A Drummer Drumming by Nancy Schatz Alton

“I’m a deep kettle whistle” -Hannah Ensor & Laura Wetherington

I want to be the drummer playing “The Obvious Child.”

No, I want to be the drum being drummed. I want the tapping, the metal reverberations—snapping popping pushing lifting drumming—drummed right into me until I am the dance.

Until I am the dancer dancing.

Until I am that girl: dancing, dancing hard at all those dances I danced at—right when I forgot myself, right in the moment where the sweating didn’t matter. That sweating was the sole purpose of the dance.

I want to be giving not one fuck on the dance floor. I want to be giving every fuck on the dance floor. I want to own my words: live them and breathe them and not have to explain that fuck captures it all: how we get to be the thing we aren’t supposed to be because upright society would like you to hide all fucks.

This isn’t for my resume. This is for the dancing: the dancing that taps you into the drumming that never ever ends. The drumming beneath society that says here we are: here we are: here we are: we are here to live out loud: to drum until the dancers can hear the beat and match the beat and then dance like no one is watching until everyone is dancing.

The drummers, I swear to god, the drummers are having all of the fun. Watch them at your next school band concert. Slip into their slipstream and dream until you are the drummer. Until you are the drum being drummed. Until you are the dancer dancing, the drummer drumming, the rhythm beneath the streets that connects you to real life.

I’m a deep drummer drumming.