For The National Day of Truth and Reconciliation I got the chance to join a fire circle in the rain. We knew it would likely rain. Despite the comforts of my heated car I decided to add a walk to my commute. It felt right, in that moment, on this day, around that fire, for it to be raining. As Daketh artist Clayton Gauthier would soon be explaining, things happen as they’re supposed to. Gauthier talked about his artwork, his story, and the things that creator had gifted him. He then began what could be described as a pedagogy of opposites. When you ask a group what the opposite of anxiety is, it’s because you accept, as we quickly did, that we know what that word means. When you ask a group what the opposite of doubt is it’s because that feeling has a surprising universality to it. But when you hear others name the opposite of anxiety; belief, action, success, confidence, you see how anxiety can be opposed, maybe for a moment, or a collection of moments, defeated. When you hear people call out the opposites of doubt, you know you’re not the only one who’s been fighting it, and you know, at least in small ways, you can win. The ceremony involved letting something go. I burned the pay parking stubs in my pocket, letting go of the way pay parking can be my excuse to let fear and anxiety be voiced as anger and frustration.
When it comes to doubt, I remembered, holding a borrowed drum and stick, that many people in my life have told me I don’t have rhythm. It was told to me like it was some innate ability, like breathing under water or perfect vision or not having a stigmatism, some unchangeable lack that I possessed. But before the program I had been teaching music appreciation a role I definitely had to grow in to. And so, as the drums began to beat I did my best to follow along. There’s a power in hearing the resonance of a hid drum melt into the matched resonance of another. The rhythm of the world, your heart, and the drums beside you, they can be heard so much better when you learn to play along side them.
