The Hum of Electric Veins

The air in the city tastes like ozone and cold metal, a sharp, metallic tang that settles on the back of the tongue. It is a dry, static-filled sensation, the kind that makes the fine hairs on your arms stand up as if they are reaching for a current they cannot name. I remember walking through streets where the ground hummed beneath my soles, a low-frequency vibration that traveled up through my shins and settled into my marrow. It was not a sound you hear with your ears, but a pulse you feel in your teeth—the frantic, rhythmic heartbeat of a million lives pressing against one another in the dark. There is a specific loneliness in being surrounded by so much light, a feeling of being a single, cooling ember in a furnace that never sleeps. We are all just sparks caught in a vast, glowing web, waiting for the night to finally exhale. When did the silence become something we had to run from?

Bappa Goswami has captured this restless energy in the image titled Tokyo at Night. It feels like standing on the edge of a great, glowing ocean, does it not? Can you feel the hum of the city vibrating through your own skin?