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Dating and Hand Grenades  by Che' Rippinger

Music, Men and Mediocre Mayhem

It’s fascinating to me how music ties into so much of our lives. I have a music friend, well, actually, many music friends. For some reason, I feel a kinship to musicians. Maybe it’s from my dance background and always wanting to pick the coolest tunes that would floor an audience. My music attraction is certainly not because I have any playing talent. Lord knows I’ve tried.

One of my attempts included “piano” when I was in grade school. I remember there was another girl in my class and she had the most beautiful fingers. They looked so gorgeous on the keyboard. She had beautifully shaped nails that made her hands look like a model. I remember looking at mine in comparison, and thinking, “Why aren’t mine as pretty as hers?” It’s amazing how these little life observations, especially when made at an impressionable age, stick with mental glue to our brains.  No one ever said a word. But I made that was inherently negative self-conscious judgment call on myself. Silly? You bet. But I think it’s an example of something each of us may have done at some point in our lives to drag ourselves down, voluntarily.

I gave up on piano. Not because of my pretty finger issues. But because the lessons soon ran off of my tiny electronic keyboard, and I could no longer keep up with the others on the music page.

I managed to pick up some instruments as a dancer. The castanets for flamenco lesson in a college dance class, were so exciting. But it was more fun to know how to hold them right, than actually finger a proper beat.

I tried drumming in college. Here’s a hint: try not learning things while drinking. A friend at a party taught me how to do a two handed rhythm. How cool was I to be able to do air drum to radio songs? With no actual sound to be made, I rocked!

With this kind of thinking, and drinking…well silly things can happen.

 I was at a basement party with family. I remember some instruments set up in the corner. Don’t ask what possessed me to go over and sit at someone else’s drum kit. Perhaps because I’d previously only “drummed” on a table top. Turns out, buying a set of drumsticks, does not a drummer make. I sat at this kit and was just tapping along. Very softly. It was a party, and like most things we do, I thought no one would notice. Then I heard something. A guitar. Uh… Then there was another guitar. Oh, boy. Then the drummer came up behind me to aid in some kind of actual rhythm and add in the base pedal. I was mortified and immediately traded the sticks off to him. “I have no idea what I’m doing. Here, you do this!” Like I really needed to state the embarrassingly obvious.

The funny part of this little life episode was that I ended up dating that drummer for a while. Thank goodness I couldn’t afford those long distance phone calls from college, back to another state. It seems, “long distance” romanticizes well, but also points out the real difficulties that are too big to work out in reality. I’ve since dated other musicians. Amazingly against the stereotype: working, income producing, professional ones. Wonderful guys, actually. I think maybe I relate well as a fellow creative person.

For some reason, I thought that playing a tambourine, as a backup singer in a band would be something I could do. What a great fantasy. You get to be a part of the glamour of the music scene, without having a huge amount of talent, right?!  Don’t you love naïveté?  I managed to sing for a stint in the official grade school church choir.  But, my choir days as a youngin’ got cut short. During one car ride my dad killed my sing along, announcing that there was a reason that the folks on the radio were professionals. I pretty much stopped singing after that. And I now know that a tambourine also takes a bit of talent, too.

That observation came from my more recent dancing foray into the arena of belly dance. The riq is a tambourine-like instrument that I haven’t even thought to attempt. It looks extremely complex when I watch it in the hands of others.

In my quest of becoming a better belly dancer, I thought that learning the drum would be a brilliant idea. My first teacher separated the wheat from the chaff, real fast. Even so, being excessive fiber instead of a naturally gifted musician, was not the spot I was aiming for. Being in the “dance” variation of that class didn’t instill a lot of confidence either. Pretty much ran out of that class trying to hide tears. Turns out I don’t respond well to a man getting in my face, insistently demanding, “You do KNOW what a Chiftetelli is, Don’t you?!” Uh well, not exactly. But you bet your coin scarf, that rhythm is emblazoned in my head with an automatic twitch response now.

Luckily some very nice drummers from that class took me aside to get me into their monthly practices. They said it was for all levels. Thank god, they truly were. I learned the doumbek drum rhythms. Two hands. Wahoo! I figured out some basics of some of the more complicated rhythms. You probably won’t see me doing a drum solo on stage anytime soon, but I have quite the appreciation for the musical side of the culture now. I created a life motto that originates from my doumbek learning, “Just get the dooms.” Translation: When something gets to be a little too complicated, bring it down to the simplest components. Pick the most basic one. Master that basic, and then add on the fancy stuff. 

Belly dance also got me into learning the zills. Apparently, moving eight different body parts with different rhythms and accents, isn’t nearly brain-popping enough. Zills are the little finger cymbals that dancers use. As an audience member before, I would have never known if they were merely dinging to the music. But now I know. There are patterns. And they are precise. And you’re supposed to move with them. And make it look effortless. Ha. So I’m on my 3^rd pair of zills. Turns out that “the right tool for the right job” and the “you get what you pay for” theories both work here. But as I also learned in my doumbek drumming classes with my tinny-sounding  Craigslist-acquired drum: it’s the drummer, not the drum. Read: if you’re good, you can play on anything and it sounds great. Some talented folks have tried my drum, so now I know.

Yep. Practice makes perfect. Although for some of us, a lot of practice makes us mediocre. That’s O.K. Mediocre is better than I was doing, before trying. Rock on!

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Ché Rippinger is a writer, cartoonist and relationship humorist with a heart. Please e-mail questions or comments to Che@ToucheToon.com   or visit online at www.DatingAndHandGrenades.com. Questions may be selected and edited for the column.