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This is the pulse.
It is irresistable, inexorable; it starts with one, and then others, and it spreads like the contagion of livng, consuming the entire room with rhythm. It ripples, it writhes, it breathes, and always the pulse thudding through like a pounding heart, sometimes faster, sometimesslower, sometimes fast enough to reach a shuddering climax and then fade away into the gasping of aftermath before it picks up again to start to build. Voices join that pulse, gasping, howling, ululating, breathless, fade away again into thepounding, irresistable rhythm.
They dance, in the center of the circle, a third of them stripped at least to the waist; narrow-waisted, overflowing-waisted, hips like a camel, inked and smooth and furred, masked and unmasked, wound up in scarves and ripples and swirling past with the sudden breath of the dancers, lungfuls of moving air a sudden shock in amongst the sweat and driving demands of the rhythm. Here lies Ma'at at Her most primal, that driving pulse that shapes everything as far as it can be heard, each individual drum,each individual bell, each chime and tambour on its own course, all dancing with Ma'at, dancing with Setekh in the violence and the passion of the beat. They writhe, arms twisting, down on their knees, pressed up together, alone, all beautiful -- a full kiss from a bare stranger into the rhythm and out and back into the dance and gone again, familiar and unfamiliar, wild, constrained, boneless or not, the pounding of hands against the instruments that sway with the player's hips, the motions of hips and joints and bare skin glistening (his arms move, pushing him upwards, thrusting higher; she sways, the tattoos swirling down her lower spine into her skirts only accentuating the slither of her hips); in the eye of the dancers a singlefigure, straightly curved, rests on head and elbows, upside down, perfectly vertical, perfectly still, the maypole for the revels. To one side, someone with glowing chains enacts what looks for all the world like a weapons form, glittering in the rhythms, choosing to enact blood rather than sex to the drive of the beat.
Even if the instrument is notplayed it quivers, vibrates, pulses between the legs, echoing sound with its low hum, eager to be a part of the sound, rippling with the energy. Even resting the beat drives the hands to just mark it, mark every other, use the off-hand if you must, but the beat must be recognised, must be heard, must be celebrated. A newriff begins, something takes shape under the hands, and by the time of fading back to that marking the pulse alone, six other people have taken it up, elaborated on it, spun it around the circle and back into the weave.
Dancers come into the circle, go out again; drummers set down their instruments, dance, return. Drummers leave; dancers leave; drummers arrive, dancers arrive. They have always played, they will always play, the potent growth of sound resting on the core that is that heartbeat . . . intoxicating rhythms singing in the blood.
It is irresistable, inexorable; it starts with one, and then others, and it spreads like the contagion of livng, consuming the entire room with rhythm. It ripples, it writhes, it breathes, and always the pulse thudding through like a pounding heart, sometimes faster, sometimesslower, sometimes fast enough to reach a shuddering climax and then fade away into the gasping of aftermath before it picks up again to start to build. Voices join that pulse, gasping, howling, ululating, breathless, fade away again into thepounding, irresistable rhythm.
They dance, in the center of the circle, a third of them stripped at least to the waist; narrow-waisted, overflowing-waisted, hips like a camel, inked and smooth and furred, masked and unmasked, wound up in scarves and ripples and swirling past with the sudden breath of the dancers, lungfuls of moving air a sudden shock in amongst the sweat and driving demands of the rhythm. Here lies Ma'at at Her most primal, that driving pulse that shapes everything as far as it can be heard, each individual drum,each individual bell, each chime and tambour on its own course, all dancing with Ma'at, dancing with Setekh in the violence and the passion of the beat. They writhe, arms twisting, down on their knees, pressed up together, alone, all beautiful -- a full kiss from a bare stranger into the rhythm and out and back into the dance and gone again, familiar and unfamiliar, wild, constrained, boneless or not, the pounding of hands against the instruments that sway with the player's hips, the motions of hips and joints and bare skin glistening (his arms move, pushing him upwards, thrusting higher; she sways, the tattoos swirling down her lower spine into her skirts only accentuating the slither of her hips); in the eye of the dancers a singlefigure, straightly curved, rests on head and elbows, upside down, perfectly vertical, perfectly still, the maypole for the revels. To one side, someone with glowing chains enacts what looks for all the world like a weapons form, glittering in the rhythms, choosing to enact blood rather than sex to the drive of the beat.
Even if the instrument is notplayed it quivers, vibrates, pulses between the legs, echoing sound with its low hum, eager to be a part of the sound, rippling with the energy. Even resting the beat drives the hands to just mark it, mark every other, use the off-hand if you must, but the beat must be recognised, must be heard, must be celebrated. A newriff begins, something takes shape under the hands, and by the time of fading back to that marking the pulse alone, six other people have taken it up, elaborated on it, spun it around the circle and back into the weave.
Dancers come into the circle, go out again; drummers set down their instruments, dance, return. Drummers leave; dancers leave; drummers arrive, dancers arrive. They have always played, they will always play, the potent growth of sound resting on the core that is that heartbeat . . . intoxicating rhythms singing in the blood.
- "Why did we kill the king?"
"He didn't like our drum."
"Oh. Good reason."
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Just thought I'd say.
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I spent about an hour and a half straight drumming. I had to try to get some of it written down, try to say what it was, while I was still drunk on it.
My arms may yet forgive me.
Drummmmmmmmmm.
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Ever wonder how big a drum you could get from a Dragon skin? I bet they'd declare war over it if it were made, but sill...