A thousand people staring up at an empty stage, waiting for the band to come out and help them forget that they exist. Exhilaration. Plastic beer cups. Everybody wants to disappear.

Do that which consists in taking no action, and order will prevail.

Your ribcage feels the impact as the bassist pounds his low D string. The drums begin to throb like a heart. A thousand people screaming, fists raised like antennas to heaven. You know it's going to happen and then it does: the guitars rip through the air, the vocalist holds the microphone tight in his fist and floods the entire room.

The most submissive thing in the world can ride roughshod over the hardest thing in the world - that which is without substance entering that which has no crevices.

Don't fight against it. You want to get to the front but so does the guy behind you, the guy behind him. Wait for the surge. When it hits it is like a wave. Let it take you forward, towards the music, the bluebright lights.

Let your wheels move only along old ruts.

The music is a liquid and you are drowning. Let the waves of bodies hit you, let them drag you like a piece of seaweed. You look up and there are lights. Drown, swallow the sound. Why do you want to get to the front?

A man is supple and weak when living, but hard and stiff when dead. Grass and trees are pliant and fragile when living, but dried and shriveled when dead. Thus the hard and the strong are the comrades of death; the supple and the weak are the comrades of life.

You don't need to be at the front. You are music. You are a thousand people swimming in an ocean of light.


Source: Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching

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