Something a little different for our
MOTD. You may have heard the news that
KURT VONNEGUT passed away this week on Wednesday at the age of 84 in his Manhattan home, the result of a fall some weeks earlier that caused serious brain damage. For those not familiar with his work, the link above can do a better job filling you in than I.
For those too lazy to read for themselves, Kurt Vonnegut was an American WWII soldier, turned novelist and writer. His time as an advanced forward scout for the
106th INFANTRY DIVISION saw him captured in Dec of 1944 during the
BATTLE OF THE BULGE and subsequently held as a German POW in the city of
DRESDEN. He was there during the
ALLIED COMBING CAMPAIGN of Feb 1945, one of only seven US POW’s to survive those bombings and became a first hand witness to the horrific aftermath.
On the subject he recalled "Utter destruction… carnage unfathomable". It was these events that greatly influenced his life’s literary work.
One of his more famous works was the 1969 novel
SLAUGHTERHOUSE FIVE, the title being a reference to his place of detention in Dresden, an underground meat packers slaughterhouse, and the reason he and his fellow POW’s survived the Allied bombings. Let’s move forward in time to the year 2003 and we are nearly there. Kurt got together with Melbourne musician and composer
SIMON HESELEV to work on a collaborative spoken-word project in which Kurt reads a passage from his novel Slaughterhouse Five, and Simon sets it to music, which we present for you here today in memory of Kurt Vonnegut.
It takes a little bit to get going, but once it takes off, the imagery created by the words is profound and the message a poignant one, from a man who was there and witnessed these events with his own eyes, ears, nose, and hands.
RIP: Kurt Vonnegut 1922 - 2007
Click the Pic to reveal the mystery 
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