Survivors Song Quotes

Grief is for the survivors, and I think that, rather than living my life in pain, I would live it in laughter and love. To the fullest.

He was a pitiful thing. He had always been a pitiful thing. Why had she never seen that before? There was a hollow place inside her where her fear had been.

How do you ruin a people? Is it with fire? Is it with bullets? You can drag a man through the street tied to the back of a horse. You can incinerate a village. Can line families up in rows against a brick wall and fell them, one by one, like a forest. But all it takes is one survivor, and the story lives on. One survivor to carry the poems and the songs, the prayers, the sorrows. It isn’t just taking a life that destroys a people. It’s taking their history.

But in the end, there will still be a morning like this one, full of new light, and a distant voice will be heard, like a memory of before we became people. And the tones of a song will well up, the gentle lull of the first mother. This song, yes indeed, will be ours, the memory of a deep root that they were unable to wrench out of us. This voice will give us the strength for a new beginning, and upon hearing it, the corpses will find peace in their graves and the survivors will embrace life with the simple joy of young lovers. All this will happen if we are able to rid ourselves of this time that has made animals out of us. Let us strive to die like the people we no longer are.

People in the outside world said something stupid with their every breath, and when they didn’t talk their radios filled the gap with the copied voices of people singing the same songs over and over.

it’s little things like that, the words of a song, which can give you the strength to go on.

What use are tears? Ying had murmured to her once, back when they had just crossed their twelfth cycle of life and the wounds of Lan’s losses still cut deep every night. The dead will neither feel them nor be called by them. Grief is for the survivors, and I think that, rather than living my life in pain, I would live it in laughter and love. To the fullest.

a myopic, sluggish federal bureaucracy further hamstrung by a president unwilling and woefully unequipped to make the rational, science-based decisions necessary; and exacerbated, of course, by plain old individual everyday evil.

There's a humpback whale in the ocean that sings at fifty-two hertz: too low for any other whale to hear. Scientists aren't sure if it's a genetic anomaly, or a sole survivor of an extinct species, or just a whale who accidentally learnt the wrong song. They just know that it's probably the loneliest mammal on earth.

Happiness was for dogs, lovely creatures though they were. Ramola yearned for something more complex, something earned, and something more satisfying.

Promises are like wishes. Yeah. They’re great as long as you know they won’t always help and won’t always come true.

He jokes about this being a different and ridiculous timeline. Because why? Crazy awful stuff happening. Horrific shit has always happened, is always happening, and everywhere. And will happen, it won't stop. There aren't any other timelines and this one has always been a horror.

The journey through another world, beyond bad dreams beyond the memories of a murdered generation, cartographed in captivity by bare survivors makes sacristans of us all. The old ones go our bail, we oblate preachers of our tribes. Be careful, they say, don't hock the beads of kinship agonies; the moire-effect of unfamiliar hymns upon our own, a change in pitch or shrillness of the voice transforms the ways of song to words of poetry or prose and makes distinctions no one recognizes. Surrounded and absorbed, we tread like Etruscans on the edge of useless law; we pray to the giver of prayer, we give the cane whistle in ceremony, we swing the heavy silver chain of incense burners. Migration makes new citizens of Rome.

the final tally of what will be considered the end of the epidemic [but not, to be clear, the end of the virus; it will burrow, digging in like a nasty tick; it will migrate; and it will return all but encouraged and welcomed in a country where science and forethought are allowed to be dirty words, where humanity’s greatest invention—the vaccine—is smeared and vilified by narcissistic, purposeful fools [the most dangerous kind, where fear is harvested for fame, profit, and self-esteem], almost ten thousand people will have died. *

I am not one of those who left the land to the mercy of its enemies. Their flattery leaves me cold, my songs are not for them to praise. But I pity the exile's lot. Like a felon, like a man half-dead, dark is your path, wanderer; wormwood infects your foreign bread. But here, in the murk of conflagration, where scarcely a friend is left to know, we, the survivors, do not flinch from anything, not from a single blow. Surely the reckoning will be made after the passing of this cloud. We are the people without tears, straighter than you...more proud...

