To Boldly Go Where No Corporate Exec Has Gone Before....

I had just returned from a truly amazing adventure. To wit, I needed ciggies, chocolate and a beer (it’s the start of my weekend!). I bundled up and ventured forth, but instead of turning left at the end of my street and walking all the way down the hill to the Family Mart right by the train station (a good ten minute walk!), for the first time, emboldened by I know not what force, I turned right!

I was truly going out on a limb. Who knew what I’d find by going “the other way”? Perhaps I would step off the edge of the world (okay, the edge of Japan). Perhaps by going “the other way,” I would find woman/woman love followed quickly by heartbreak, betrayal and tears. Or maybe I’d walk for miles and miles with no sight of a Family Mart, Lawsons or 7-Eleven (oh yes…they have them here too, except they’re better here because you can buy sake, scotch, oden and little freeze dried sardines. Unfortunately no Big Gulp available…bummer). Or perhaps, I wasn’t really being so adventurous after all, since somewhere in a dusty closet in a little traveled cul de sac of my mind, I remember that Thor once told me that the Family Mart up the hill was quite a bit more conveniently located than the one down the hill.

And he was right. Less than five minutes and I was there. I made my purchases and returned home.

Pretty boring story, I know. Except! I’m sitting on the couch eating the last of the shumai/gyoza pig-out I’d been intermittently engaged in since about 1:00 o’clock this afternoon, and I’m watching CNN. Not CNN stateside but the “international edition,” especially tailored (one supposes) to the misinformation needs of expats worldwide. It’s pretty horrible stuff, all recycled seemingly every three hours. I wonder if CNN back in the States is obsessed with the life force of the Pope and the marriage of Prince Charles to that lady in England – the one he reportedly once told on the phone, “I wish I could be a tampon up inside of you right now,” or something like that (of course, this piece of essential reportage did not emanate from CNN; I don’t know where it came from. I just have it lodged in another dusty, closet in my brain and I have adopted the unshakeable stance that if it is in my brain, it must be TRUE! which is why I’m sharing it with you now. As for the pope, an alcove in my mind has it on record that if you get really close to him, he smells like pee…Of course this story probably originated with a child, since only children actually get to be close to the pope and we all know that children (yes even papal ones!) sometimes lie.

Anyway, in a radical departure from the litany of the Prince and the Pope stories, CNN had a special segment on ""African-inspired" “corporate drumming,” and this is when I realized that I was going to totally throw up. Apparently, “corporate drumming” is gaining popularity in the U.S. as soulless executives struggle desperately to inject some sort of feeling and perhaps a renewed sense of vitality and purpose into their petty, profit driven lives. A voiceover noted the fact that the participants are not just executives, but human beings! With souls!! Sometimes, it would appear, voiceovers are actually lies.

Sit back for a minute and imagine: a typical business conference room (perhaps the conference room at the Hilton or the Sheraton). Now picture that conference room filled with a bunch of white people eagerly clutching “African” tom toms and beating them in an incredible concordance of “no rhythm.” Now picture some white hippie guy (No, not Paul Simon) with his sleeves rolled up on a stage conducting this mad symphony (and if you look really hard, you might see a sheepish dread locked “African” brotha in the background somewhere).

Pretty normal, huh? “We’ve” apparently come along way (baby): all the way from beating drums to celebrate nature, ask for rain, healthy harvest, and what have you to this: foot soldiers of capitalism beating drums to “inspire” themselves to go out and make the almighty dollar.

After I wiped projectile vomit from my lips, my shirt and the television, I felt calm. After all, why not? So much else has been taken from Africa, why not drumming too? It’s not as if it’s sacred or anything. Not like African drumming is anchored in any meaningful cultural traditions or anything like that, is it? I mean really….