They are all seated, ringed into a mobbed sea of noise, myriad dabs of color. They are here to be entertained, an audience to a performance, to escape the daily drudgery of their lives. Thumbs up, thumbs down. They want to see blood, to see a man destroyed and devastated by his opponent. They want to cheer onward the champion, to partake in his victory, his triumph of murder. For it is theirs, it is for them. It is their spectacle, a debacle staged for their enjoyment. Feats of strength, endurance, animal savagery. A reminder of manhood, of what it means to be alive. This is their power, faceless, joined in collected bellow. They watch and stamp their feet and lose themselves. The only thing that stands out here is blood, and they are gathered to watch it spill. Nameless, they are the invisible mass that weights the spinning sights to their center.
If an individual with a weapon in the midst of the crowd began to slaughter them, mimicking the scene that they fantasize about, would you call them innocent? Ignorant, perhaps, that what they watch can break out of its borders, out of its frames and into their reality, striking the easy target of their social gathering. Ignorant, perhaps, that they are a part of the world even in this mass confinement, that they are a political power of dimension and scope that are demanding of more than just entertainment. But innocent, no. How can anyone be innocent in a world where everything we do affects one another? I’m afraid that the only creatures on this earth who can claim innocence are the ones who do not have the self-awareness to be bitter, to bear hatred. Animals. And these people, flocked together to remind themselves of their nature, losing themselves in the unconsciousness of the crowd, for a while together they are animals. But then they separate themselves and they become aware.
And it is from this awareness, now, that I destroy. I stand up against the blank white void and bombard it with words, string its fields with my sentences, penetrate its space with the bullet points of my periods.