Cheryl was aided in her search by the Internet. Each time she remembered a name that seemed to be important in her life, she tried to look up that person on the World Wide Web. The names and pictures Cheryl found were at once familiar and yet not part of her conscious memory: Dr. Sidney Gottlieb, Dr. Louis 'Jolly' West, Dr. Ewen Cameron, Dr. Martin Orne and others had information by and about them on the Web. Soon, she began looking up sites related to childhood incest and found that some of the survivor sites mentioned the same names, though in the context of experiments performed on small children. Again, some names were familiar. Then Cheryl began remembering what turned out to be triggers from old programmes. 'The song, "The Green, Green Grass of home" kept running through my mind. I remembered that my father sang it as well. It all made no sense until I remembered that the last line of the song tells of being buried six feet under that green, green grass. Suddenly, it came to me that this was a suicide programme of the government. 'I went crazy. I felt that my body would explode unless I released some of the pressure I felt within, so I grabbed a [pair ofl scissors and cut myself with the blade so I bled. In my distracted state, I was certain that the bleeding would let the pressure out. I didn't know Lynn had felt the same way years earlier. I just knew I had to do it Cheryl says. She had some barbiturates and other medicine in the house. 'One particularly despondent night, I took several pills. It wasn't exactly a suicide try, though the pills could have killed me. Instead, I kept thinking that I would give myself a fifty-fifty chance of waking up the next morning. Maybe the pills would kill me. Maybe the dose would not be lethal. It was all up to God. I began taking pills each night. Each-morning I kept awakening.

for flatboat barges. They would talk about the day Swan met a boatload of survivors from the destroyed land that had been called Russia, and nobody could understand their language, but she talked to them and heard them through the miraculous jeweled ring of glass that

Helen of Troy Does Counter Dancing The world is full of women who'd tell me I should be ashamed of myself if they had the chance. Quit dancing. Get some self-respect and a day job. Right. And minimum wage, and varicose veins, just standing in one place for eight hours behind a glass counter bundled up to the neck, instead of naked as a meat sandwich. Selling gloves, or something. Instead of what I do sell. You have to have talent to peddle a thing so nebulous and without material form. Exploited, they'd say. Yes, any way you cut it, but I've a choice of how, and I'll take the money. I do give value. Like preachers, I sell vision, like perfume ads, desire or its facsimile. Like jokes or war, it's all in the timing. I sell men back their worst suspicions: that everything's for sale, and piecemeal. They gaze at me and see a chain-saw murder just before it happens, when thigh, ass, inkblot, crevice, tit, and nipple are still connected. Such hatred leaps in them, my beery worshipers! That, or a bleary hopeless love. Seeing the rows of heads and upturned eyes, imploring but ready to snap at my ankles, I understand floods and earthquakes, and the urge to step on ants. I keep the beat, and dance for them because they can't. The music smells like foxes, crisp as heated metal searing the nostrils or humid as August, hazy and languorous as a looted city the day after, when all the rape's been done already, and the killing, and the survivors wander around looking for garbage to eat, and there's only a bleak exhaustion. Speaking of which, it's the smiling tires me out the most. This, and the pretense that I can't hear them. And I can't, because I'm after all a foreigner to them. The speech here is all warty gutturals, obvious as a slam of ham, but I come from the province of the gods where meaning are lilting and oblique. I don't let on to everyone, but lean close, and I'll whisper: My mothers was raped by a holy swan. You believe that? You can take me out to dinner. That's what we tell all the husbands. There sure are a lot of dangerous birds around. Not that anyone here but you would understand. The rest of them would like to watch me and feel nothing. Reduce me to components as in a clock factory or abattoir. Crush out the mystery. Wall me up alive in my own body. They'd like to see through me, but nothing is more opaque than absolute transparency. Look - my feet don't hit the marble! Like breath or a balloon, I'm rising, I hover six inches in the air in my blazing swan-egg of light. You think I'm not a goddess? Try me. This is a torch song. Touch me and you'll burn.

Suffering, gracefully accepted, refines the human heart, and the experience of darkness sharpens the vision of the spirit.

We are survivors. The only survivors. And survivors always feel guilty at being alive.

A native of the southern United States, the warbler was famous for its unusually lovely song, but its population numbers, never robust, gradually dwindled until by the 1930s the warbler vanished altogether and went unseen for many years. Then, in 1939, by happy coincidence two separate birding enthusiasts, in widely separated locations, came across lone survivors just two days apart. They both shot the birds.

