SUGIK

in the morning i pray....among other things, i send god all of the things that i am dealing with and let him work it all out; what will be realized, what will be lifted from my mind, etc. so in the morning i "turned over" to god what would happen with my meeting with sugik this morning, and also that i would like a gamelon teacher in a barter arrangement, without money.

sugik is a 15 year old that helped me out in the internet cafe and that appeared a few more times suddenly out of nowhere, including last week at a temple ceremony i went to. he invited me to come over to his house and so today was the day. we planned to meet at 9 at the internet cafe since i didn't know where he lives ( or his name,,,,) i got there early and sat outside by the road keeping an eye out for him, and also just taking in the morning goings on, on the main road of the village...it is so different than anything i know, that i could just spend hours sitting there. among the "different" things was seeing an old man sitting on the other side of the road, just sitting on a cement wall of a house, motioning hello to cars and people and motorbikes that passed him by. i thought how this is a common pastime in bali, just to sit outside and watch traffic and say hello. and i wondered what kind of life that is for the old man.

then i saw sugik running towards me (the first time i saw a balinese running! they are never in a hurry, but i think he was late and felt embarassed to have kept me waiting). i crossed over the street to meet him and we shook hands and we took two steps and suddenly he stopped in front of the old man that was sitting on the cement wall and said to me "this is my gamelon teacher". i was dumbfounded! i know who his gamelon teacher is, since i have seen sugik at his lesson, and am also a very avid fan of his teacher, keeping my eye on him constantly at every temple performance, since he is the leader of the gamelon band, and plays a wild drum! i noticed him the first day i came to the village at the first ceremony, there was something about him that just caught my attention and ever since then i always try to spot him out among the musicians to see if he is there, and how he does it. so with the blue baseball cap on his head, instead of the traditional bali batik kerchief and sarong, i didn't recognize him. and here i thought just an old man with nothing to do was sitting watching traffic. i excitedly told sugik what an avid fan of his i am and that i love hearing him play all the time and that i just didn't recognize him. i had no idea why sugik had chosen to stop and introduce me to his teacher, other than out of respect, but decided that this apparently was a god send and exactly what i had "turned over" in the morning; my meeting with sugik and finding a teacher for the gamelon! so i said, "sugik, i want to study gamelon and i need a teacher that is willing to teach me for free since i do not have any money, can you ask him if he knows anyone that can teach me." sugik translated and the teacher smiled. he was talking and talking with sugik who continued to translate all the accomplishments of the teacher; he once had a student from the netherlands, henry, and he has been to japan, and played in america in california, and he has taught all of bali, and performs everywhere, and has taught almost all of the musicians in tejakula. i acknowledged his fame gladly and knew he really was outstanding. but what about me? I continued and insisted, that i am serious and that i really love the gamelon and need a teacher. while watching the gamelon band the day before at the ramayana play, i saw that alot of them were old folk and that maybe one of them would just enjoy teaching me without needing money to support a family. i again continued to explain to sugik that i am serious. and each time he translated. and then i saw the old man nod and sugik said "he will teach you for free". what?! the head of the orchestra, the lead musician and teacher of the village agrees to give me private lessons, for free?! "yes." "thank you thank you thank you" (and you too god).

