Thumping

Something primordial in me hears and feels the bass thumping in the ceiling and immediately calls up a memory of big guns, something from the First World War. In a moment, I feel back in the Air and Space Museum in DC, surrounded by dioramas of mud and barbed wire, feeling in my chest the atmospheric booming of simulated guns. I am in awe at the sheer creative power of mankind, a creativity that seems to be best harnessed for destruction, as though the human race was a single maddened ouroboros, eternally feeding on itself.

I read in an essay by a student yesterday that no human should ever take the life of another; my heart rebelled against it. Which of us would not, in a fury born of rage or justice, make himself the embodiment of retribution? The ability to take a life is as much a part of man as his strong right arm; power over life and death is as vital as breath, as primal as the heartbeat of thumping in the ceiling. If we choose not to, be it weakness or strength, it is not because we could or should not.

I curse any man who, if his child was in danger, would not put his hand upon the gun. We are born to the timelessness of violence, the eternity of a life consumed in another's choice; it is more ancient than speech.

Perhaps all of this is barbaric and vile, but something about an angry bass thumping brought it out in me so quickly and so clearly that I had to put it down.