If I was set an essay on Friday, I’d spend three hours on Saturday morning in the library. Was that normal? I didn’t know. What I did know was that I felt less prone to depression and more normal walking through Venice or staring out over the lake in Zurich. At home I wrestled continually with my moods. The black thing inside me gnawed like a rat at my self-esteem and self-confidence. I felt there was a happy person inside me too, who wanted to enjoy life, to be normal, but my feelings of self-loathing and the deep distrust I had towards my father wouldn’t allow that sunny person to come out. When the black thing had an iron grip on me, I couldn’t even look at my father: Did you do bad things to me when I was little? Like a line from a song stuck in your brain, the words ran through my head and never once came out of my mouth. Not that I needed to say what was in my mind. I was sure Father could read my thoughts in my moods, in the blank, dead stare of my eyes. It was hardly surprising that there was always an atmosphere of strain and awkwardness in the house, and the blame was always mine: Alice and her moods, Alice and her anorexia; Alice and her low self-esteem; Alice and her inescapable feelings of loss and emptiness.

Unless you have suffered and wept, you really don’t understand what compassion is, nor can you give comfort to someone who is suffering. If you haven’t cried, you can’t dry another’s eyes. Unless you’ve walked in darkness, you can’t help wanderers find the way. Unless you’ve looked into the eyes of menacing death and felt its hot breath, you can’t help another rise from the dead and taste anew the joy of being alive.

Keith Richards on change—"It's gotta go up and down. Otherwise, you won't know the difference. It would be just a bland, straight line, like lookin' at a heart machine. And when that straight line happens, baby, you're dead.

Sexual healing and general recovery need to work together in the same way that music and lyrics work together to make a song: They alternate and blend together at different times. They are complementary, not isolated, experiences.

Softley’s first album, Songs for Swingin’ Survivors (Columbia), produced by Donovan’s management team of Peter Eden and Geoff Stephens, is one of the three great solo folk albums released in Britain in 1965, alongside Bert Jansch’s second, It Don’t Bother Me, and John Renbourn.

By then Ramola had begun to see herself as asexual but would not admit this to her mum. She said she was impressed by Mum's vocabulary choice, and added she enjoyed the idea of sex like she enjoyed the idea of riding a bike, but both involved too much prep work, or leg work, as it were, and she was alright forgoing both for the forseeable.

What use are tears? Ying had murmured to her once, back when they had just crossed their twelfth cycle of life and the wounds of Lan’s losses still cut deep every night. The dead will neither feel them nor be called by them. Grief is for the survivors, and I think that, rather than living my life in pain, I would live it in laughter and love. To the fullest.

The questions must be, what were the effects on the people as their lands were stolen and desecrated, relationships destroyed, children taken and violated, lore and ceremonies devalued and dishonoured? What long-term impacts have these separate yet inter-related tragedies had on the survivors? Answers to these questions will provide answers to present distressful circumstances.

A LITTLE SONG AND A RECEIPT. Doe: a deer, a female deer— Often chased by sonneteers of old. Caught, and killed, and bathed in fear, turned to human blazons to be sold— Eyes—$twin models of the stars. Skin—$fine tissue wrought from gold. Lips—$your favorite kind of flower. Sex—$a secret still untold/ a Silk Road to unfold/ a thing for you to mold/ a source by you controlled. Total: $—————.—

If you had been here on that day and at that hour, if you had see the hell that opened up on Earth before our eyes, if you had even a glimpse of that, you would never, never entertain the crazy thought of another war. If there is another war, automatic bombs may explode everywhere and there will be no beautiful songs of distant Earth-no poems, no paintings, no music mo literature, no research. Only death.

[but not, to be clear, the end of the virus; it will burrow, digging in like a nasty tick; it will migrate; and it will return all but encouraged and welcomed in a country where science and forethought are allowed to be dirty words, where humanity’s greatest invention—the vaccine—is smeared and vilified by narcissistic, purposeful fools [the most dangerous kind, where fear is harvested for fame, profit, and self-esteem], almost ten thousand people will have died. * * *

In Notes of a Jazz Survivor, a documentary about his drug- and jail-ravaged life, Art Pepper and his wife, Laurie, listen to his recording of “Our Song.” The entry of the saxophone, Pepper explains, is “like the most subtle hello.” Ramamani’s voice is the response to this call; it is Laurie’s hand reaching for her husband’s as they listen. Ramamani tells us not only what it is like to love, but also what it is like to be loved. When I hear her voice, darling, I feel your hand in mine.

