by Bill Chisholm
I was playing a little improv percussion music the other night with some friends. We had drums, rattles, a tambourine, and a bell along with a flute and my 3 string guitar. We got in the groove several times. At the end of one song, one of the players spoke about what the groove was and shared the words of a drum teacher, Arthur Hull, he studied with. Hull called that getting or being in the groove, “entrainment”, which means, incorporate and sweep along in its flow, (of a rhythm or something which varies rhythmically) cause (another) gradually to fall into synchronism with it: On the other side of the equation, when entrainment doesn’t happen, Hull says it is a train wreck.
It is an incredible feeling/experience to find oneself in the state of entrainment musically, but it doesn’t just happen. The players have to drop their egos, not try to dominate, deeply listen to what the other players are doing and move into sync with them. When everyone is in the groove, the music has an organic quality that carries in and the players along. When that doesn’t happen, there is no music, there is only noise and it does become a train wreck.
If one looks at our founding document, the Declaration of Independence and read the Preamble to the US Constitution, they both start with the word “We”, it is a collective word, and to me it implies entrainment, moving into sync. The first purpose listed in the Preamble is “to form a more perfect union”, that certainly speaks to the notion of at least working towards the goal of entrainment.
The first two Presidents of the United States George Washington and John Adams warned of the danger of partisan politics. Its tendency to polarize along party lines and becomes more a struggle for partisan political power than it does in working towards the purposes outlined in the Preamble.
As a many time candidate for political office, I have experienced first hand how partisan identification stifles critical thinking on part of both the voters and the candidates. There is almost no discussion of the real issues facing the states or the nation, or of the vision and goals of how to create a more perfect union.
In playing music with a group and a variety of instruments, there is variety in sound, in texture and the experience of the players. For it to work, for the players to bring the sound and textures of their instruments into harmonic entrainment, there cannot be egoist division of the players or dominance by the stronger instruments. There has to be respect among the players.
At this time in our nation’s history I think of the words of Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg. “Four score and seven years ago (we are now at 24 score and one year ago) our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.” While we are, thankfully, not engaged in a civil war, we certainly are engaged in an uncivil peace.
Ideology has trumped ideas, there seems to be little desire on the parts of many players in the political arena to move us away from a train wreck and instead find that common ground, which will make for a more perfect union.
As with the playing of music and finding that place of entrainment there has to be the desire to make it happen, to understand the good feeling of being in the space. In my neighborhood, which is blessed with quite a few skilled carpenters and experienced workers, we often find ourselves working together on projects. There is very little or not ego, we put ideas on the table as to how best do the project and then work together to make it happen. The working on the project together, complementing each other is much like the experience of being in the groove playing music.
We’d be better off abolishing the political parties, making ideas the center of our political system rather than ideology, but at a minimum, we need to set aside our partisan power agendas and move the well being of the country and the planet to the forefront. Put all the cards on the table, welcome new and different ideas and seek to find the best ones.
Imagine if you would, our state and national legislative bodies, each member with a different percussion instrument, a flute or a stringed instrument, dropping their egos, listening deeply to what the other is playing and experiencing entrainment. Wouldn’t it be amazing, the sounds that could and would be produced in those legislative chambers. And now imagine what it would be like sans the instruments if those same folks tried to work together for the well being of all the people of their states and of our nation and the planet.
Entrainment or a train wreck, that’s where we are and the choice, is ours.
William K. (Bill) Chisholm 