Last Bullet
“Some tribe in the future, far in the future, might find a pistol, perhaps the world’s last pistol, and one hundred rounds of ammunition. The priests of that tribe, in tribute to the unknown, might invent a holiday and fire one bullet each year as a link to the unknown. After ninety years, it isn’t difficult to imagine that a new bull might be put forth that shots were to be fired only every hundred years, at the expiration of which time the something extraordinary might be foreseen to occur.
“And perhaps at the expiration of nine hundred years a new bull might go forth to the effect that the last round never was to be expended—that the tribe would choose to worship potentiality in their artifacts rather than uselessness.
“But our tribe has fired the last round and our only link to the possibility of powers greater than ourselves is the useless gun, the essential element we no longer possess. And since our priests have fired off that last round, they have expended any possible link to the past, as such a memory would surely cause us pain. Therefore, our dead rituals are rituals of denial. They concern not potential but lack, and express contempt—contempt, mainly for ourselves, and for our urge to celebrate.”
—David Mamet, “Some Thoughts on Writing in Restaurants”