Imagine a single survivor, a lonely fugitive at large on mainland Mauritius at the end of the seventeenth century. Imagine this fugitive as a female. She would have been bulky and flightless and befuddled—but resourceful enough to have escaped and endured when the other birds didn’t. Or else she was lucky. Maybe she had spent all her years in the Bambous Mountains along the southeastern coast, where the various forms of human-brought menace were slow to penetrate. Or she might have lurked in a creek drainage of the Black River Gorges. Time and trouble had finally caught up with her. Imagine that her last hatchling had been snarfed by a [invasive] feral pig. That her last fertile egg had been eaten by a [invasive] monkey. That her mate was dead, clubbed by a hungry Dutch sailor, and that she had no hope of finding another. During the past halfdozen years, longer than a bird could remember, she had not even set eyes on a member of her own species. Raphus cucullatus had become rare unto death. But this one flesh-and-blood individual still lived. Imagine that she was thirty years old, or thirty-five, an ancient age for most sorts of bird but not impossible for a member of such a large-bodied species. She no longer ran, she waddled. Lately she was going blind. Her digestive system was balky. In the dark of an early morning in 1667, say, during a rainstorm, she took cover beneath a cold stone ledge at the base of one of the Black River cliffs. She drew her head down against her body, fluffed her feathers for warmth, squinted in patient misery. She waited. She didn't know it, nor did anyone else, but she was the only dodo on Earth. When the storm passed, she never opened her eyes. This is extinction.

we will pay those proud survivors 3000 for slaughter of kin killed in their homeland when young Swede-warriors strike once again learn that Beowulf our beloved warleader lies lifeless now his last breath-moment vanished into time a tale for mead-benches songs for a king who crushed hell-monsters stepped up to a throne served his people there held high his promise. Now haste will be best that we go to find him guide him at last from that fire-black field where he fell deathwards 3010 to his final bedrest. Those fine gold-treasures will melt with his heart that mighty dragon-hoard shall all go with him grimly purchased with his own lifeblood—for the last time now he has paid for goldrings. Pyre-flames shall eat them flame-roof shall thatch them no thane shall wear them treasures so dear no dressed hall-maidens shall wear on their bosoms wound-gold necklaces but grief will adorn them of gold-love bereft as they wander in exile through alien domains 3020 now that our lord has laid down his laughter songs and hall-joys. Now spears will be lifted grim and morning-cold gripped in anguish with frost-numbing hands. No harp’s sweet sounding will waken bench-warriors but the black-gleaming raven circling with fate will say many things describe to the eagle ample corpse-banquets how he shared with the wolf wondrous slaughter-meals.” So that grim messenger gave his report his unfrivolous news nor did he lie much 3030 in words or warnings.

She dances, She dances around the burning flames with passion, Under the same dull stars, Under the same hell with crimson embers crashing, Under the same silver chains that wires, All her beauty and who she is inside, She's left with the loneliness of human existence, She's left questioning how she's survived, She's left with this awakening of brutal resilience, Her true beauty that she denies, As much she's like to deny it, As much as it continues to shine, That she doesn't even have to admit, Because we all know it's true, Her glory and success, After all she's been through, Her triumph and madness, AND YET, SHE STANDS. Broken legs- but she's still standing, Still dancing in this void, You must wonder how she's still dancing, You must wonder how she's not destroyed, She doesn't even begin to drown within the flames, But little do you realize, Within these chains, She weeps and she cries, But she still goes on, And just you thought you could stop her? You thought you'd be the one? Well, let me tell you, because you thought wrong. Nothing will ever silence her, Because I KNOW, I know that she is admiringly strong, Her undeniable beauty, The triumph of her song, She's shining bright like a ruby, Reflecting in the golden sand, She's shining brighter like no other, She's far more than human or man, AND YET, SHE STANDS. She continues to dance with free-spirit, Even though she's locked in these chains, Though she never desired to change it, Even throughout the agonizing pain, Throughout all the distress, Anxiety, depression, tears and sorrow, She still dances so beautify in her dress, She looks forward to tomorrow, Not because of a fresh start but a new page, A new day full of opportunities, Despite being trapped in her cage, She still smiles after being beaten so brutally, A smile that could brighten anyone's day, She's so much more than anyone could ask for, She's so much more than I could ever say, She's a girl absolutely everyone should adore, She never gets in the way, Even after her hearts been broken, Even after the way she has been treated, After all these severe emotions, After all all the blood she's bled, AND YET, SHE STANDS. Even if sometimes she wonders why she's still here, She wonders why she's not dead, But there's this one thing that had been here throughout every tear, Throughout the blazing fire leaving her cheeks cherry red, Everyday this thing has given her a place to exist, This thing, person, these people, Like warm sunlight it had so softly kissed, The apples of her cheeks, Even when she's feeling feeble, Always there at her worst and at her best Because of you and all the other people, She has this thing deep inside her chest, That she will cherish forever, Even once you're gone, Because today she smiles like no other, Even when the sun sets at dawn, Because today is the day, She just wants you to remember, In dark and stormy weather, It gets better. And after what she's been through she knows, Throughout the highs and the lows, Because of you and all others, After crossing the seas, She has come to understand, You have formed this key, This key to free her from this land, This endless gorge that swallowed her, Her and other men, She had never knew, nor had she planned, That because of you, She's free. AND YET, THIS VERY DAY, SHE STILL DANCES, EVEN IN THE RAIN.

