I read a Times obituary about a writer who was able to make a living and earn the respect of others in his field, but who never reached the highest level of fame and best-seller-dom. Then I went to get my practice pad and words, phrases, situations, scenes began to write themselves in my mind. I went downstairs for a piece of apple and thought, someone really skilled and inspired could turn this into a story or even a book. Sentences were unrolling, storyboards appearing with one topic after another. Some of it has already appeared in here; for example, what I knew about learning the golf swing and its parallels to learning how to hold and use drumsticks.
The one I'll commit to sketching here is how I took piano lessons in my 40's and disliked playing scales, but... "it surprised him to learn that he didn't mind practicing single-stroke rolls. Three minutes of eighth notes, three minutes of sixteenth notes, then three minutes of 32nd notes, following the lead of one of the multitude of YouTube drum teachers.
"A few seconds setting up the web-based metronome and timer, then began the 10-minute daily challenge, beginning with 1 minute at the highest speed he could play at that point, followed by 2 minutes a hair slower, and then 3 more a couple of ticks slower still, and concluding with 4 minutes at a pace just a few beats per minute less than the original 1-minute exercise. As he went along, his hands and wrists became fatigued and it became difficult to get through the exercises without stumbling. But each evening after supper and a nap he climbed the stairs to the room where he kept the sticks, the pad and the padded throne."
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