The pebble drum was made by a committee. Two women arranged a drum making workshop on Cortes Island, and as the days unfolded, we found ourselves all working equally on two hides, so in a way that feels inherently female, no one owned the drum skins, yet each was responsible for stewarding its becoming a drum. The little pebble inside the smoke tan pouch honors the value of small parts that are also being a part of a larger whole.
The eight-fold path drum didn’t want to be a turtle. When I completed the interlacement pattern on the back of this frame drum, I began pushing the lacing into various arrangements, and decided I could wrap the strands into the shape of a turtle. I spent many months trying to make this pattern into a turtle; each time only to be stymied by thongs that had nowhere to complete, or knots that couldn’t be hidden. Sometimes a drum knows who it is long before I do.
The star drum received its name in a magical experience of concordance that I tell on its purchase a journey drum page on my Journey Oracle website, but the painting came in response to an invitation to exhibit a piece of my art in a show titled, “me and my shadow.” Because I never know who or what is going to appear when I gaze into a drum, and because I have a contract with the spirit world not to control or edit what I see—I don’t paint very many drums. At first I found this image quite unsettling, and yet the more I looked, the more I felt the protective kindness of the spirit animal guide, especially in its willingness to share its eye with a human. I wonder how many of us humans offer an eye to an animal in this reality—given the necessity of equality and generosity that this would require.
