Polyrythms and Ideas

One of the things you need to learn as a drummer is to play different things with each of your limbs. This is known as independance. I can play one pattern on the kick drum, another of the hi-hat or ride, another on the snare, and perhaps my left foot is playing another pattern with the hi-hat foot pedal. To someone starting out, this is usually quite difficult and you often find one limb trying to follow the other. A little way down the line this becomes quite easy and natural, and it's one of the things that can make a great rhythm.
The next challenge is polyrhythms. This is similar to what I've just spoken about except your playing two or more rhythms at the same time. For instance, you may be counting 1-2-3 on the base drum, but at the same you'll play 1-2-3-4 on the ride cymbal - on top of the first rhythm, or even 5 and 4 and so on. Played correctly, you get a really interesting and sometimes hypnotic rhythm.

What does this have to do with my point of view?
Well, some people act as if there is only one way of thinking. They acknowlege that there are other ways of looking at things, but they feel their way is perhaps better than other ways of looking at things. This is usually quite evident in a debate between science and religion, or in understanding concepts like energy, spirit, soul etc.
But, is it not possible to have different points of view at the same time - views that seem to contradict each other?
I have found that it can be quite helpful to entertain that possibility, and quite often there is something else that emerges when you do that. Something emerges that, I find, is more true to me and my experience of life.
I think that it goes back to the concept that theories and ideas can never fully map out the true experience of living. Real life is messy and there are always grey areas - areas of mystery that no theory will ever quite cover. Holding two conflicting ideas at the same time can push you into exploring these grey areas with more honesty.

Truth is often found in the balance between two opposites.

My favourite times of day

Dawn and dusk are my favourite parts of the day. Just before the sun goes to sleep, or as the world is about to wake up. Whenever I've gone for a walk early in the morning, there is something about the freshness of the new day that makes me feel alone, but not a lonely kind of alone, but a peaceful aloneness. The air is fresh and loaded with potential and I feel alert and awake and aware that I'm part of something much bigger than myself, that I'm connected to this world that is waking up. I know that in an hour or two the world will be full of chaos again, the noise of traffic with everyone hypnotically following the beat of business. But for a while I'm at the place where the world was created and everything is new.

Dusk is my other favourite. That time between night and day, darkness and light and I feel like I can stretch out and touch another realm, the place where magic is alive. Between waking and dreaming, concious and unconcious, between matter and spirit, that which is thought to be real and that which is imagined. This is when I like to sit in my garden and half close my eyes, but not all the way. And as my eyes adjust I see the energy that is given off by the plants and trees, and I look down at my hands and I too am surrounded in moving waves of energy. Of course there's the skeptic in me saying that this is only because I'm squinting my eyes slightly, and it's probably true, but I choose to ignore it and enjoy the experience, and my imagination and the real world dance together.