Grimaces of disapproval.
“You’re strapped to a gurney with lethal drugs dripping into your vein and we hear ‘My Jamaican Guy’ … I don’t get it,” says the doctor.
“Yeah, you’re right … maybe if I was Jamaican …” Dad says, perusing along.
Then the rabbi pipes up.
“See if they have the Smiths’ CD, The Queen Is Dead,” he says. “The song ‘I Know It’s Over.’ ‘Oh Mother / I can feel / the soil falling over my head …’ That presentiment of being buried could be really intense.”
“Please, not Morrissey,” grumbles the doctor, rolling his eyes. “You have this great abortive-execution video and you’re gonna ruin it with Morrissey?”
“I think Morrissey’s perfect for an abortive execution,” the rabbi replies defensively.
“You know what would be really intense?” says the operations officer. “The White Zombie song ‘Soul-Crusher.’ ‘Burning like fat in the fire / The smell of red, red groovie screamed mega-flow / A stalking ground without prey / A flash of superstition whimpering like a crippled animal / Dogs of the soul-crusher / Pulling closer like the blue steel jaws of hell.’ ”
“That’s a cool song,” the superintendent agrees.
“You like Fugazi?” the operations officer asks my father.
“I don’t really know any specific songs,” says my Dad.
“Fugazi! Yes!” raves the superintendent, pumping his fist in the air.
“You ever see them live?” asks the operations officer.
“No, man, I wish I had.”
“You gotta see them in Bethesda. That’s like the ultimate place to see Fugazi.”
“Fugazi … Fugazi … Fugazi … OK, here we go,” says Dad, sliding his finger across the page from Performer to CD Title. “They have Red Medicine.”
“Perfect!” the operations officer says. “That’s got ‘By You’—‘Generation fuck you / to define and redefine / you’d make them all the same / but molds they break away / safely inside / looking outside / go keep on picking at it / it’s just going to get bigger …’ It’s got ‘Target’—’It’s cold outside and my hands are dry / skin is cracked / and I realize that I hate the sound of guitars / a thousand grudging young millionaires / forcing silence / sucking sound …’ ”
My father shakes his head.
“It’s too bleak … Too apocalyptic. I survived the execution attempt, right?”
The warden’s male secretary floats a concept.
“Echo and the Bunnymen. ‘Over You.’ ‘Feeling good again / always hoped I would / never believed that I ever could.’ ”
“You know what song might really work?” Dad says. “ ‘Don’t Go Breaking My Heart.’ Elton John and Kiki Dee.”
The rabbi shuts his eyes, his head bobbing to the imagined music.
“That might work,” he says.
“Or maybe a standard …” says Dad. “ ‘The Best Is Yet to Come.’ Sinatra. Y’know, real brassy optimism …”
“What about something from Phantom? Like Michael Crawford singing ‘Music of the Night,’“ suggests the warden’s secretary. “That could be very dramatic. Because, frankly, I think you could use something with a little schmaltz, ‘cause seven minutes of a motionless body on a steel cot is not particularly compelling.”
Dad looks up from the catalog.
“This is gonna sound weird,” he says, “but I think it could be really good. ‘I’m Hans Christian Andersen.’ Danny Kaye, from the movie.”
“You’re lying there with a lethal drug IV in your arm and the soundtrack is ‘I’m Hans Christian Andersen’? That doesn’t make any fucking sense to me,” says the superintendent.
“That’s the point,” asserts my father. “We see me — Joel Leyner — on a gurney. But we hear ‘I’m Hans Christian Andersen / Andersen — that’s me.’ See, it’s like: How are we identified? And how do we denominate ourselves? What’s me/Leyner? What’s the meaning of that classification? Names are arbitrary designations used by the state apparatus to facilitate surveillance and control. That could be Hans Christian Andersen on that gurney. You know what I’m saying? See, you’ll be watching Joel Leyner and hearing Danny Kaye claim that he’s Hans Christian Andersen. You’d get this dissonant dialectic going between image and sound.…”
“I think people would just think it’s a goof,” the superintendent says.
“Well, what about ‘Inchworm’—from the same movie. Y’know, ‘Inchworm / inchworm / measuring the marigolds Like measuring out the last moments of my life.”
“I just wouldn’t use a Danny Kaye song. That’s my personal feeling, man. I just don’t think he’s right for this.”
“I have an idea, but it’s in a completely different direction,” says the warden. “We see a man lying on a gurney, strapped to a gurney, right? That, to me, connotes surrender — a kind of erotic surrender. Y’know, you can do whatever you want to me and take however long you want to take doing it. Because I’m ceding control to you. So I thought maybe something like Luther Vandross … y’know the song ‘The Glow of Love.’ There is no better way to be / Hold me, caress me / I’m yours forever and a day / We are a sweet bouquet / Seasons for happiness are here / Can you feel it? / The reason we’re filled with cheer is / We’re in rapture / In the glow of love.’ ”
“Is he restricted to one song, or can you lay in parts from different songs?” asks the executioner.
The superintendent shrugs.
“I don’t see why we couldn’t use sections from several songs, if that’s what Mr. Leyner would like.”
“OK, maybe we go like this,” the executioner says excitedly. “We key the music to the control-panel lights for the drugs’ delivery sequence. Red light, yellow light, sodium thiopental injection — boom — Elton John and Kiki Dee, ‘Don’t Go Breaking My Heart.’ Green light — fade music. OK. Red light, yellow light, pancuronium bromide injection — boom — Luther Vandross, ‘The Glow of Love.’ Green light — fade music. OK. Red light, yellow light, potassium chloride injection — boom — Michael Crawford, ‘Music of the Night’ from Phantom of the Opera. Green light — fade music. Joel looks up and says, ‘I feel shitty.’ Fade to black.”
“You like Arnold Schoenberg’s Suite for Piano, opus 25?” the rabbi asks my father.
“How’s it go?”
The rabbi hums the entire fourteen-minute composition.
“Nuh-uh,” Dad says.
I stick my two pinkies into my mouth and produce an excruciating, hideously high-pitched whistle.
“Hey! People! C’mon, I gotta get out of here already!”
“We have a soundtrack to finish, son,” says my father, without looking up from the catalog.
I turn to the superintendent.
“Can you remix an existing song? Patch in some samples, add some tracks?”
“Y’know the remote-fired stationary tear-gas network control console booth above the maximum-security eating hall?” says the superintendent. “Well, I have a little studio in there — Korg DSS-1 Digital Sampling Synthesizer, Kawai R-100 Digital Drum Machine, Roland MC-500 MIDI Sequencer. What are you thinking?”
“Well … this is like completely off the top of my head, but … After the drugs, my dad looks up and says ‘I feel shitty,’ right? Why don’t we take the Bernstein/Sondheim tune from West Side Story—‘I Feel Pretty’—overdub the word shitty—make ‘I Feel Shitty.’ And I’d slow it down to a dirge. Do a sort of Trent Reznor mix. ‘I feel shitty / oh so shitty / I feel shitty and witty and bright / and I pity / any girl who isn’t me tonight.’ ”