listening to Benny Goodman’s smooth version of  ”Tiger Rag”
composed at a time when tigers where not yet an endangered species
     when soldiers were dying in World War I
     and would die again soon after Benny first recorded it in the 1930s
    
I wonder how it is that music can be so divorced from death

maybe because, for the US, wars have always been fought elsewhere,
    except for the Civil War - an issue that still occupies two research institutes

distance seems to create heroes more easily
     even though they are not aware of it
music helps to maintain the division between here and there

only when the draped coffins are unloaded
     those two worlds converge
and our sense of uninvolvement is exploded