he asked if i would like to come into his house and see a photo of the man from the netherlands that studied with him, i always answer "yes" to everything people offer me here, so we went down a little path into an open air living room where he motioned for me to sit down on the rug and proceeded into a little room to look for the photo. he soon returned with an old album and as he searched among the photos i felt sorry for him that they had all faded over the past 30 years and no faces or details could be seen on them,,,but he was looking for henry from the netherlands to show me. on the floor also was sitting an old man in a t-shirt and a sarong, and a small thin older balinese woman was going in and out of the rooms, smiling at me, and helping him try and find the photo of henry. meanwhile i saw how this famous musician had once had a head full of black hair and a mustache and was quite charming. ah, finally a photo of henry, sitting in this same room, with a drum on his lap, yes. i explained that i have a camera and that i can take up to date photos of him playing in the band at the temple if he would like and keep them on the computer so that they won't fade and that he will have some current photographs. and i can even make a video for him....sugik smiled, politely, and after i requested an e-mail address of a family member that i can send them to for him, i realized that his grandson was sitting there with his cell phone which has a camera, and i am really not in touch with reality! they don't need me with a camera to photograph him, they can take photos all the time with their cell phone....but the balinese would never say that to a guest, and they politely gave me the grandsons e-mail address. i asked when we could start lessons, and the answer was that in a few days there is a big ceremony (for a change!) and that after that. fine...what a miracle!!!

then we had our introductions. the teacher is called su gede sueightie and i am called eileen, and then i turned to sugik and told him that i don't even know what his name is! sugik (how in the world am i going to remember that?!) and then i turned again to the teacher to try and remember his name, and messed that all up, and then turned to sugik and didn't have the faintest idea what he had told me his name was a minute before, so i told him to tell me again since i already had forgotten it! so he said it slowly and wrote it on his hand. ahh...sugik....okay. meanwhile the older woman had returned with 3 bottles and a bag of cookies, and graciously placed them in front of each of us. i looked at the bottle....am i really going to drink a coke?! and i tried reading what it said, even though it looked like coke, and it said : Thebotel.....i laughed; i get it : a" bottle" of "tea"! and i took a sip to see if i had guessed correctly, and yes! cold tea, nice. su gede continued to tell about all of his achievements in life all over the world, and sugik translated. i asked who the man here was, and he said it is his father, who was also a drummer, and hanging on the wall he pointed to a drumstick and said that it is very old and belonged to his grandfather who was also a drummer. i asked him how long he has been drumming, and he said 40 years on the gamelon and drums, and that he will be 60 next year. ah, i laughed and said we are the same age, ( which reminded me of a joke about a woman that goes to a dentist and when she sits down in the chair she recognizes him from her school days even though he is now wrinkled and bald and asks him if he wasn't the same so and so from the class of 1960 and he says yes and she says that she recognized him after all these years, and he said : oh really, what did you teach? apropos me thinking he was an old man sitting on the cement wall....so what does that make me!)

su gede asked if i want to come see his studio in a neighboring village (answer "yes" to everything you are offered. ) "Yes!" so off we went on 2 motorbikes zooming down the main road, su gede was busy beeping everyone we passed whether by foot, by car, in a kiosk, in a truck....he knows everyone and the beep is a "hello". and then we turned down a winding path and down narrow walkways until we stopped in a courtyard, where lots of pickled dry tuna skins were laying on screens in the sun drying out. a 5 year old girl sat on the ground next to a pile of skins and kept pulling out one at a time and placing them next to her grandfather that had a chopping knife and a tree trunk as he sat cross legged on the ground, folding the long tuna skins into a little pile and then chopping them up into smaller slices. this is the studio?! then out came a hippie type and i was introduced to him, a student of gedes, "that has many foreigner friends". it turns out that gede wanted to borrow two of his drums...after some small talk, sugik, and the grandson left on one motorbike holding 2 huge congo drums and drove back, and gede and i started off too. as he again continued to beep at everyone, he suddenly stopped near a kiosk that was grilling fish and other goodies, and told me to wait, and he returned 10 minutes later with a bag full of take away food. as we made our way home beeping i realized that indeed i am not 18 and blonde, but i am a woman and a foreigner, riding on the back of his motorbike and this is definitely something to brag about, and he did it in his own humble way.


