text: Not really sure how to classify this one so I just went with sci fi because it has a few elements. &#x200B; ***And the Drums Rattled On*** &#x200B; And the drums rattled on. Bells and pots and pans. The hot sun beats down against the back of your neck. Like the wooden spoon banging against the frying pan in our new daily sonic communion, you are the sun’s percussion. You inhale the hot stale air that has collected underneath your mask. A bubble of sweat is gathering below your nose and itching persistently, but you are compelled to accept the sensation because you can’t touch your face. The drums rattle on. &#x200B; Now. The moon grins sardonically. You hide from its light in the dark corner of your room. It looks in through your window and calls out your name, your eyes meet; haunted unknowable cold terror. In the moon’s eyes you see things that were never meant for a human mind to comprehend. You forget your name. The drums rattle on. &#x200B; You wake up. The moon’s terror lingers cold on your spine. You still can’t remember your name. You get up and flick the light switch on your wall. It has no effect. You wander through hallways and cabinets in the dark. The drums rattle on. &#x200B; You wake up again. You were asleep on the couch. The room is dimly lit. A medium steel pot falls violently, or is thrown from the top of the stairs and bangs loudly at the bottom of the steps. No one is awake. You remember that you forgot your name. It stays forgotten. You experience a tense ache in your chest. The drums rattle on. &#x200B; You wake up again. You are in a room full of clowns. They do not look at you. You look out the window. The sky is falling. It is extraordinarily beautiful, the world is filled with new colour. The clowns continue to make preparations for the celebration. They are busy making commemoratory paperclip necklaces, assembly line style. There is a handheld mirror on the table next to you. You pick it up and make eye contact with yourself. You don’t remember your name but you start to remember your life. You feel lost. You cry out in anguish. The clowns freeze. They slowly turn and make eye contact with you. Their eyes are huge, hundreds of kilometres wide, filled with craters and volcanoes. You feel the pressure of their immense gravity. The moon is no longer laughing. The moon is crying. You can’t remember your name. The sky continues to fall, the room is filled with bright indigo light. You sob alongside the moon intensely. You are falling through a series of watery caves carved out in contradictory non euclidian patterns. The sky finishes falling. Your cave is pitch black. You do not have eyes. The drums rattle on. &#x200B; You wake up. You do not remember your name. You think about your childhood. Playing in the laneway behind your house. Your street, shielded in a ceiling of octogenarian trees. Two alleys on either side, plants growing out of cracks in the jagged concrete. It was a far encompassing universe with all the plasticity that entails to the perceptions of your young mind. You and your friends sit on skateboards and ride down a slight slope in the laneway road, filled with exhilaration, convinced it is a steep and dangerous hill. You immerse yourselves in your intricate fantasy game that mostly involves play-fighting each other with tall sticks that have had all the bark picked off. You eat from the gardens of your front and back yards, sour berry eating contests, chives and lemon balm. In the summer you fill up plastic jars with dirt and bugs. One year a group of kids climbed dangerously up the fence to the top of the mulberry tree. The mulberry’s were blended up and made into popsicles that were rather disappointing, but the mysticism of childhood is such that the disappointment was very quickly forgotten. &#x200B; You hear three knocks on the door of your room. *Thump Thump Thump.* You don’t answer. Three more knocks. *Thump Thump Thump.* You get up, walk over and open it. It is the moon, wearing dark Ray-band glasses. “How are you feeling” You don’t know what to say. “Uh...” The moon smiles, takes off its glasses, looks you in the eye and says: “I’m dreaming...This dream I’m having is a lucid dream, a waking dream. You are a figment of my unconscious.. A character of my mind.” You feel like someone is pouring warm water and lemon juice on your scalp; prickly, concise, and unrelenting. Your perception of your own physicality takes on an irrational uncanny valley characteristic; like your head is where your foot is supposed to be and your foot is where your head is supposed to be. “What I’m wondering about” Says the Moon, “is do you have your own sentience or do you just exist within my mind?” You regard the moon, the moon regards you back. Neither of you know the answer. You slowly start to feel a sense of warmth and solidarity growing out of your mutual existential confusion and anxiety. This eventually leads you to smile and embrace. The drums rattle on. &#x200B; **\*\*\*\*\*\*** &#x200B; The sky has fallen. In the scattered remains of Earth’s death, the Moon sits alone. &#x200B; The clowns living on the moon have a machine that converts all known physical matter into paperclips. You can hear the sounds of screaming clowns echoing throughout the halls, hallways, corridors, vents, windows, and doorways of their town as their bones continue to be crushed efficiently in the paperclip mechanism. &#x200B; A planned exhibition to Venus for the purposes of converting all of it’s material into the paperclip mechanism is being constantly delayed as the clowns planning it continue to have their bodies ground up in the cogs of the paperclip machine. &#x200B; A conference is called in 4 days time. 4 days pass. The conference convenes. Reduced price on green clown wigs. Sarcastic calculator in the centre of the conference beams vaguely with contentment. The Cogs roll and roll. The clowns scream with pride of their fantastic machine. The conference adjourns. The drums rattle on. &#x200B; **\*\*\*\*\*\*** &#x200B; You wake up. You have an email. The jumbled text is incomprehensible. Words seem to jump off the page before you can make them out. The characters are moving around and interposing on top of each other in a contradictory and irrational manner, the “S” and the “A” are both in the same place, but at the same time they are both somewhere else. The birds chirp loudly outside your window. It’s that time of day, the drums start again; pots and pans, gongs and whistles, improvised percussion, and clapping. It naturally mixes with the divine rhythm of the birds singing and forms a universe unto itself, a byzantine sonic ecology. You doze off. The sonic tapestry becomes aware of itself, and circles inward toward you like a tornado, or a dog chasing its tail. You allow the tapestry to eat away at your conception of ego. It turns and turns, slowly, chipping away bit by bit. The distinction between you and the tapestry becomes increasingly blurred. Eventually it has swept you away. You buzz peacefully alongside the sentient rhythm. You have no eyes. You have no name. You are alive and the drums rattle on.