The best interview podcast going right now is Guy Kawasaki’s Remarkable People. This week he talked with Mark Schulman. Schulman is a drummer. Currently he tours with Pink. Well, when tours start up again. He’s also an author and speaker.
Guy asked him about the art of being a drummer. My music education began as a drummer eventually playing in the University of Cincinnati marching band with many students from the College Conservatory of Music there. I was interested.
“Don’t grip the drumsticks too tightly,” Schulman said. Holding on too tightly tenses your fingers, wrists, arms, and shoulders such that you can’t provide a smooth, driving beat. It’s a metaphor for life, he added.
My wife had never heard about the famous Malaysian Monkey Trap (probably goes under a lot of names). You place a fruit larger than the hole that the monkey reaches into the container to grab it. The monkey will not let go of the fruit in order to escape. It traps itself. She was reading Where the Red Fern Grows. They trapped raccoons the same way.
Our question for the day–to what or whom are we holding on too tightly that we are tensed, stiff, trapped? Where do we need to let go? Breathe freely? Relax and refocus?
I have a backlog of about 20 items to write for this blog. I am so far behind on my annual assigning of soccer referees that at times I am overwhelmingly discouraged about getting through the season. Our house is in disarray while we’re having the interior painted. We moved during the pandemic. Every wall was painted contractor white. I looked at the size of that project and figured we could afford a professional. Good move, except during the pandemic no one was going into other people’s houses. When my environment is in disarray, so is my focus.
Try that this weekend. I will. I need it. It’s amazing. Relax, tackle a project “Bird by Bird”, and much is accomplished.