There were just too many questions; the answers were one more thing being rationed to the survivors ...

Never say, when the skies are heavy-laden, That you are treading the last path … Because, just as the skies will one day clear, It will come, this longed-for hour As with the rumble-beat of a drum … And we will be here! —from a Concentration Camp Song

Imagine being a child with a secret for which there are no words, only dark shapes sliding around in your vision, shapes nobody else sees. Imagine what would be unleashed if so many people didn’t have to waste so much time dealing with flashbacks, secret-keeping, suicidal thoughts, low self-esteem, crippling fear of … everything, and on down the dreary list. Imagine the fantastic, the amazing, the mind-boggling things so many rape survivors could do, say, create or be if they didn’t have to waste time being traumatized and stymied and made small. Imagine the art that we could create, the songs we could sing, the forests we could plant, the life-changing planet-saving gizmos we could invent, instead of wasting our time trying to stop our hearts from pounding if we hear footsteps behind us on our way to the bus stop. It’s such a wholesale waste of potential.

Emergency services and other public safety nets will be stretched to their breaking points, exacerbated by the wily antagonists of fear, panic, misinformation; a myopic, sluggish federal bureaucracy further hamstrung by a president unwilling and woefully unequipped to make the rational, science-based decisions necessary; and exacerbated, of course, by plain old individual everyday evil.

In the final tally of what will be considered the end of the epidemic [but not, to be clear, the end of the virus; it will burrow, digging in like a nasty tick; it will migrate; and it will return all but encouraged and welcomed in a country where science and forethought are allowed to be dirty words, where humanity’s greatest invention—the vaccine—is smeared and vilified by narcissistic, purposeful fools [the most dangerous kind, where fear is harvested for fame, profit, and self-esteem], almost ten thousand people will have died.

You may deceive other people, but not me," answered Inoue in a cold voice. "Previously I have asked the question to other fathers: What is the difference between the mercy of the Christian God and that of the Buddha? For in Japan salvation is from the mercy of the Buddha upon whom people depend out of their hopeless weakness. And one father gave a clear answer: the salvation that Christianity speaks of is different; for Christian salvation is not just a question of relying on God--in addition the believer must retain with all his might a strength of heart. But it is precisely in this point that the teaching has slowly been twisted and changed? in this swamp called Japan.

Post-college, Natalie and Ramola roomed together in Providence for two years, during which time Natalie tended bar and seemingly read (consumed would be a more accurate verb, here) every YA novel featuring one apocalypse or another.

Luis's plan is simple: to outlast. It is in this manner, with the watchers watching from the trees and the shadows that Luis and Zombie Josh dance their shoes to pieces.

Our lives are like lace, appearing unbelievably complicated and mixed up to others. It is essential to remember that your life has to make meaning only to you.

I looked out the hall window across from me as I stood leaning against the wall, and saw the bars on the outside of the windows. The rain trickled down the reinforced misted milk-glass in a constant deluge of melancholy rivulets. It was getting cold - the shadows, the rising turbulent winds, the drifting red and orange leaves were returning once more. I tuned out the sounds of the doctors voices. Soon, I couldn't make out the words they were saying as definite signals meant to convey something. Their words became a dim humming, a song drifting along the periphery of my awareness. And it was then, I knew I would be able to leave. I would go back to my room and take out the violet silk dress, the monstrous talisman I had created, and I would look at it. I might give it away after all. I need to let her go for all the ghosts she carried within her every measured stitch.

April 1965, then, marked the beginning of a new epoch for the new breed of singer-songwriters in Britain. As well as Collins and Graham’s Folk Roots, New Routes, in that year there appeared Donovan’s What’s Bin Did and What’s Bin Hid and Fairytale; John Renbourn’s self-titled first album; Mick Softley’s Songs for Swingin’ Survivors; Martin Carthy, a collection of folk songs with violinist Dave Swarbrick; Jackson C. Frank’s Jackson C. Frank; and Bert Jansch, the debut by the fastest-rising star of them all. Jansch, who was born

Anne Briggs, The Hazards of Love EP (1964); John Renbourn, John Renbourn (1965); Mick Softley, Songs for Swingin’ Survivors (1965).

