Recycled percussion
Hobbling away from a street fair in Philadelphia’s Kensington neighborhood, I was immersed in the personal cultures of neighbors. Spontaneous garage sales sprung up in postage stamp front yards. Kielbasa was grilled within inches of brick facades. Sidewalk dance lessons, with rhythm and without. Tattooed hipsters strolling lawful, plastic cups half-filled with Renegade IPA. A carnival in full rage.
A young man teaching a five year-old to drum on upturned plastic buckets. Lacking rhythm, like some of the dancing neighbors, the giant-eyed child was mesmerized, sitting in front the buckets. His teacher, ecstatic. Practicing in a small, tree-covered neighborhood park the size of a single rowhome, the power of community was distilled into a single relationship.
Transport
A stop sign brought most traffic to a complete standstill at the southwest corner of the park. A one lane street. The drum lesson fifty feet away, looking down the street, I saw and heard a red thing. A red thing. A whining red frog. Nothing like it. Stopped dead, I had no choice but to wait for it to hum-buckle by me.
The closer it got, the weirder the experience. Time slowed down, at the same rate the car sped up, until the driver Fellinied his face against the driver-side window. Smushed. Smashed. Smiling. A peformance. For me. Between the drumming, the engine’s stipple, the driver’s smile, and the humidity, the world slowed down. Inexplicably.
The drums. The dancers. The grills. The hipsters. The carnival’s rage.
Fun. Cool. Weird.
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