Thursday, March 12, 2009

I am thinking of the idea of the African drums doing the call and response between two villages, or camps. One drum calls: are you there? Are you there? Are you there? And they get a response: we are here. We are here. We are here. Back and forth all night. Passing the hours. Under the engulfing sky. With nothing particularly important to ask, or to tell, except maybe to watch out for a lion, or tell them the water hole is low. But mostly just call and response for its own sake. Because we all need to hear back. We all need to shout out. This blogging seems to me a new old thing. New old like New Age was a lot of old stuff put in a new envelope. New old like discovering something ancient for the first time and thinking it is a revolutionary concept. Call and response. Call and response. An afinity so ingrained in us we don't recognize it any more. Does it matter what we say? Are our ideas and notions so important? I am not so sure. My hunch is, that it is the call and response that we are really motivated by.

2 comments:

Linda Pendleton said...

Randy,

I believe you are right. It is about the call and response. It’s all about sharing, a meeting of the minds. But it is also about more, as I have discovered. At times some little thing we may write has an inspirational impact on another, and it is at those times we feel the true value of what we do.

Thanks for visiting one of my Blogs and for your warm comments. Please visit again and keep the dance to the drum beats going...

Unknown said...

Hi Randy:

Yes, that's a good analogy-- community & connection are to me the biggest elements of blogging.

Well said.