Ms. Understood

        One of my biggest fears is that of being misunderstood. Knowing, in my heart, what my intent was, but then the impact of my actions creating undesirable emotions and/or consequences. For someone else and for me. It’s unavoidable that this will happen from time to time. For me, though, it pushes very big, very painful buttons.
        The installation of these buttons began in childhood. Even as a kid, I was aware, arguably hyper-aware, of my intent. That was probably a product of Catholicism (the old “god knows what you’re thinking and is always watching” spiel) and a natural introspection that I’ve always had. I could bullshit myself as much as the next boy, but I instinctively always knew when I was doing so, and I would usually cop to it if I were called on it. Unusual for a ten year old, but that’s how I was.
        While this attribute of intense self awareness and introspection has served me very well as an adult, possessing it as a kid made being a child much less....childlike. It contributed a lot to my less-than-care-free attitude as a kid. That and being told that if I wasn’t constantly careful, life as I know it could be over any second.
        My folks, god bless them, employed the Scare The Living Crap Out Of The Kid With Potential Dire Consequences technique of teaching me to be careful. It worked, but the price was awfully fuckin’ high. I could have used some more reckless abandonment as a kid. In some ways, I’ve made up for it as an adult, but it would have been a much less anxious childhood if I wasn’t constantly reminded that certain doom awaited me should I ever take my eye off the ball.
        Here’s a perfect example. We all know that kids have to be careful handling knives. Even butter knives. But in my family, the warning went something like this: “Be careful with that knife. If it slips out of your hand, you could poke both eyes out, blinding you for the rest of your life.” When it came to climbing trees, this was heard more than once: “Watch out climbing that tree. If you fall, you might break your neck and end up in a wheelchair. Permanently.” To a kid, the fear of being blind or completely immobile was about as bad as it got. I’m surprised I didn’t develop acute cases of aichmophobia (fear of knives) or dendrophobia (fear of trees) as an adult. I do, however, have spinomalophobia, which is a fear of wheelchairs. I’m kidding. I made that word up.
        Let me come off this tangent and get back to being misunderstood. If I combine my hyper-awareness of my intent with the reality that, being “bad” or making mistakes of judgement (which kids often do) often meant being mercilessly shamed, I can see why this is such a big button for me. It was bad enough being shamed and feeling worthless. It’s even worse, though, when a kid is aware that his intent was indeed pure and good, but is being persecuted into the ground for something he never meant.
        Most kids aren’t able to understand how trying to be good can sometimes end up with them being severely punished and feeling really bad. And if that’s never explained to them, this mystery of life that we label “misunderstood” becomes a total mind fuck, which it was for me.
        Most kids don’t have the tools to separate the act of being shamed from who they are, so they take it on and feel completely worthless. Enough of these incidents following a kid’s innocent fucks up, and a child can equate making a mistake with worthlessness. To throw salt into the already festering wound, if the kid’s actions came from a good, loving place, and the results are emotionally catastrophic, then the fear of being misunderstood takes on almost phobic proportions.
        So being misunderstood becomes synonymous with shame, which is synonymous with worthlessness, which is synonymous with feeling completely suck-ass-what-the-fuck-is-the-point-I’m-no-good-even-when-I-try-to-be-let-me-jump-off-a-fuckin’-bridge. At least that’s where I can go.
        This is an old tape that still plays in my head sometimes when I’m misunderstood. It’s my responsibility to work this out, and I don’t blame anybody but myself for where this sends me. It is, however, a very dark, painful place inside of me that hasn’t seen much light. I still need plenty of work on it. The misunderstood madness is up for me right now, and I’m struggling with what it’s bringing up for me.
        I’ve done enough work on myself so that I know not to get into victim mode when I’m misunderstood. And I take full responsibility for the fact that my actions create certain impacts, even unintended ones. But I also know that whoever misinterprets my actions has some responsibility in the misinterpretation. Like most communication, it’s a combination of sender and receiver.
        What I’ve also come to realize is that a man who comes from his heart is probably more likely to be misunderstood than one who comes from his head. At some point, maybe I’ll do a whole post on that, but for now I’ll just say that that potential fact doesn’t make coming from my heart any less desirable. Maybe it just comes with the territory. People aren’t use to a man coming from there, and therefore his words and actions could often be looked upon somewhat suspiciously, and need to be explained away using more common reasoning.
        “It couldn’t be that the guy is just coming from his heart. Nah. Most guys don’t do that. Could love really be what's behind his actions? There’s no hidden agenda? I don’t know if I can really trust that. He’s probably full of shit.” Who’s problem is that? If any of us have any hope of being better understood, it’s all of ours.


©2009 Clint Piatelli. All Rights (and a completely misunderstood amount of wrongs) Reserved.

Wooden Warrior

Note: This is an essay about drumming that I wrote while I attended UCLA in the summer of 2006. It's a bit of a departure from what I usually blog about, but I really like the piece and it's fun to mix it up once in a while. Hope you dig it.