once we were back at his place he went into the tiny kitchen and came back with some coconut oil which he lovingly rubbed onto the skins of the drums. when gede went into the kitchen the grandfather picked up the drum and tried to beat it, but then motioned to his arms and said he no longer has strength, he put the drum back on the rug and returned to sit in silence and without moving for 2 hours watching us. the elderly are cared for by the youngest son. gede returned and then began to tune them, sitting on the rug. he then showed me how to sit and said "would you like a drum lesson now?" (always say "yes") "Yes". and he handed me one of the (very heavy) drums, and a drumstick and proceeded to beat out a tune and motioned for me to imitate him, i did, "technique number 1" then another rhythm "technique number 2" . i managed to do 1 and 2 without too much difficulty and he was happy, once i got each tune he would play a complicated conversation between me playing my drum and he on his and i had to not get mixed up, which i succeeded at doing, and i got the "thumbs up" sign meaning "good". technique number 3 didn't go as well. with one hand beating on the bottom side of the drum one rhythm and the right hand holding a drumstick and beating on the other end of the drum a different beat, the goal was to manage to do the rhythm 10 times without a mistake, while he played a complicated accompaniment, i couldn't get past 6 times straight each time, before my mind would jump in and mix me up and i would start all over again counting 6 correct beats. it was important not only to beat the rhythm very strong and loud but to hold the drumstick in a relaxed manner, and to sit with a straight back, another one of my "heroes" from the school band appeared at his house then, too, making himself quite at home, they started to introduce him to me and i laughed saying that he is another one of my stars since he is an amazing drummer and gamelon player that i have had my eye on at all the performances. su gede continued to repeat again and again techniques 1,2 and 3 and explained that i must memorize them and once i get them down, we can go on to 4 which will be more difficult than 3 and he knows that 3 is already difficult, but that i am good. we had been drumming for over an hour and i was tired. i wasn't sure if the best method would be to just stop and let it go for another time, or just take a break and try again, remembering that all i have to do is try and be as empty as possible, no mind, no will, no expectations, no ambition, just be in each beat of the drum, a channel allowing the rhythm that my body already knows, to come out, without interfering with my ego or will.


su gede told the other student to continue to accompany me and he disappeared into the kitchen, only to appear minutes later with a lovely meal for sugik me and him, (grandfather and star student were left out of our meal, for some reason....) he placed a colander of white rice that had a little banana leaf the size of a matchbox with a smidgen of rice on it placed on top of it all (i assume a sign of the rice offering that has been made by the cook). the plastic tray also had bamboo sticks with fish kebab patties grilled on the tips of them, and a bowl of folded banana leafs with thin bamboo sticks keeping them folded, when the oblong one was opened for me by sugik as he placed it on my bowl, out rolled a spicy fish mixture that he said is very good, and then su gede also opened up a triangular shaped one and out came a chicken ball. a small bowl with hot spicy chill paste was the perfect condiment along with a small pot of some hot soup to be poured over the rice. so this was the carry out meal su gede had bought along the way. how sweet. a plastic bowl was brought to wash our right hand in before eating, since that was our "silverware". su gede proceeded to take one of the banana leafs from the fish patties and placed a little bit of each of the foods onto it, as an offering, before we began to eat. the food was delicious. it was the first time i was being hosted to typical balinese food that the villagers buy and eat everyday, since they don't have refrigerators, and it is so cheap and easy and tasty just to buy this fresh food on the street and take it home to eat every meal. he was such a generous and kind host. i was slowly beginning to understand that for him it is a great honor that an american israeli woman wants to study gamelon with him, and for me it is a great honor that the head of the temple gamelon band is willing to teach me. and here was sugik, sitting for hours, smiling, translating everything either of us said, so respectful to his teacher. he explained that i must learn 5 days straight and then have a 2 day break, perfect! i agree. we will begin after the holiday. " and during the temple ceremony where he will be playing, you must sit next to him." (in front of the thousands of villagers that will be coming there. ) after sugik had repeatedly translated what a famous and excellent teacher the teacher is, he said that his dream is that every single person in bali will know how to play the drums and the gamelon. and then i understood that this talented musician needs students and without them, he is just an old man, sitting on the cement wall waving hello to the passerbys.