NaShoStoMo Day 4

The young man raised his drumsticks above his head and struck them together to the sound of glorious anticipation, then drove them down upon the cherry-red drums with their clear plastic heads to the rhythm of the falling rain. The thin batons of white wood crashed out the thunder and the lightning upon cymbals made of brass, while his feet drove the bass drum to the rhythm of the world's heartbeat.

The young man behind the microphone reached out into the unseen past, and his hand, wrapped around the black plastic hilt of his weapon, seemed to wrap around the hand of the weathered-faced aboriginal shaman from ten millennia ago. His voice called out the same chant that the first vocalists had cried out around the fire circle in forgotten ages past, the next movement of the eternal song that thrums through the twisted double helix of human history.

All else is accompaniment. Be it the elegant violin held in the long-fingered hands of the chamber orchestra concertmaster, or the electric guitar smashed upon the stage by the long-haired young rebel in black leather and ripped trousers, or the ivory and ebony keys lovingly tickled by the mussy-haired young man bent intently over his twinkling fingers: all else is accompaniment to the Beat and the Voice that lays at the heart of all music. Without them, the Beat and the Voice lose much of their color, much of their flavor. Without the Beat and the Voice, however, all else is Noise, the aural chaos of the terrifying wilderness, from which ancient humankind fled and hid in deep caves marked with soot and flame.

And the young people rose up towards the stage, their faces uplifted, their bodies swaying to the Beat, the Voice wafting over them, as the young man with the short blond hair drove his thin plastic pick over the tightly coiled strings, coaxing a passionate wail of primal emotion from a device born of harnessed lightning. And, for one more moment, the Music sang out through the endless sea of souls.