Friday morning, I participated in my very first drum circle. For about ten minutes.
The loose drum circle was meant as a warm-up to a presentation marking the one-year anniversary of the Eaton Fires and the destruction of hundreds of homes and businesses in Altadena, California. Hands before words. Rhythm before reflection.
If you’d asked me a week ago how I felt about drum circles, I would have sighed dramatically and rolled my eyes so hard I might have strained something.
Before I started playing, I considered drum circles in the same suspicion-worthy category as grifter gurus, aggressively upbeat affirmations, and those who “hold space” without ever quite explaining for what or for whom.
Dear Reader, I was wrong. Very wrong.
Because something unexpected happened in those short ten minutes.
About a hundred (mostly) strangers sat in a makeshift circle and learned basic drumming techniques from a Grammy-Award-winning percussionist.
And then we played. Our bandleader played a simple beat. And then we, with our borrowed drums and myriad of shakers and tambourines, responded in unison.
Some hands were confident. Some were tentative. Some people missed a beat and found it again. No one flinched. No one corrected. The rhythm just…absorbed us all.
And then—this is the part I didn’t see coming—I stopped thinking.
No inner monologue. No self-editing. No low-grade anxiety scanning for the next thing to worry about. Just hands on a drum, in a room with new bandmates, making sound. And rhythm. And, yes, music to my ears.
After ten minutes later, the drum circle ended. And I felt…different.
Not euphoric. Not “transformed.” Just quieter in my head. More present. Like something had clicked into alignment without needing a meeting or a memo.
When I got home a couple of hours later, I went online and ordered myself a beginner djembe, a drum that originated in West Africa. Traditionally carved from a single piece of hardwood with a drumhead made of animal skin.
I didn’t buy it because I’m suddenly auditioning for a drum collective or planning to lead moonlit rituals in my backyard. I bought it because that short experience reminded me of something I keep forgetting: Our bodies feel things our brains can never know.
We spend so much time up in our heads—planning, narrating, optimizing, explaining ourselves to ourselves—that we forget there are other ways to process. Older ways. Wordless ways. Rhythmic ways.
Drumming doesn’t care if you’re eloquent.
It doesn’t care if you’re productive.
It doesn’t care if you’re “doing it right.”
It only asks one thing: Are you listening?
Listening to the beat already happening.
Listening to the space between sounds.
Listening to when to lead and when to follow.
For me, playing the borrowed drum felt…fun and fundamental.
I’ve been thinking a lot about rhythm recently. Not just musically, but creatively and emotionally too. About how often we try to force a rhythm instead of finding and following one. How easily we confuse urgency with importance. How often we mistake noise for momentum.
The drum circle worked because no one tried to dominate it. The beat emerged. It shifted. It breathed. People adjusted without needing instructions. We just played.
What if more of life worked that way?
What if life wasn’t about constant output, but about keeping time with yourself?
What if a rest wasn’t failure, but a necessary pause between measures?
What if following the beat didn’t mean losing autonomy, but trusting that you don’t have to generate everything by yourself, from scratch?
I don’t know where this little drum will fit into my days yet. Maybe it becomes a morning ritual. Maybe it’s something I reach for when words dry up. Maybe it just sits in the corner like a reminder that I’m allowed to make noise without explaining why.
But I do know this: I’m done dismissing things just because they look a little earnest from the outside.
Sometimes the thing you scoff at is the thing your nervous system has been quietly begging for.
Sometimes healing doesn’t come as a breakthrough. It comes as a beat.
Sometimes clarity doesn’t arrive as a sentence. It arrives as a rhythm.
Sometimes we just need to be part of the band and listen and tap along. And trust we’ll find our peace and place in the song.
Keep calm and drum on!
Clint 🌈✌️
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FROM THE ARCHIVES
MAN CRUSH OF THE DAY
“It doesn’t matter the kind of music, it doesn’t matter whether it’s a cowboy hat or a yarmulke. I don’t care if it’s outer space or pop, the spirit is the same.”
David Lee Roth
I'm so glad you found that!!! I've been in a few drum circles and it IS magical - not 'profound', necessarily but it always "clicks" something intangible. Like being in a "shower of sound".
So much wisdom here. Thanks for beating the proverbial drum for following one's own deepest rhythms, Clint. ❤️🧡💛💚💙💜