D.J. Manly on love in The Beat

Many people I know have been victim to unrequited love. Common question… “How do I make him love me?” Wish I had the answer. I think love is so magical because it involves a potent combination of variables, some kind of spicy recipe with several ingredients, some of which have never been identified.

The Beat is written from the perspective of guy who is sure the way he feels is not returned, and will never be. He can only make assumptions based on the information he has in front of him. Sometimes those clues are misleading.

Love is pain when it’s not working and the most rewarding sense of pleasure when it does.

Why did I pick a drummer as the love interest of Johnny in this story? Well, I think the drummer beating on his/her drum says something to us. Perhaps drumming represents the rhythm of love, the intensity of passion, or the beating of our hearts when the one we love enters a room. Indeed, our main character, Johnny confesses in The Beat that: I didn’t say what I wanted to, how the very thought of him inspired every note I played, or every word I sang. I turned around on that stage and saw him behind those drums and I was on fire.

Drums have been around a long time. So has love. Ancient drums have been discovered all over the world, first appearing in an excavation site from the Neolithic Era. The oldest recorded drum is from 6000 BC.  Egyptian tombs have yielded small drums used for ceremonies. Caves in Peru contain wall markings depicting drums in various aspects of societal life. We know that Native people of North America used a series of wood and gourd drums for their celebrations and music, and are still used in ceremonies.

But drums have not always been used just for music. In Africa , where music is simply an interpretation of everyday life in sound, drums were used as speech. A pattern of beats played in a certain way could communicate many different kinds of information. In parts of Africa , drums were even given entities and gender. They were an expression of the soul, of belief, spiritual awakening.

The mystery of the exact ingredients coming together in a brilliant swirl at the right moment, awakening love in two individuals, remains unsolved. It’s no small accomplishment. It’s as complex as the tap tap tap of the drums, rudimentary, seemingly simple repetition and yet it weaves the most enchanting of melodies. It’s like the tap tap tap of the heart, isn’t it? The Beat.

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The Beat by D.J. Manly is now available at Amber Allure.

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