I meant to take of photo of Alain’s car, stuffed full with my drums, cymbals and assorted stands, but I forgot. It’s just as well. I probably shouldn’t look back.
My brief days as a drummer are gone. After months of mulling it over, I sold my kit to my former drum teacher and he picked them up on Friday.
There just isn’t enough time left in this life for me to start all over again after so many months of not playing. I have other priorities. It was fun. And I had almost mastered Don’t Stop Believing by Journey when my sticks went on the shelf. I’m not sure what to do with this space now.
Many casual drummers play an appropriate beat along with a song, and improvise here and there where it’s needed. I was learning the actual beats, as written by the guy who created them. You still need skill and timing to do the former. But you need even more practise to do the latter. I really enjoyed it and there was nothing like the feeling of getting a complicated tempo change right after a few dozen tries. Still, no one would ever say I’m musically inclined! I can hear when someone sings flat or sharp but I can’t hit those notes myself.
The reason I quit is simple: pain. I have a condition called Military Neck. For some people, it’s not a big deal. For others, like me, it causes terrible pain. Basically, Xrays show my neck is perfectly straight. It’s supposed to have a curve. How I lost the curve, or if I ever had it, is up for debate. It may be the result of whiplash from a collision I was in a few years ago. But that doesn’t matter as much as learning to live with it. It’s the reason I stopped drumming and why I rarely ride my motorcycle anymore. Just wearing a helmet leaves me with days of painful after-effects.
I’ve tried a couple of solutions, done a lot of research, and I’m considering different treatments, some alternative, some mainstream. What I won’t do is go on painkillers, although that’s all that physicians have to offer me. No one seems to believe that I’ll ever be “cured” but I should be able to learn to manage it. It means not lifting anything heavier than a grocery bag, not riding my bike (at least for now) and no drumming. Bye bye kit! I hope you make some aspiring drummer very happy.