I'm going to stop now, I think. We'll talk again later. I promise. If I break the promise, please know I didn't mean to. It sucks, but promises get broken all the time. Promises are like wishes. Yeah. They're great as long as you know they won't always help and won't always come true.

In the final tally of what will be considered the end of the epidemic (but not, to be clear, the end of the virus; it will burrow, digging in like a nasty tick; it will migrate; and it will return all but encouraged and welcomed in a country where science and forethought are allowed to be dirty words, where humanity’s greatest invention—the vaccine—is smeared and vilified by narcissistic, purposeful fools [the most dangerous kind, where fear is harvested for fame, profit, and self-esteem), almost ten thousand people will have died.

In this brutal world of incessantly exploding sound effects, pubescent song lyrics and banal advertisements appealing to the lowest common denominator, the trick is to take refuge with the very small band of survivors who savor words like chocolates.

There were many things. I’m what I call a ‘moving on’ kind of girl. There’s a song on our new album about it. Rather than deal with problems in relationships, I’ve always moved on. That’s why I’m one of the very few survivors as a woman, you know. Women tend to be more into men usually but I wasn’t.” 1980

Of course, most of us, if not all of us, do not get to live our idealized lives. And that’s okay, isn’t it? We try and we fail and occasionally we triumph, and we adjust and we survive until we don’t, and we aim to love and we find hope. And maybe we realize that hope isn’t an unrealistic devotion to some unattainable, consumeristic ideal of happiness, of “living our best lives.”15 Hope is believing there will be another moment of joy.

With a historian’s eye, Archibald Gracie attempted to separate truth from fantasy as he listened to the survivors’ stories, a potential book beginning to form in his mind. Second Officer Lightoller and Third Officer Pitman regularly stopped by the small cabin Gracie shared with Hugh Woolner to discuss various aspects of the disaster. All agreed that the explosions heard during the sinking could not have been the ship’s boilers blowing up. From the discovery of the severed wreck in 1985 we now know that the “explosions” were actually the sound of the ship being wrenched apart. But Gracie and Lightoller firmly believed that the ship had sunk intact—a view that would become the prevailing opinion for the next seventy-three years. Gracie thought that Norris Williams and Jack Thayer, “the two young men cited as authority … of the break-in-two theory,” had confused the falling funnel for the ship breaking apart. But both Williams and Thayer knew exactly what they had seen, as did some other eyewitnesses. On the Carpathia, Jack Thayer described the stages of the ship’s sinking and breaking apart to Lewis Skidmore, a Brooklyn art teacher, who drew sketches that were later featured in many newspapers. The inaccuracies in Skidmore’s drawings, however, only bolstered the belief that the ship had, in fact, sunk intact. And what of the most famous Titanic legend of all—that the band played “Nearer My God to Thee” as the ship neared its end? It’s often claimed that this was a myth that took hold among survivors on the Carpathia and captivated the public in the aftermath of the disaster. None of the musicians survived to confirm or deny the story, but Harold Bride noted that the last tune he heard being played as he left the wireless cabin was “Autumn.” For a time this was believed to be a hymn tune by that name, but Walter Lord proposed in The Night Lives On that Bride must have been referring to “Songe d’Automne,” a popular waltz by Archibald Joyce that is listed in White Star music booklets of the period. Historian George Behe, however, has carefully studied the survivor accounts regarding the music that was heard during the sinking and has found credible evidence that “Nearer My God to Thee” and perhaps other hymns were played toward the end. Behe also recounts that the orchestra’s leader, Wallace Hartley, was once asked by a friend what he would do if he ever found himself on a sinking ship. Hartley replied, “I don’t think I could do better than play ‘O God, Our Help in Ages Past’ or ‘Nearer My God to Thee.’ ” The legendary hymn may not have been the very last tune played on the Titanic but it seems possible that it was heard on the sloping deck that night.

where humanity’s greatest invention—the vaccine—is smeared and vilified by narcissistic, purposeful fools [the most dangerous kind],

The virus doesn’t herald the end of the world, or of the United States, or even of the commonwealth of Massachusetts. In the coming days, conditions will continue to deteriorate. Emergency services and other public safety nets will be stretched to their breaking points, exacerbated by the wily antagonists of fear, panic, misinformation; a myopic, sluggish federal bureaucracy further hamstrung by a president unwilling and woefully unequipped to make the rational, science-based decisions necessary; and exacerbated, of course, by plain old individual everyday evil. But there will be many heroes, too, including ones who don’t view themselves as such.

