soundtrack

Track 1 - Dear Clarice

Dear Clarice,

I have followed with enthusiasm the course of your disgrace and public shaming. My own never bothered me except for the inconvenience of being incarcerated, but you may lack perspective. In our discussions down in the dungeon, it was apparent to me that your father, the dead nightwatchman, figures largely in your value system. I think your success in putting an end to Jame Gumb's career as a couturier pleased you most because you could imagine your father being pleased. But alas, you are in bad odour with the FBI. Do you imagine your daddy being shamed by your disgrace? Do you see him in his plain pine box, crushed by your failure, the sorry petty end of a promising career? What is worst about this humiliation, Clarice? Is it how your failure will reflect on you Mommy and Daddy? Is your worst fear that people will now and forever believe they were indeed just good old trailer camp tornado bait white trash, and perhaps you are too? By the way, I couldn't help noticing on the FBI's rather dull public website that I have been hoisted from the Bureau's archives of the common criminal and elevated to the more prestigious Ten Most Wanted List. Is this coincidence or are you back on the case? If so, goody-goody. Because I need to come out of retirement and return to public life. Clearly this new assignment is not your choice. Rather I suppose it is part of the bargain, but you accepted it, Clarice. Your job is to craft my doom. So I am not how well I should wish you, but I'm sure we'll have a lot of fun.

Ta ta,
H.

Track 9 - I Make My Home Be My Gallows

Because of his avarice and his betrayal of the Emperor's trust, Pier della Vigna was disgraced, blinded, and imprisoned. Dante's pilgrim finds Pier della Vigna on the 7th level of the Inferon, and like Judas Iscariot, he died by hanging. But Judas and Pier della Vigna are linked in Dante by the avarice he saw in them. In fact, avarice and hanging are linked in the medieval mind.

This is the earliest depiction of the Crucifixtion, carved on an ivory box in Gaul about A.D. four hundred. It includes the death by hanging of Judas, his face upturned to the brach that suspends him. Here it is again on the doors of the Benevento Cathedral, hanging. This time with his bowels falling out. On this plate from the fifteenth-century edition of the Inferno, is Pier della Vigna's body hangs from a bleeding tree. I will not belabor the obvious parallel with Judas Iscariot, but Dante Alighieri needed no drawn illustration; it was his genius to make Pier della Vigna, now in Hell, speak in strained hisses and coughing sibilants as though he is hanging still.

Come l'altre verrem per nostre spolie,
   ma non pero ch'alcuna sen rivesta,
   che non e giusto aver cio ch'om si toglie.

Qui le strascineremo, e per la mesta
   selva saranno i nostri corpi appesi,
   ciascuno al prun de l'ombra sua molesta.

Avarice, hanging, self-destruction.

Io fei gibetto a me de le mie case.

I make my own home be my gallows.

Track 10 - The Burning Heart

He woke her then, and tremblling and obedient
She ate that burning heart out of his hands
Weeping I saw him then depart from me.

Could he daily feel a stab of hunger for her
And find nourishment in the very sight of her?
I think so.
But would she see through the bars of his plight and ache for him?