The world is layered in rhythms. The heartbeat that skips and dances, measuring out our blood and our lives in quarter-notes, that in some moments echoes in our head like a drum, pay attention; the breathing that speeds and slows, grows ragged or smooth, that holds and holds in a watery world, pay attention; the steps that pace and race and skip and stumble, pay attention.
The rhythm of beating wings overhead, the rhythm of rain hammering on roofs, the slower, heavier beat of fat raindrops in downpipes and gutters; the rhythm of something hopping through the underbrush, the rhythm of the tides on the shore – pay attention.
The hammer of thunder, the emphasis on the beat of the storm like a crashing of cymbals to mark the apex of the chorus – you had better be paying attention.
The world is chaos, rhythms, and I have always heard them. I hear all of them. I feel them. I walk with them, a vast and vibrant cacophony that is unlikely to coincide, and we impose our own rhythms over the top of them, the rhythm of clocks and waltzes and walk-signals.
I pay attention. There is a metronome beneath all of this.
When the clock chimes the hour, then an hour has passed.
When the world chimes, all at once, then I hold my breath and still my feet and if I could pause my heart, I would, because the next beat dictates the cycle of the world—
When I was a child, I drew the nine of skins: the drummer of the final measures. Nines are nearing the point of completion, the last mile before home, and we all know that mile is longer than all those that went before it, laid end to end.
This is the crisis point, the bridge before the final chorus, the transformation of tempo, the metamorphosis of meter – and it is up to me to bring this song home.
The skins are the rhythm. The nine of skins brings me nine drums.
I scatter my choices across the skin of the world. I choose the timpani, the tabla, the buljirr, the ashiko, the darbuka, the bodhrán, the djembe. That makes seven. The feet of the dancers? I play that, too, as they drum upon the earth. That makes eight.
The ninth drum? That is my heart, the drum that plays itself.
The rhythm.
There are drummers, and then there’s me.
I can play you the rhythm of the world, if you will dance to the beat of my drum.
If you pay attention.
I have a Wednesday night writing group. We do prompts, and drabbles, and it’s a good time. This non-drabble prompt was “unusual suits in Tarot decks,” as the MC for our weekly shenanigans collects Tarot decks. We each picked a number between one and eight, and were given a card as a prompt. When I was given the suit “Skins”, this is what immediately came to mind. I looked up the significance of nines in Tarot, and later I read up a little on different kinds of skin drums (membranophones), because these have can be found wherever humanity can. For war, for peace, for gathering, for speaking, dancing, celebrating, grieving – for all things and all times, there is a drum. There is a rhythm.
Nothing if not verbose 