King of Kings

There is a theory, which seems to get more legitimate each year and backed by scientific research in well received magazine publications, which argues that mankind is a simulation, each human a highly computerized and encoded digital creature, maybe even preprogrammed before birth.

This would suggest that there’s an entirely different, new world beyond the so-called earth in which we inhabit, occupied perhaps by angels awaiting our passage. One can imagine great walls and concrete doors dividing us from some celestial nirvana.

Maybe it’s a ridiculous thought. But when I listen to the music of B.B. King, I reckon I might believe it.

You can close your eyes and see the music of B.B. King. It reels into your heart like fishing line and the hook sets right in, opening up doors and breaking down walls to worlds never known before.

His music, the roaring voice like the echo of lions and dynamite guitar licks that erupt constantly, each note screaming through the eardrums like bullets and gliding so perfectly through the soul, as though they are trickles upon the canvas skies—it pulls you out of water. It stretches through outer space, bursting like a star, sets Mars afire and paints the rings around Saturn, bends around galaxies and unlocks a door to a dark room and strikes light from the sun like a match before your face, leaving one nearly without words, save for Jesus Christ or Holy Shit.

It could be called a religious experience, leading you past the churches and altars, the crowds in the pews, the boring sermons, the lifeless hymns and directs you straight before the angels themselves.

Finally, it leaves you without breath, stopping your heartbeat, then with the closing of each track, tosses you back into the water.

That is B.B. King.