My Love Affair with the Pocket

A drummer’s romance and other steamy, rhythmic penchants and escapades
by Frank Sardella

Prologue

No one seems to know how to describe it.

But they know it when they see it; or hear it as it were.

Appropriate, I suppose, that they call it “the pocket” though, as it does comprise a sort of void or empty space, a nothing, yet something all the same. The pocket is an intangible of sorts, elusive and enchanting in its nature, provoking and inviting.

How could someone, however, anyone, have a love affair with something so ethereal? Yet here I sit, hopelessly, head-over-heels and giddy, amidst a lifelong romance for the ages, embroiled in its allure, unable to break free – as if I would ever want to or entertain the very thought!

I wish I had an explanation. The answer (or lack of) is why I started the In the Pocket for Drummers digital radio show in the first place.

In a word, I found the pocket to be “indescribable” for my first couple decades of drumming, ignorant as I was about its very existence. In fact, and in retrospect, I was in love with it since before I decided to play drums at the tender age of 9, and yet didn’t even know what “it” was that I loved so completely.

It’s a strange kind of love, isn’t it, loving something that you don’t yet know exists, feeling meaningful and profound emotions, knowing to your core they are true, but not being able to say quite who?

Rhythmically motivated to my core, enamored by a good hook or earworm, I have considered myself to be melodically ecstatic. But am I being melodramatic?

A pocket of space it may be, impossible to love, but how could it be anything else if you always find yourself in it and have it feel so good to be there?

In point of fact, there is no other way to express “the pocket” than to be in it. That said, I have been all in since my perceived “beginning of time” and decades before I even figured out with “whom” I was so deeply involved.

Come to think of it, is being “in the pocket” any different than being “in love” or “in a relationship” or even in a particular situation or condition? Are these not intangibles themselves that “everybody knows” exist yet don’t have the words to define, describe or express, much less detail its components or mechanics? Don’t we become involved and say we’re “in” these things?

You can define “love affair” many ways. Even the dictionary describes that it is a romantic relationship or even “episode” between two lovers. I chose this word, not arbitrarily, but specifically and precisely. I had definite intentions when I concluded I was having one with something neither I (nor anyone else) could clearly, concisely or succinctly define, a “quality” I was informed people either had or they didn’t, one which you “had to be born with” and was a manifestation of “talent” rather than study, training or experience.

If I were merely born with it, this would suggest I have fallen hard for none other than yours truly, that I loved myself to an infinite order of magnitude. But I would never fall for that. For I know it takes “two to tango” as the old saw goes.

There may be something inside me, but there is also, most assuredly, something out there, and we are involved. I’m in it and I live there permanently. It is my home.

I used to think I merely loved my drums and that playing them was my commitment, forever and ever, and these were valid, knowing and willing vows I had made.

But before the drums came my sharp perceptions ranging farther in scope than the mere 5 we’re taught in school. Beyond sound are perceptions of rhythm, timbre, tone, volume and emotion. All of which are inevitable, everywhere in life.

As for having to be “born with it” or possess a special talent, these sense channels are unique to no one and are innate. Anyone can experience them and perceive what this world has to offer. The only difference from person to person is how aware or “in tune” they are to these phenomena.

When it comes to this “pocket” we all run on about, ogle and marvel at, it is achievable by anyone who will listen, or rather, “be in tune to” or become aware of its existence. It is indeed a “feeling thing” after all.

People describe it as a “feeling” or attest you have to “feel it” and this is true. But that shouldn’t imply that not everyone can feel it. Anyone can. And if you can feel it, you can be in it, and certainly even create it. This adds up to the love affair that I don’t believe is limited to mine. I believe anyone who perceives it, loves it so.

I guess you can say my affair started with the ultimate mystery date, the unknown companion lurking in the shadows, like Cyrano whispering poetic verse and conveying adoration and love via a most obscurative channel.

My love for music itself in all its various forms, genres and expressions notwithstanding, I must admit I was born with an innate crush on regularity of time. Rhythm is a manifestation of the passing of time, with pattern and regularity, and I am inherently obsessed with its infinite possibilities of combination.

But it isn’t music that is the context. The meeting place that begins the origin story of my love affair with the pocket is Life itself on planet Earth and in this universe.

It began with the sound of laundry cycling and spinning through the washer and dryer, round and round the thumping with regularity, as I toddled around with toys that made clicks and rattles in perfect time. I’d tap along or memorize it all up in my head, and sing along and heed its rhythmically soothing taunts.

Baseball cards in the spokes of my bicycle when I was 8 years old were my first metronome engaged in regular pulses at varied speeds, an introduction to the “feel” of rhythmic patter.

Chirps of birds and crickets, the barking of a dog and the clopping hooves of horses in parade, even the subtleties of the pistons of the engine of my father’s Chevrolet served to make me feel “at home” and that everything was alright.

These may seem like childish things that have long since disappeared from life to only have been replaced by more mature expressions, but all of them remain and have only grown. Even in my steps as I walk along the sidewalk I, today, as I had then, feel the rhythm of my pace, and sing along gleefully, and very naturally in my head.

