War cry

Eli took a long shower. He turned on his music very loud. Very very loud. I yelled at him from the top of the stairs. No reply. I yelled at him from the bottom of the stairs. Again, no reply. I knocked on his partly opened door and as he turned to me, wearing only a white towel wrapped around his waist and bending over to do something with his feet or his ankles, yelled at him from there. Yelled at him to turn the music down.

I didn’t really have to yell at him from there, I suppose. Its uncomfortable walking up behind someone’s back who doesn’t know you’re there and you don’t even know where they are exactly but just see them all of a sudden, because he could have been in his other room. And they’re barely dressed.

It would be different if I was a hunter. Eli is a kind of hunter. He’s in the military reserves and goes out on weekends to do war games exercises. When he comes home he’s always barely slept and talks excitedly in a loud voice.

I like turning up the music loud too sometimes. When Eli does it, downstairs, in his apartment, so you can hear it all over the house, it makes me think of some kind of war cry to scare your enemy. Like you know how the bagpipe music of the Scots was supposed to put fear into the hearts of its enemies. Except for me personally bagpipe music gives me a chill, but not the scary kind, and makes the back of my head tingle. Like in recognition.

The dynamics of this situation suggests to me that if you’re a warrior emitting, in whatever form, your battle cry you should be careful to not get so caught up in the miraculous and scary power of your cry that you forget that your deafening sounds provide an excellent opportunity for your enemy to use it as a cover and to stealthily attack you from behind.