Spear through the heart

I've been staying on caixa recently with the Lions - trying to give it another push to try to make that slippery caixa repertoire stick in my head and get that swing better, better, BETTER.... (by "better" I hope it is clear that I mean "less sucky"). I really want to improve at it. Plus, oddly enough, I've been needed on caixa recently, because there have been several rehearsals recently when the main caixa Lions have been out of town. There's nothing like the threat of being sole caixa player to put the fear of god into you. The same thing's been happening in Axe Dide, where I'm regularly the only caixa player for fast Rio samba. So I've been chugging at it.

The groove's been getting marginally better. I'm in one of those stages now where Im thinking "Wow, I'm really improving! My swing is GREAT now!" - which I KNOW, from the past five years, means that I am about to discover that I still really suck in some unperceived but truly terrible way, and that my swing is completely horrible in some way that I can't quite hear yet, and that the next time I play in front of Fred of Monobloco, or in front of Jorge Alabe, they'll get that little smile and little head shake that means "oh, she's got it wrong in that way that gringos always get it wrong - how funny that they all do that same mistake".

Sigh. Anyway, I'm focusing now on our big Halloween gig on Friday. So there I was on caixa at Lions rehearsal on Sunday. People were chatting, I was just noodling around, quietly practicing some little chatter fragments super-slow and super-quiet, off in my own world. Off on my own. Then suddenly -

A caixa EXPLODED into a Viradouro groove RIGHT NEXT TO ME with a volume that almost flattened me against the wall. Brian Davis. Brian had decided it was time to start Viradouro, and he'd gotten a caixa on and walked straight up to me without me even noticing (I'd been staring down at my drum in my little lost mental world), till he was about 2 inches away, and he had launched into a blistering, impossibly beautiful, swinging Viradouro groove that was at least three times louder as I can play at my very loudest. It was just Brian, all on his own, just solo'ing, calling all the other caixas to join him. It was completely electrifying. It felt like - it felt like the Tokyo Bullet Train had just blasted through the room. It felt like a white-hot supernova had ignited right next to me. It felt like a spear right through the heart. It felt like the moment when a huge wave catches your board and you suddenly start to fly.

I could not possibly do anything other than just join in and play along (at 1/3 of his volume).

So, here's the thing, I'd just found out two days earlier that I'd probably lost my job at Univ. Portland - due to a brand-new hiring freeze - due to the economic collapse. Suddenly I was thinking I'd only be in Portland till April, and then moving on with my life. I'd spent all weekend looking at job ads: in Scotland, in the Middle East, in Brazil (of course), in London (but I couldn't find any good ones), in Trinidad... even in Nevada (actually that one looked really fun: a tiny experimental college with only 26 students on a cattle ranch in the middle of the desert. And horses!) I'd gotten sort of resigned to the concept that I might be leaving Portland. And it was starting to seem sort of exciting. Aberdeen, Scotland, studying seabird ecology! Trinidad, marine biology! South Carolina, sea turtles! A Nevada cattle ranch, with horses! I was starting to think, time to blow this town, this UP hiring freeze is a sign, it's time to move on.

But with Brian playing at me like that, I thought: I don't want to leave this town. I don't want to leave this band, and I don't want to leave these people. I'm not done here. Six more months in Portland isn't nearly enough time. The Lions are something truly valuable; and I need to find a way to ride this wave for a while longer.