Weekend at CCMAC: Sessions #2, 3 and 4

A Tuning the Air Journal

Saturday August 28, 2010 – Weekend at CCMAC: Sessions #2, 3 and 4

Saturday August 28, 2010
Copper Colored Mountain Arts Center
Ann Arbor, MI

5:00am – Rise
5:30am – 1-hour silent meditation with community
6:30am – Free time/breakfast
9:00am – Community blessing (followed by doughnuts!)
9:30am – Session #2
12:00noon – Free time
1:00pm – Lunch
2:00pm – Session #3
4:30pm – Break
5:00pm – Out to Ann Arbor with three of the CCMAC team for an awesome dinner
7:00pm – Session #4

Sitting at 5:30 is pretty brutal, even for me. Plus, it has been a long time since I’ve done my morning sitting cross-legged on cushions. But I didn’t bring my kneeler with me (along with the laptop, a decision designed to keep me down to carry-on for the flights), so I suffered legs falling asleep.

Session #2 began at 9:30am. The two or three people from the Ann Arbor vicinity who took part in last night’s free class did not decide to follow through and sign up for the full weekend. I choose not to take this personally. So the team for the balance of the weekend are all part of the group here that runs the Arts Center. There will generally be 13 or 14 in the circle, depending on a few individual schedules (a couple of the participants will need to miss at least one session due to their work obligations). One advantage to this turn of events is immediately apparent. This is already a group. This is a community following a particular spiritual path, from the Buddhist tradition, and they are used to working together. This makes my life a bit easier, in certain respects, since turning a mob of strangers into a group is generally where a lot of my energy goes at the beginning of a seminar. Not necessary here.

We began with a return to clapping circulation exercises, picking up on the work from last night and going further and deeper.

Then a 40-minute session of Body Beat. I had originally envisaged this for the afternoon session. It is a good way to generate energy in that after lunch midday slump. But the weather forecast is for high temperatures and humidity today. The barn-converted-to-arts-center has fans and some air conditioning, but I am concerned that even with that it will be too much. Even at 11am it is pretty warm when we wrap it up. Good work, and the team manages to rise to most of the challenges. Clapping on backbeats always a stumbling block, but not nearly as daunting for this group as for most, so naturally I push it!

Back to the circle, and out with the boomwhackers. We reviewed the rhythmic figures I presented to be memorized last night, and introducing the next ones. The penny seemed to drop that this is going to require a bit of personal work and review in between class sessions.

After lunch, Session #3 began at 2pm. It was in fact pretty warm in the barn, and I wanted to keep the physical activity low-key. Dug into my storehouse of Frank Sheldon exercises, and introduced two. First was the “Winking Game”. This never fails to illuminate the state of our attention. Plus, it is a bit silly, kind of fun, and when it clicks there is a wonderful elegance about the way the group interacts and moves that is instantly noticeable. Excellent observations from the team. Then to another Frank classic: circulating words. We worked with creating stories one word at a time in circulation. The fans in the room made speaking up an absolute necessity, and forgetting to speak up a good indication of attention having meandered. I asked one of the participants to summarize the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears, and then had the group tell it in circulation (“the first 4 words of your story will be ‘once upon a time’, and you will indicate the end of the story with ‘happily ever after’.”) The version of Goldilocks that emerged was a little strange, but certainly entertaining. This helped the group to get a sense of narrative, with a beginning and a middle and an end, and so the next totally improvised story had much more coherence, ending in raucous laughter over some strange images with potentially bawdy interpretations.

Introduce the next set of rhythmic figures to be memorized. Now it is abundantly clear that this exercise is going to involve personal work. Ended the afternoon session with some thrakking in 5 and 7, with hand claps and then boomwhackers. Wrapped up Session #3 at about 4:15.

Went into town with Hootie as well as both the president and the executive director of CCMAC (who happen to be a married couple). Great bbq, and interesting conversation discovering a lot of crossed paths. Time for a little rest and personal gathering before the next session.

Session #4 at 7pm. I began by introducing the final rhythmic figures to be memorized for the weekend. Drilled them to make sure everything was in place. A number of people made notes for studying. The plan is to put it all together at the final session on Sunday afternoon.

Just beyond the middle, and the evening of a good day of pretty hard work. A bit of fun seemed in order. A number of the people in the class are studying drumming on conga drums, and an inquiry determined that there were enough extra drums around that we could have an entire conga drum circle. The risk, as I saw it, of this was that by putting familiar instruments in everyone’s hands we might revert to familiar and comfortable patterns. This is not a drum seminar, and I am definitely not a drum teacher. We are working with opening up, directing and dividing attention, connecting with the other players. Thankfully, the team seemed to get this, and so outside of a bit of random banging as the drums were set up, we managed to remain on task. We went to a number of circulation exercises already introduced, and pushed a bit further. The sound of the drums certainly adds a bit of fun, which helps. Definite improvement. We thrakked, this time adding an 11 pattern to the 5 and 7. This, as always brought the energy level up. I reminded the group of the basic exercises in directed attention we have been using to contain our energy and this was instantly understood. A lot of juice in the room. Moved on to set up The Whizz. We managed a certain velocity, and even flirted with escape velocity. Not sure what kept us from really taking off. Is it the nature of drums? The hot weather? Something in the nature of this particular group? Perhaps simply not enough people to really handle the current. I don’t know. Certainly fun, and very cool sounding on the drums.

Wrapped things up at about 9pm. Back to my quarters. Chilled and did a bit of reading, and early to bed (5:30 will again come sooner than I realize).

Back to Day 1
On to Day 3