Dr. Awolesi will be proven correct in her epidemic forecast: the exponentially increased speed with which this rabies virus infects and progresses will aid in its own containment and control. Nine days after Josh and Luis meet Ramola and Natalie a massive pre-exposure vaccination campaign will finally begin in New England for both humans and animals. In concurrence with the quarantine, the vaccination program will be wildly successful and will return the region from the brink of collapse. In the final tally of what will be considered the end of the epidemic (but not, to be clear, the end of the virus; it will burrow, digging in like a nasty tick; it will migrate; and it will return all but encouraged and welcomed in a country where science and forethought are allowed to be dirty words, where humanity’s greatest invention—the vaccine—is smeared and vilified by narcissistic, purposeful fools [the most dangerous kind], where fear is harvested for fame, profit, and self-esteem), almost ten thousand people will have died.

However, there is a small but undeniable part of herself that takes comfort in imagining the detailed journey home: landing in Gatwick, a train to Victoria Station, the tube to King’s Cross, another train that rolls through the countryside, small towns, and swelling cities, and eventually to Newcastle, then a forty-minute Metro to South Shields, a two-mile walk (her rolling luggage listing consistently to her left), and it’s warm and sunny even though it is never warm and sunny often enough in northern England, and finally she’s standing before their semidetached home with the brick walls and a white trellis, and she walks through the small garden and through the back door, then to the kitchen to sit with Mum and Dad at their ridiculous little table with the ugly yellow vinyl tablecloth and they both glance over the frames of their reading glasses and smile that wan I-see-you-dear smile.

Lily groans and whacks his shoulder. Lily-shoulder-whacks hurt the most too. Robert doesn’t let on how much it smarts by not rubbing his arm. She says, “We’re not in America,” out of the side of her mouth, as though she’s embarrassed to be saying so.

Wild-eyed and as twitchy as a short-circuiting electrical panel, the boy snaps and growls, atavistic in his new animalness. He does not turn around or walk down the stairs. He holds his ground. His legs are spring-loaded. His fists are rocks, his teeth bared in deimatic display, broadcasting the threat of our most primitive weapons.

next. There’s no apparent strategy or reason or order to the violence beyond the existence and the instance of the acts themselves.

He sang the songs, read his Bible, listened to what the preacher said, and began praying to God for guidance on how to best live what he learned in church every Sunday. Randy began a true relationship with God,

She gasped in shock and sat, staring at him as though he were mad. “Not in Song of Solomon?” he asked. “No!” His fingers trailed lazily up and down the skin of her inner thigh. “Solomon had how many wives? Ten? Twenty?” “Seven hundred,” she said, her voice breaking as his fingers moved upward. “Then he surely knew something about cunnilingus,” he said.

What use are tears? The dead will neither feel them nor be called by them. Grief is for the survivors, and I think that, rather than living my life in pain, I would live it in laughter and love. To the fullest.

What were they playing? All agree that the band featured light, cheerful music—ragtime, waltzes, and the comic songs that were then so popular in the London music halls. Survivors specifically recalled Irving Berlin’s “Alexander’s Ragtime Band” and a pretty English melody called “In the Shadows,” the big London hit of 1911. Colonel Gracie couldn’t remember the name of any tune, but he was sure the beat was lively to the end. Nevertheless, the Carpathia had no sooner reached New York than the story spread that the band went down playing “Nearer, My God, to Thee.” The idea was so appealing that it instantly became part of the Titanic saga—as imperishable as the enduring love of the Strauses and the courage of the engineers who kept the lights burning to the final plunge. Yet doubts persist. In the first place, the whole point of the band playing was to keep the passengers’ spirits up, and light music seems best suited to that. As Colonel Gracie observed, “If ‘Nearer, My God, to Thee’ was one of the selections, I assuredly would have noticed it and regarded it as a tactless warning of immediate death, and more likely to create a panic that our special efforts were directed towards avoiding….

the flame of violence is generally fueled by ignorance.

