THE TAIKO DRUMMER - Mark H Rooney

My second tea was with another long-time friend: the one and only....Mark H Rooney.

I met Mark at Boston University in the early 1990's. We first got to know each other when my wife sang in a women's acapella group called Terpsichore. Mark was in a men's group called the Dear Abbeys. The two groups performed together frequently and became the base for a small web of college friends with a deep and lasting connection to each other. Mark and many of the other singers from these two groups remain some of our best friends today. Over the years, he's been a wonderful shoulder to lean on - as well as one of the most entertaining and talented people I've ever met. My kids call him 'Uncle Mark'.

He means the world to me.

Mark is now a Taiko performer and teacher living in Washington DC. He was here on Long Island this past weekend leading a Taiko workshop at Stony Brook University. What is Taiko? Let's ask Wikipedia:

Taiko (太鼓?) are a broad range of Japanese percussion instruments. In Japanese, the term refers to any kind of drum, but outside Japan, it is used to refer to any of the various Japanese drums called wadaiko (和太鼓 "Japanese drums") and to the form of ensemble taiko drumming more specifically called kumi-daiko (組太鼓 "set of drums")

Here's some video of Mark with a group of Taiko drummers accompaning the band ilyAimy for a cover of Led Zeppelin's Kashmir.

Mark stayed at our house on Friday night, so we decided to have tea in my family room. At first, I didn't think we would be able to accomplish this without going out and bringing the tea back home. (Or perhaps delivery for just tea?) But then my wife informed me that we actually have tea in our house already! I had no idea! She has an entire drawer in our kitchen filled with different types of tea! This was outstanding news! I had never seen this drawer before. But look!!!!!

There appears to be at least eight different types and flavors. I can only equate this sudden knowledge to the feeling the Beverly Hillbillies must have felt when they discovered oil on their land! Who knew! And not only that, she also told me that we could use the weird machine in the corner to heat up the water for our tea!

I had steered clear of this thing in the kitchen corner for many years due to my hatred of coffee, and also because the name "Keurig machine" sounded to me like something the Nazis invented to torture the Jews.

NO PAPERS? HEY FRANZ, GET ZA KEURIG MACHINE!!! SIEG HEIL!!!!

Anyhow, with this new and exciting bevy of selections available to us, we made our tea choices. Mark chose the Tazo Zen.

I chose the Trader Joe's Harvest Blend at my wife's suggestion. Also the fox on the box appears to be the type of animal that would be friends with me.

We sat down in my den to talk. Over the years we had spent many nights in this same room with friends and loved ones, sharing music and stories, laughing our asses off - always having a great time. But never had we chatted over tea. Until now.

Mark is a person who is very connected to his Japanese heritage. He had a wealth of interesting information about the love of tea in Japan. Apparently, it's a big deal there. Some people spend their lifetime training in tea ceremonies. And it's not just about drinking the tea – there's all this secondary stuff like how the room is decorated when making tea. And the cleaning ritual beforehand. There are specific snacks that go with it - based on season or locale. There are stores in Japan famous for making these treats that accompany the tea. That’s all they make! Tea treats! He said that everyone drinks tea in Japan. Especially green tea. Green tea is one of the more popular flavors in Japan for everything. You can get Green tea Kit Kats. Ice cream. Condoms (I assume.)

Funny enough, Mark said that he really doesn't enjoy tea all that much. He has what the Japanese would call nekojita, or 'cat's mouth', meaning that he takes a long time to drink his tea because his mouth is very sensitive to hot temperature.

This was so sad to me. Potentially he could be a tea lover like me, but his body just simply won't cooperate.

It was at this point in the conversation when I informed Mark it was time to ask my three questions. (Again, this will be a recurring feature of this blog. Also editors note - when Mark speaks he tends to bend certain words to give them more prominence. This obviously gets lost when you are reading his answers and not hearing him. So I'm going to use italics to highlight these particular words.)

QUESTION ONE:

You’re a Taiko Drum Performer and Teacher. It’s a true artist's profession. Do you ever wish sometimes that you went into a career that made a lot of money - as opposed to following your heart? In other words, is there ever any doubt?

MARK:

I hate to sound so cliché, but it really would imply that I feel like I had a choice. And I don’t necessarily feel like I did. I’ve tried the more conventional kinds of work here and there. The most conventional thing I’ve ever done was teaching English in Japan, and that was still very unconventional. But even that kind of structure didn’t appeal to me as a lifestyle. This is not just about the job or what you’re doing to make the money, it’s a lifestyle that you chose to live. For me it wasn’t so much about choosing, it was about accepting - this is what I’m going to be doing. A lot of people say to me, “oh you’re so lucky you get to do this thing that you love. It’s so much fun and oh I wish I could do that..” So I always say, 'You can too.....just quit your job. Forget about owning nice things or living in a place you really want to live. Forget about any vacation you ever want to take. Forget about those things. If that’s what you’re willing to do." And they are like, "well I couldn’t do that'. And so I say, 'then you don’t really envy what I do'.

QUESTION TWO:

What would you say is the craziest thing to happen to you while on stage?

MARK:

Nothing terribly crazy. What’s crazy to me is that if I’m not on a traditional stage, people feel very free to just come up to you even though you’re swinging large sticks rapidly and in the middle of performance. But people will come up to you and say, “Hey that’s kind of loud!” I get hired to do these gigs. I didn’t just show up and say, “Hey I’m going to play my drum at your party!” People will come up and say, “Do you have to do this here?” "I do if I want to make my money, yes." (Photo below is Mark animatedly demonstrating the rapid motion of the sticks around in a circle.)

By now I had almost finished my Harvest Blend tea - which I really enjoyed. But I noticed that a certain feeling had also started to harvest in my body. So I had to interupt our conversation for a break.

Was this an immediate reaction to the Harvest Blend? Or tea in general? We'll keep an eye on this development in future blog posts. Now back to the final question.

QUESTION THREE:

What is it about Taiko that drew you in?

MARK:

It was a lot of things. It definitely speaks to my cultural heritage. It’s physical. And Taiko is something that you experience rather than hear. You feel it really physically. Ultimately Taiko is so much about connection. That’s what I like about it. You’re connecting to this instrument. You’re connecting to the people you’re playing to. There is so much connection to an audience. And it’s so immediate.

MARK (continued):

It’s almost meditative. It sort of calms that storm in my head. It’s so visceral. It’s so in that moment. It demands that you are fully present. Being in a group too....there are those times when you feel you are connected, rather than all playing seperately at the same time. You’re playing together. And you ride that wave for a while.

EVAN:

It’s like that thing where band members are in the zone together and they look like they’re having visual sex with each other. The bass player and drummer in particular. (photos below are of me pretending to have visual sex with other band members whilst playing the drums. From the looks of this, I'm just as awful at visual sex as real sex.)

MARK (continued):

There’s just something to be said about hitting a big drum with colossal sticks and making a big BOOM! I sometimes try to be philosophical about it and highfalutin with this kind of “oh the ancient arts…” but when it comes down to it, it’s really just a big drum. And it’s fun.