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“We’re going to save the planet,” Decibel Jones said in the voice that launched a thousand sexual awakenings. He slung his arm round his old boyfrack’s waist. “I thought you’d want to sit in.”
A moment later, all three of them, plus one white cat, ceased to occupy Planet Earth.
Remember that friendly, bouncing disco ball you were following? Hold on tight with everything you’ve got, because now that the band’s back together, that shiny little minx is about to break orbit.
13.
Everything Has Rhythm
The question has never been: Can you build cities?
Ants do that.
The question has never been: Are you capable of considering your own existence and getting kind of depressed about it?
Any animal in captivity does that.
The question has never been: Can you use tools?
Crows do that. Otters do that. Apes do that. Good Lord, everybody does that.
The question has never been: Can you perform complex problem solving?
Dogs do that.
The question has never been: Can you experience love?
Nobody doesn’t.
The question has never been: Can you use language?
Parrots and dolphins and cuttlefish do that.
The question has never even been: Do you understand object permanence, can you recognize yourself in the mirror, do you bury your dead, do you bond emotionally with your young?
Elephants do all those things, and some humans definitely don’t.
The only question is this:
Do you have enough empathy and yearning and desperation to connect to others outside yourself and scream into the void in four-part harmony? Enough brainpower and fine motor control and aesthetic ideation to look at feathers and stones and stuff that comes out of a worm’s more unpleasant holes and see gowns, veils, platform heels? Enough sheer style and excess energy to do something that provides no direct, material benefit to your personal survival, that might even mark you out from the pack as shiny, glittery prey, to do it for no other reason than that it rocks?
Everything in the universe has rhythm. Everything pulses to a beat laid down by the Big Bang. Everything feels the drumline of creation from star to sex to song. But can you make that rhythm? In order to create a pop band, the whole apparatus of civilization must be up and running and tapping its toe to the beat. Electricity, poetry, mathematics, sound amplification, textiles, arena architecture, efficient mimetic exchange, dramaturgy, industry, marketing, the bureaucratic classes, cultural critics, audiovisual transmission, special effects, music theory, symbology, metaphor, transportation, banking, enough leisure and excess calories to do anything beyond hunt, all of it, everything.
Can everyone else trust that, if you must declare war and wipe out half a quadrant, you’ll at least write a sad song about it?
Yes?
Well, even that is not quite enough.
Are you kind enough, on your little planet, not to shut that rhythm down? Not to crush underfoot the singers of songs and tellers of tales and wearers of silk? Because it’s monsters who do that. Who extinguish art. Who burn books. Who ban music. Who yell at anyone with ears to turn off that racket. Who cannot see outside themselves clearly enough to sing their truth to the heavens. Do you have enough goodness in your world to let the music play?
Do you have soul?
Air
Go sing it like a hummingbird
The greatest anthem ever heard.
