There’s a new sound coming from the Valley at night. It’s not an animal sound. You hear those all the time. Some new cackling, cawing, bleating, or croaking sound will rise out of the Valley, surrounded by an eery cloud of silence, as the other creatures of La Mancha try to get a bead on the newcomer. Last summer I heard a sound like someone clacking ball bearings together. I heard it every night for a week and then it was gone. Whatever made that sound was either eaten or moved on.
But this is no animal noise. It’s a human sound. So faint you can only hear it late at night, when the noise of commerce and celebration fades and silence deepens in the darkness.
I first heard this sound one evening around midnight, when I was sitting on the bow of Dulcinea with my back to her wall, looking out over the Valley. I had been hearing it for some time before I realized what it was. Drumming. Drums in the deep. Old drums. Leather and wood with human hands falling on them in a rhythm.
Let’s get right to the heart of the matter, shall we?
Do I believe that when I become quiet in my soul and sit long enough in the Valley that the modern world falls away from me, I can hear the ancient echo of drums, a sound not heard in this valley for a hundred and fifty years?
Honestly, no. I do not. I’m far too enmeshed in our modern worldview to believe something like that. We are in Austin, famously weird, so there are any number of reasonable explanations for this sound. But now as I write to you, I feel a pulsing of grief in my gut, a rising sense that I, we, all of us have lost something precious that we will never find again. We’ve lost trust in our own natural projections of meaning into Creation. We see a thing, look it up online, yawn, and go about our business. I wish I did believe in the ancient echo of drums. But no, I don’t. I can’t. Not anymore.
But if it’s honesty I seek, let me screw my courage to the sticking place and admit that I don’t even know how the microwave works. I certainly have no business speaking to the metaphysics of the Valley.
But let us dissect that fascinating question together.
Am I hearing echoes of the ancient drums of the The People?
I have heard drums. Three times in six months. And the first thing I thought was, “That’s what the Valley sounded like a hundred and a thousand years ago.”
The People live in this land and drum.
Our ancestors take the land from them.
Modern humans begin to drum again in the Valley.
Lonely writer hears the drums and is moved to write.
Honestly, how is this NOT an ancient echo?
So let us return one last time to this fascinating question.
Am I hearing echoes of the ancient drums of the The People?
Of course psychologically and emotionally speaking, the answer is a clear yes. But I’m not talking about that.
You know what I’m talking about.
My hands are trembling as I write this because I don’t know anything for sure anymore. That happens when you lose it all. You find yourself in a liminal space where you feel like you could believe everything.
I don’t know.
I am so close.
So close to believing.