I'm feeling it today. I'm reminded of elementary school, the night before a field trip. I'd stay up all night imagining what I could get into the next day. I'd run circles around the girls, with a sack lunch in my hand, and stains on my knees.

Today the music swells inside of me. Tonight, when I sit at the drum kit, I'll bang out more than just a back beat. I'll play something for my grandmother and for my sister. I'll let the high-hats breath a bit longer for my friends and for my best lady. I'll lean into the floor tom with a little more weight, and make 'em think there's a storm a-comin'. And when the bass floats up and settles between the 2 and the 4, I'll ride it like a cloud.

For now, I'll let Mr. Baldwin tell it:

All I know about music is that not many people ever really hear it. And even then, on the rare occasions when something opens within, and the music enters, what we mainly hear, or hear corroborated, are personal, private, vanishing evocations. But the man who creates the music is hearing something else, is dealing with the roar rising from the void and imposing order on it as it hits the air. What is evoked in him, then, is of another order, more terrible because it has no words, and triumphant, too, for that same reason. And his triumph, when he triumphs, is ours.

James Baldwin
- Sonny's Blues