Let’s attempt an anthropological definition. Man is not just an animal that eats bread (Hesiod), an animal that makes promises (Nietzsche) or an animal with glasses (Svevo). Man is also a striking animal. In the beginning there was rhythm; an eternal immutable, standard accepted, indisputable, omnipresent. There is a rhythm to the ebb and flow of tides; There is rhythm in the orbits of the planets; There is a rhythm in the flight of birds; There is rhythm in sex gymnastics; There is rhythm in the mastery of language. To paraphrase Carson McCullers, only death lacks rhythm. After rhythm came the body with which we were endowed as a species: arms and feet, opposable thumb, eyes at landscape level, a structure refined after millions of years of evolutionary jewellery. And finally the instrument appears: originally the stick and stone of the primitive herd; at one point the drum of African slaves; Fortunately, one day, that complex machine we call drums is embodied in artists such as Art Blakey, John Bonham and Dave Lombardo.
An excellent translator (William H. Gass, Mary Robison and Chris Offutt are his credit) and the author of a single but unforgettable novel to date (The Invisible Sea in The Swiss Army Knife), thanks to the Mester de bateria we know today, Ce Santiago has been playing this instrument for decades, in fact longer than he wrote and translated. Drum Mester is a declaration of love and at the same time an attempt to identify the faces of a mythology. Like any declaration of love, this one needs no reasons other than those that come from the heart; Like all mythologies, it is unjust by definition. But neither passionate motives nor self-serving prejudices make this endeavor any less interesting. The exact opposite. They support the evidence that we are faced with an investigation of the point that Cioran makes with great insight: “Everything musical belongs to memories.”
So play and write, translate and play. Tap and tap until the words (from others, from oneself) are arranged in a precise order, in a tick-tock sound where language captures the world and gives back to us a glimpse of clarity, a glimpse of that rich passage where the irreversible creation of meaning of mystery occurs. . Write to explain who and what I am; translate to explain who and what others are; Tap to reveal the hidden rhythm of things and their conditions. Ce Santiago expresses this in more beautiful and resonant words, so the last drum beat is his: “Drums are the seed and at the same time the ultimate materialization of rhythm, the ordinary monad of rhythm that exists in everything and everyone; Moreover, it is the altar of everything that wants to dance like Zarathustra’s god: with the armored body of freedom and self-affirmation.