It’s curious to think about—I’ve probably spent more time listening to this song than Schubert spent writing it. The manuscript is, if the website I stumbled upon can be trusted, a single sheet of paper. It was published some two decades after it was written. Liszt transcribed it—as he did so much else—and Primrose as well. Not surprising, if you’re a violist, you gotta do a little borrowing to fill in the repertoire.
That was a cool, cool paragraph written on the day after a bloodbath. And by cool I mean not hip but emotionally chilly, neutral, stepped-back and slightly ironic.
Which is not how the rest of the nation is feeling. People are in shock. The New Day has discovered that a little girl with connections to a town on the east side of the island was killed. Boricua Blood in the Tragedy screams the front page today.
And people are saying the usual. Evil, we are told by CNN, visited the town of Newton, Connecticut, yesterday.
Yeah?
Or was it a paranoid schizophrenic who had access to semi-automatic rifles?
I’m skipping this one. I’m assuming that if we had wanted to do something about it, we would have. I’m forced to conclude that there is something in my countrymen that wants slaughter, that relishes in the bloodshed, that thirsts to see anguished families and a weeping president and destroyed lives.
Why don’t we celebrate it?
The Spanish—a more honest people—go happily to their bullfights, and delight in seeing the bull downed in a pool of blood.
Well, we could do the same thing. Every Saturday, at random, a school somewhere in the nation is picked—will it be yours? Your children’s? Your grandchildren’s?
No matter, Friday night you will not sleep. Little children will beg to sleep with their mommies. “I’m scared, Mommie,” they’ll whisper.
Go back to bed, it will all be all right.
But you’re not sleeping either.
Because after all, it could be your child, your daughter, your sister.
Right, school chosen. Now we have to know the grade, the classroom.
Hey, do it in real time.
Add some excitement to the game.
How long does it take for the killer to walk from his home to his car? How long is the drive? How long to search for parking, to unload the guns, to pull the mask over his face?
Half an hour?
Forty-five minutes?
Right, so now we have the kids in the school. Everybody is there—teachers, principal, kids. Everybody is in their places.
Waiting for the slaughter to begin.
The media is filming. Relieved parents in other towns all across the country are cracking the first beer.
Better than Monday Night Football!
It’s old, our bloodlust. The Romans, seeing the Christians fed to the lions.
The gentry, viewing the mad raving at Bedlam.
Maybe it’s time to say it. We love to see the young butchered, the blood splattered on the chalkboard, the entails underneath the little desks / seats.
Love it.
Death and destruction and blood and tears.
Makes us feel good.
Or some of us. Because who’s going into that school?
The killer.
Also chosen by lottery.
A card-carrying member of the NRA.
Litany for the Feast of All Saints
Rest in peace, all souls,
Those that have done with care and suffering,
Those that have fulfilled a happy dream,
Those sated with life, those scarcely born...
All who have passed from this world to the Beyond,
All souls, rest in peace.
Souls of loving-hearted maidens,
Those who shed uncounted tears,
Whom false lovers deserted,
And the blind world cast out...
All who have departed hence,
All souls, rest in peace.
And those that have never smiled on the sunshine,
But beneath the moon waited, on thorns,
To see God one day, face to face
In the pure light of Heaven...
All souls that have departed hence,
All souls, rest in peace.
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