Several days ago I helped a young woman build a drum. We prepared the hoop by feathering thin lengths of ash wood together and clamping each layer into a sister mold. We spent time working with the electric planer and the belt sander, so that she could do the beveling and finishing of the rims herself. The ring that holds the thongs on the back of the drum was made from a cedar branch, chosen for just the right straight thickness and paid for with songs and a hand made bead.
The drum head was cut from a deer hide after the hair had been slipped and the fat scraped until the membrane shone with a translucent glow. The young woman cut thongs, trimmed to size and then punched holes in the drum head, all in preparation for the assembling of the drum.
And then we came to the part that cannot be taught. How loose should the drum head be when laced onto the hoop, to accommodate the shrinkage of this particular skin? How does one see the vibration in the still wet skin, to gauge how the sound will flow over the entire surface? How tight should the thongs be that anchor the voice of the drum? Do the thongs that hold the cedar ring need to be adjusted as the skin dries, or is the initial tension the right amount to keep the ring taunt, yet not so tight that the skin causes the wooden frame to bow?
These are the skills of 10,000 hours, as described in Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell. The Journey Oracle divination cards have aspects in readings that also cannot be taught. And yet how would this be otherwise? When I used Dr. David R. Hawkins’s technique for calibrating the energy level of the Journey Oracle, the combined cards, stories and hand-made presentation registered 970…on a scale whose top end is 1000.