        Long and slender, honed from a hickory tree somewhere in upstate Vermont, bearing the scars of a hundred thousand collisions, a single drumstick lies in repose next to it’s partner. The pair are identical twins, but like all identical twins, upon closer inspection, they reveal glaring dissimilarities. Both sticks are of the same make and model. But the one on the left is new, and hasn’t been used. No marks mar its perfectly smooth surface. The one on the right, though, has seen many nights of battle.
        The grizzled warrior and the green wanna-be. They were both created precisely the same for the exact same purpose. But one is a seasoned veteran, a go-to guy with the strength and the guts to get the job done, with the wounds to prove it. The other is as yet untested, unscathed, and absent of any je ne sais quoi. It has yet to fulfill its purpose. Its only purpose. The two wait together, alone, on the head of a drum.
        The responsibility of a drumstick is seldom appreciated, and that is because of its perceived transience; that is, if one breaks or slips out of hand, there’s another one to replace it. While that remains true, it doesn’t take more than a small shift in perspective to awaken you to a stick’s importance. Simply imagine a drummer trying to play without them. No sticks, no drums. No drums, no band. No band, no music. No music, no nothin’. A new definition in Webster’s New Dictionary of Modern Music should read: “Drumstick; the simplest piece of equipment that will, should it permanently fail, bring an entire evening of musical expression to its knees.”
        A drumstick endures a tremendous amount of constant abuse yet remains functional. Particularly in the genre of rock and roll, where volume, power, and intensity, dictate, to a substantial degree, the music’s appeal. And nowhere are power, volume, and intensity more sinisterly demanded than in the role of the drumstick.
        From the moment a stick is set into motion, it enters the strange and marvelous musical battlefield of rock drumming; one part creative expression, one part exhausting workout, one part psychotherapy, one part focused aggression. Playing the drums in this environment is as physically, mentally, and creatively challenging as any performance art form. Constantly in motion, a drummer’s limbs act as the conduit for his energy; energy born in his heart, focused by his mind, stored in his body, and explosively released through his arms and legs. And the only thing between a drummer’s hands and his instrument are his sticks.
        Hitting a drum demands plenty from a stick. But the true brutality comes from hitting the cymbals. Built like weapons, cymbals are sharp, heavy disks of metal, and they’re made to be hit hard. No other musical apparatus shares these attributes. They are the only instruments that can be thrown with any accuracy from fifty feet and kill you if they hit you. They’re like sharp, giant metal Frisbees.
        Many drummers tilt their cymbals towards them, and hit them with glancing blows. Cymbal manufacturers and technicians alike recommend this, for this method supposedly produces the best sound and also prolongs the life of the cymbal. But like some drummers, especially rock drummers, I am of a different school. My cymbals do not have much appreciable tilt; they face me pretty much edge on, so I hit them pretty much edge on. Music snobs will sometimes remind me that striking a cymbal in this fashion does not necessarily produce the most volume or the best sound from the instrument. The self-appointed musical aristocracy will occasionally go so far as to frown upon the practice. My retort to such drivel is that there’s no right or wrong way hit a cymbal, because how you hit is part of what gives you your own sound, your own style, indeed your individuality. How you hit a drum or cymbal is one of those intangibles that remain outside the parameters of technique and form. And besides, it feels great to hit a cymbal edge on. And that’s why we play music. Because of how it feels. That usually shuts them up.
        When a cymbal is tilted towards the drummer, the blow of the stick is deflected over a relatively wide area. More of the stick hits more of the cymbal, like the palm of your hand coming down flat on a table. When the cymbal lays edge on, however, the physics are quite different.
        Imagine taking the table, tilting it on its side so that the top is perpendicular to the floor, and now hitting the edge of it with the palm of your hand. Very little of your hand hits the table, and very little of the table gets hit. But the force is the same. This focusing of force into a smaller area causes much greater stress on both the table (the cymbal) and your hand (the stick).
        The majority of this force is brunted by the stick. With each blow, the stick receives a small battle scar, a proud symbol of its strength and purpose. After many of these hits, and many scars, the structural integrity of the stick begins to weaken. But like a secretly injured quarterback who’s in pain but still performs at the top of his game, the stick plays on. Many thousands of hits later, the stick is splintering with every blow, minute shards of wood flying off of it like the spurting blood of a pummeled boxer. Around the drums lies a splattering of sawdust, more silent evidence of countless brutal assaults. The casual observer might surmise that I had spent my time cutting planks of wood with a circular power saw, where sawdust is an inevitable by-product, instead of creating music.
        Cymbals are struck tens of thousands of times in a night’s performance, from a variety of angles and through the entire range of force; from glancing blows to heavy handed hits. I like to employ a fair amount of theatrics in my playing. A technically simple but visually effective maneuver is to raise one or both arms high above my head en route to executing a cymbal crash. Raising the arms high over the head is largely for dramatic purposes, because I don’t strike through the cymbal. Instead, as the arms are coming down, the elbows bend and the energy gets transferred to the wrists. The motion is similar to cracking a whip. The power comes from the whipping motion through the elbow and wrist, not the shoulder. But it looks good. And it feels great.
        Given the choice, I’ll always pick up a used stick as opposed to a brand new one. There’s something comforting about using a stick that’s seen some action, like an old pair of running sneakers that are past their peak but not yet over the hump of decline, and still feel great on your feet. When I look at one of my sticks that’s adorned with the remnants of battle, I see all the hits, I feel all the action, and I connect.
        My stick is an old friend who I’ve been through a lot with. It reminds me why I do this. It makes me feel proud that I’ve created so much music and moved people with nothing more than my sweat, my imagination, my creativity, my drums, my cymbals, and this old piece of wood.


©2006 Clint Piatelli. All Rights (and hundreds of thousands of brutally aggressive collisions between drumsticks and cymbals) Reserved.