His resolve had flowed away like sand on the outgoing tide. He sat on the running board of the Pobeda, slumped against the door, and stared out over the gray ponds and blowing reeds. He had somehow come to the end of his journey, the future he’d held out to himself no more than a trick of the illusionist, the self-deluded survivor. Against the vast background of the deserted land he saw his insignificance only too clearly—a vain, petty man, envious and scheming, an opportunist, a fraud. Why should such a man remain alive? Get in the car, he told himself. But the willful interior voice sickened him—all it knew was greed, all it did was want. Even here, at the end of the world, it sang its little song, and any gesture, no matter how absurd, would satisfy it. But the only act he could imagine called for removing the Steyr from beneath the driver’s seat of the automobile and relieving the earth of an unneeded presence—at least an act of grace.

I wish I could write their individual stories in the book of our lives with indelible ink, because we cannot compel the world to share our affliction, but we still have the duty to honour our dead. Tina said it: all it takes is for one person, just one, to burst into grief for the others to take up the song of mourning. That is our mission. That is our duty as survivors. We are all survivors in this country, to varying degrees. To survivors, the Lord, in His languid Mercy, grants unending years of contrition. This, at least, is necessary; otherwise, where would the salty water in the oceans come from?

Pekes and the Pollicles” was the sole survivor of his original scheme. Eliot’s letter to Geoffrey Faber suggested another building block, an event that brought the cats together. “The Song of the Jellicles” is about a Jellicle Ball. Could this have been the event that Eliot was proposing? If so “Practical Cats” would have dance at its centre. Dance was now sweeping Britain, albeit about six decades behind America. Brian Brolly reluctantly accepted that Cameron would co-produce with the Really Useful Company. “Practical Cats,” the musical, was born.

humanity’s greatest invention—the vaccine—is smeared and vilified by narcissistic, purposeful fools [the most dangerous kind, where fear is harvested for fame, profit, and self-esteem],

hamstrung by a president unwilling and woefully unequipped to make the rational, science-based decisions necessary;

The number of people infected with Covid-19 in Massachusetts was skyrocketing

piss-poor federal response,

Like she was dancing through life to some song nobody else could hear. Never met another woman like her-she wasn't just sexy, she was a survivor and I admired that.

A keen singer, she joined a teachers’ choir that toured the country performing traditional nationalist songs, one of which proclaimed proudly, ‘I am a Slovak and a Slovak I will remain’ – a tune she would happily break into throughout her life.

Against the towering mountains behind, this group of family and friends looked like a tiny remnant of an ancient group that had lived here once in abundance, now clustered together for bare survival, singing ancient songs. They were oddly like L Pod, Luna's family. The whales, too, were a tiny remnant of an ancient greatness, a family of survivors that had been decimated by captures and killings, poisoned by debris humans have fed to their world as waste, scarred by sonar, starved by the fading of the salmon, still singing sings to the past.

preservation. The pair of Golden Scorpions jumped into action, their stings flashing as they closed the gap and cut through three of the altivorc guards before their weapons even left their sheaths. The two survivors had managed to draw their own giant broadswords, but fell before taking a swing as the Scorpions slashed through them. Black blood sprayed on the floor and walls. They closed toward their final target, but the Altivorc King did not seem the least bit concerned. He leisurely shifted on his cushions as he withdrew a grey metal wand, pointed it at one of the Scorpions, and spoke a guttural syllable. A bolt of blue lighting sizzled from the tip, hurling the man back a dozen feet through the air with a scream of agony. In that split second, the other Scorpion reached him and stabbed. Dhananad barely registered the motion, but the final result stood out clearly. The Scorpion screamed and clawed at the King’s hand, which seized his wrist in a bone-crunching grip. Rising to his feet, the altivorc drove the would-be assailant down to his knees and plucked the weapon away. He threw it at Dhananad’s feet. “I am very forgiving, and will forget this reckless transgression.” He released his hold on the Scorpion’s wrist. “Your life is spared…for now. Go ahead and meet with the princess if you are still so thick-skulled. You will see I am right.” The Scorpion gasped, clutching his hand, which bent at a strange angle. He fared better than his companion, who lay in a smoldering heap near the entrance. Dhananad cringed, deciding once and for all he would never tempt the Altivorc King again. He turned on his heel and left, his entourage scurrying after him. Ambassador Piros watched Prince Dhananad storm out of the room. Once his angry

How do you ruin a people? Is it with fire? Is it with bullets? You can drag a man through the street tied to the back of a horse. You can incinerate a village. Can line families up in rows against a brick wall and fell them, one by one, like a forest. But all it takes is one survivor, and the story lives on. One survivor to carry the poems and the songs, the prayers, the sorrows. It isn’t just taking a life that destroys a people. It’s taking their history