about Girls. 

 Even the word "Girls", which I consciously chose over the word "Women", is beautiful to me. It speaks to an innocence and a purity of beauty that the word "Women" does not have. It has nothing to do with age. It has to do with a very personal and intimate literary and emotional charge. 

Drums and Girls: I love them both. Unconditionally. They speak to my heart. They ignite a passion and a fire and a wanderlust. They are both so fuckin' beautiful; powerful, magnificent creations that capture my imagination. They are both wonderfully complicated, and at the same time, incredibly simple. All you have to do, really, is Love Them With All Your Heart; With All You Have. Simple, but not easy. Just like a lot of life.

Drums and Girls are at once primitive, and of this age. Sexy as fuck. I am at once their equal, their master, and their slave. I walk beside them. I walk in front of them. I walk behind them. What's the fuckin' difference? Because, no matter where I walk, I am devoted to them; to their energy, to what they bring to this world, to what they bring to my life.

At about the same time that Girls became really important to me (around twelve), so did Drums. Drums provided a "Motherly" energy; a feminine, unconditionally loving, nurturing, caring, responsive, powerful sense of belonging; something that I never felt before I started playing. Drums gave me an emotional anchor, an emotional outlet, that saved my ass. That saved my life. 

 I was a pretty awkward adolescent. So I didn't have much play with the opposite sex. But, when I played Drums, I got a response. When I spoke to them, they listened. And they spoke back. I gave to them, and they gave to me. That dialogue changed my life. 

But there was more. It went beyond me and drums. It extended to the world at large. Other people, who heard and who saw me play drums, who heard, who saw, who experienced, my energetic cries of passion and fire and love; those people spoke back to me too. With smiles. With dance. With love. With something I never got from anybody else when I put myself out there. And so, I fell in love with Drums. The same way I fell in love with Girls. How couldn't I?

If you have ever seen me play drums, you know what an emotive maniac I am. I don't so much play the drums as I do make love to them; as I do make love with them. Which goes a long way in explaining the look of joy and ecstasy plastered on my face whenever I play. Especially at a gig with a band. 

As much as I love playing drums for the sake of playing drums, when I do it with a band, with other people, it ramps the whole paradigm up to another quantum level. To a level I can't get to by myself. Ultimately, I connect. 

Drumming with a band is like making love to Girl I'm in love with. 

Yup. Just like it in fact.

 ©2017 Clint Piatelli, MuscleHeart LLC, and Red F Publishing. All rights reserved.