Martin Ott
	Learning The Tango The heart is a muscle, a mantra, an ideal, an excuse. Its life is as short as the universe: contracting expanding, exploding, filled with joy. The thump-thump of the heart has been credited with many things: the blues/rock beat, binary code, knock-knock jokes, two people playing each other like drums to the rhythm of moon and sun. The heart beats faster when we climb a stairmaster, make love, smoke cigarettes, inject needle drugs, have nightmares, watch the person we love enter our lives. An elephant’s heart beats more slowly, a field mouse faster, each a grain of sand, a universe. Time means everything and nothing to the heart. For example, an artificial heart could be programmed to sing karaoke, perform ventriloquist acts with the brain, send a river of blood to the groin. Perhaps this already occurs and we just don’t know the truth of the heart, the truth of another person, the truth of the universe pulsing to an indescribable beat, life, death, we.