The Seventh Universal Human Emotion

I haven't had any time to write in ages, due to teaching some new college classes (or "new preps", which is college-teacher code for "never-ending high-stress hell of 100-hr workweeks"). Which means little time to practice either. But I gave my last lectures on Friday! The spring semester is OVER! Such an unreal feeling to give that Last Lecture and hand out the student evals and BE DONE.

(Well, not done actually, because I've still got all the grading and the exams to write and then the exams to grade... but never mind about that little detail)

It gave me a sense of dizzy-headed elation all afternoon. And just in time for Friday night's Axe Dide show! Despite the total lack of practice time, I've been trying to keep up with the Lions and Axe Dide as much as I can. I feel like I've been hitting new personal low points in both groups - I've been having to miss about every other rehearsal for each of them, and I hate not having any practice time, and I hate the sensation of hard-won skills leaking away. But on Friday with the Last Lecture done, I scooted home to review all the Axe Dide breaks, then raced to the mall to put together a new white-and-red stage outfit and then, off to the gig.

I'll skip the long description this time and just say, this show completely kicked ass. The band was hot, hot, hot, and the dancers were hot, hot, hot, and I was so glad I'd had that speck of time to review all the material - it all was finally locked into place in my head and it just flowed. The whole show just flowed. It all just worked. It was beautiful, it was exciting, it felt fun, it felt relaxed, it felt happy. I got to play pandeiro with Mehmet, and shekere with the amazing 3-part guiro shekere team (the formidable Chaz on lead, Doug on the middle, me on the high), I got to sing the amazing Osain songs with the scary-good Axe Dide singers.

But the moment that is really sticking in my memory - well, aside from the moment of curtain rising to reveal Doug the shekere player pelting the singers with gumballs from clear across the stage, and then saying to the audience "Anyone else want any Ecstasy?" - is when Zach - ok, now a word here about Zach, I'd last seen him dressed in a crazy outfit in a Halloween parade in New York City pounding an alfaia, and then all of a sudden he pops up 3000 miles away in Oregon, and about two seconds later is leading every group in town playing absolutely masterful repique and absolutely masterful everything else, and teaching samba/Indian fusion classes at the local university, and it turns out he's never even touched a repique before two seconds ago, and now, bing! turn out he's learned all the Axe Dide choreography, and is leading us through all the dance cues and doing it PERFECTLY. Jee-zuz. So anyway - where was I -

So the enduring moment of Axe Dide at the Someday Lounge is when Zach calls us in using THE FASTEST REPIQUE CALL IN THE UNIVERSE.

And boom, there we are playing THE FASTEST SAMBA IN THE UNIVERSE. Or at least in Portland. I clocked it later at about 160bpm. Now that is what I call escola tempo! I could almost smell the fried cheese and hear the Skol beer sellers in the distance.

What you have to do in that sort of situation is just JUMP on it, like jumping on a galloping horse as it goes by. You just have to not think about it, and just jump. So I jumped, and so did Angela and Stacy and Mehmet and everybody else.

After a ragged start we kind of got hold of it and, like the wind catching the sails, we just started flying. It was like trying to sprint up Everest - the first hundred yards was going okay, but how long was our oxygen going to hold out?

I glanced over at Stacey, who was playing 2 surdos side-by-side, her arms were moving so fast she looked like a hyperspeed Energizer bunny. She shot me an eloquent expression of grim concentration and slightly bared teeth, and I looked to my other side at Angela playing caixa, and Angela gave me an equally eloquent expression, which I can only describe as equal parts smile, snarl, and eye-roll.

I've been watching the show "Lie To Me" lately, that TV show about a behavioral scientist who can decode the minutiae of people's facial expressions and can tell what they're really thinking. I wish they could put those 2 expressions from Stacy and Angela on the show - because they are the expressions that mean "Holy shit I can't believe we are playing this fast, this is INSANE, we are gonna DIE, and after we die, I personally guarantee that ZACH IS GONNA DIE FOR REAL right after we get offstage" . I think it's one of the 7 universal human emotions. There's, let's see, Anger, Surprise, Fear, Disgust, Sorrow, Happiness, and then there's Holy-Shit-We're-Playing-Too-Fast. And they definitely each have a distinctive facial expression.

But we went ripping along and I started really getting into it. I got all excited about my rimshots and just started leaning into my caixa, and then I suddenly remembered those amazing German caixa guys at Bloco X, and the spirit of Bethan-the-Wildcat-Caixa entered into my hands, and after that I just played as hard as I could. I think I accidentally sped us up some more.

But then ... a burn started in my right shoulder, a burn that grew and grew and grew. That increasingly ferocious, unstoppable lactic-acid pain that means you have 10 seconds left before the muscle simply quits working. I'd fried out my right deltoid! And it was about to quit working entirely.

One corner of my mind became academically interested ("Now why should it be the deltoid? I would have predicted the deltoid wouldn't even be involved! I definitely need to get some samba players into the EMG lab to test this out"). While another corner of my brain was just going "please don't drop the stick, please don't drop the stick." As much as I was loving the tempo, soon I would literally have to stop playing.

I kept thinking, if I can just make it to Samba Show, if I can just make it to Samba Show.... (our next piece, which starts with a very slow samba). Please god let me just make it to Samba Show without dropping my stick!

I made it to Samba Show. *****slow***** samba at last! Whew!

And then - oh right, Samba Show then switches to a fast samba partway through, I forgot about that. Zach played THE FASTEST REPIQUE CALL IN THE UNIVERSE. Stacey and Angela both shot me an extremely eloquent look. And we were off.