To me, playing drums is all about the feeling I get laying down a groove. I get almost as much satisfaction playing wide-open in my basement as I do for a cheering audience... almost. It's obviously about the rhythm, but there's something much, much more.

It may sound crazy, but it's more about the spirituality of the process. Drummers can get into a zone when laying down a phat groove. It's a trance-like state that you can get into if you've been playing for awhile. It's a state where your mind is not thinking, but meditating, and your limbs are on autopilot finding the essence of the groove. Legs and arms all independent freethinking entities doing what comes natural, and your mind is free to be content - deeply content - in the zone.

Micky Hart , drummer of the Grateful Dead, has a wonderful book out on the subject called "Drumming at the Edge of Magic". In the book he talks about the power of music to heal and transform the human spirit. I'm not a Grateful Dead fan, but this book and the accompanying CD is incredible.