But add to it music and transistor radios, and records playing, scratches and all (also in regular patterns), you’ve got a recipe for all that motivated me to meet the pocket after all. A crush that didn’t end in a crush but rather blossomed into a full-blown love affair.

And they say diamonds are forever… So naïve. They don’t know what “forever” means.

Although I had found no one with an ability to describe it accurately, I yet had a sense of knowing that this apparent, if invisible force did indeed exist, and that others were keenly aware of its existence, not because of definition, but conviction. Sure, they attest that “you have to be born with it” or that some talent must be inherent for it to be even possible to express, but that they talk about it at all signifies a base knowledge at least of its reality and that it does have qualities.

Musicians tell each other instinctively and definitely when they are in the pocket, and protest and complain, even criticize, when they aren’t even close.

Audiophiles, ignorant of any of the mechanics or theory involved, feel it when it’s happening, and suffer ultimate disappointment for want of it when it’s not.

From behind the kit, I have observed this time and again, in the gyrations and motions of those who share its space with me, as my playing within its tight but comfy confines reflects its presence in their moves. And those so affected become witness this intense love affair I have with it, sharing in its joy and even expressing envy to want a similar relationship of their own.

They long, pine and yearn for it and seek to be with it for always, though they may never play a single musical note themselves.

Scouring the playlist of any given listener of music is most revealing as it’s inevitable to find some of the most in-the-pocket moments of all time. The pocket is something that may be created and established by the few, but it is always expansive enough to encompass the many. Infinitesimally small it is yet infinitely broad enough to sufficiently encompass the masses, however sizeable their numbers with unlimited room for growth.

It has always been there for me on the receiving end and only motivated me to bestow it on others, through shared listening experience, but mostly through performance, striving to emulate with accuracy its hypnotic nature and allure.

It could be said that if someone played in the pocket, way out in the boondocks, far from civilization, and no one was yet there to feel it, did it happen? Or, should I say, did it even matter? Whether or not it did occur, it proves out that there is cause and effect, a giver and recipient, and we have a bare minimum quantity present for a proverbial tango to take place.

I could not and will not accept that this phenomenon cannot be defined, harnessed and mastered for the greater good, rather than a fortunate few.

I have no desire for such conditional fortune and could never keep to myself something we all possess in our very nature, tapped or untapped, realized or in ignorance thereof. This is the stuff of a better world.

Consider it. Where would you be without the music? For that matter, where would music be, if not in the pocket? Boundless and uncontrolled by time, it may not exist at all.

Where would we be then?

I contend that the rhythmic composition of time is what drives us, what turns the Earth, and is a reason for existence, motivating all Life, without which time would stand still, quite literally. Where would we be without it?

Thankfully we have been blessed or bestowed or at least benevolently endowed with it, if mysteriously, and have access. If only some wouldn’t relegate it to “talent” only to be entrusted to a fortunate few.

There is far too abundant hoarding of human nature and innate intelligence in this world for me or anyone else to feign singular talent out of everyone’s inherent ability, let alone remain blandly silent and ignorant about any such behavior keeping from the light those who may bask in its warmth and so enlighten and inspire others with its charm.

All of which has led me to a strategy to debunk the fallacies of ages past, that only a Mozart could practice license and that the rest are condemned to only marvel.

Enjoyable a spectacle as it may be to observe, this pocket would not be observable unless it awakened a similar awareness in others, a consciousness submerged but alive and aware, whether or not we are paying attention or aware of such awareness. These pockets of time are common to all and can be sensed.

Perhaps the world would change for the better had all of us recognized it in unison.

My goal now is to form a collective of those who have keenly mastered it, who can feel it and recognize its existence, regardless of if they can define its essence or characteristics or if they believe themselves to be one of the talented minority who are revered by the majority who “weren’t born with it” and whose only ambition is to be an audience.

This work is the basis of my mission to not only define the pocket, but to do so in such a way as to bring it out in everyone, and that instrumentalists of all kinds, from amateur to pro, may bring out the optimum potential that is natively theirs.

Mine increasingly reveals itself with every passing beat in time, with every stroke and rest and with every pleasureful moment it creates for self and others.

It reveals itself in every good hook, every swift lick and each penetrating pulse. Whether on the giving or receiving end of such, you’ve got to admit that it is worth defining and making more accessible by all.

We all want to share those moments as we do when we hear a great song. It isn’t enough to experience it. You have to tell someone and share. Don’t you?

With that I present the epic tale of my love affair with the pocket, in all its significance, both metaphoric and literal.

It is the back story to my BeatSmarts system of training people to create pocket and a codification of the uncodifiable, the components of the pocket that I have asked drummers and musicians everywhere to help, in part, to further define on my In the Pocket Radio podcast.

I offer this work to you so that you may find your own love affair, or at least come to appreciate and realize the one you have been in and yet may not have known about.

I believe we’re all there. May my story help you embrace yours.

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