Lately

Last night at TD rehearsal RS commented on the fact that my rolls are getting better. I remember too KS saying one day recently at SSW rehearsal that "the class I took was obviously helping" as I seemed to be getting better.

The funny thing is...I'm not practicing drums pretty much at all these days. And I gave up on the class and didn't really even do it.

But yes...I'm getting better.

I've sort of thought about it in fleeting moments over the last four months or so...but on Monday I was convinced. I play drums better sober.

This might seem self evident. Of COURSE you would play better sober than drunk. But I wasn't so sure for some time...and honestly it might not have been true for a while. What's true is that...all other things being equal...I play better sober. Which is to say that, for a while I played really poorly sober, because I was more used to existing while drinking than existing while not drinking. But I'm getting to the point where I'm sober more often than I'm drunk (though still not drunk zero percent of the time). And so things are evening out.

My first real band on the drums was The Lollards, and I remember very vividly that right around the time I started playing with JA (August 2006) that I was in a period of "trying not to drink". But what I found was...I couldn't play drums sober. It's true. Playing drums is a strange mix of total concentration and...not thinking too hard. If you think to hard you guarenteed will mess up. And so, at the time I was in a place where I was either drinking...or thinking too much...and so I found that I really could not play drums without drinking. And so I set a limit for myself of two beers only when drumming and nothing at all the rest of the time. And these are the kinds of rules that were meant to be broken by someone of my tendancies.

I remember just as clearly that, last fall, when I started again down the road of sobriety just how bad I drummed. I felt like my arms and legs didn't work right anymore. But rather than put a bandaid on it...I pushed through. And now...a little over four months later, I can honestly say that I play better sober than drunk. And in fact that I might not be able to play AT ALL while drinking now (haven't tried in a while...and don't want to).

But I guess the part that is a pleasant surprise is that...now I play better sober than I did back in the day when I played my very best drunk (or while drinking). I fix mistakes more quickly...my endurance is up...my patterns are more smooth...I get good ideas and sometimes can pull them off on the fly (or can try, fail, and recover). I still occasionally catch myself thinking too much and train wreck...but less often.

Just imagine if I actually practiced too.

Baby steps...