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Music

Mark Kozelek Responds to Florida Shooting on "Day in America"

In the 15-minute-long song, released Saturday, Kozelek attempts to grapple with the massacre in between fleeting thoughts.

In a new song, Sun Kil Moon auteur Mark Kozelek has responded to the mass shooting at a high school in Parkland, Florida on Wednesday that left 17 people dead. "Day in America," released via the Sun Kil Moon website on Saturday, is a 15-minute-long track that—in a style typical of Kozelek's recent work—attempts to grapple with the massacre and its aftermath in between straightforward, stream-of-consciousness recollections of day-to-day banalities and fleeting memories.

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Early in the song, speaking almost in monotone over a repetitive acoustic guitar, Kozelek says that he and his band were in a studio when the news broke:

Donnie said, Why don't they just get rid of the guns, like they did in Australia?
And I sat there befuddled and said, "I don't know what to tell you.
But the Republicans like having their right to bear arms
Even if it blows kids off the planet, or they spend the rest of their lives without their legs and arms
The Republicans believe in their right to bear arms
No matter the rising death toll and the amount of harm it causes to innocent people
They have the right to bear arms."
And honestly, from that point on, we picked up our instruments.

Kozelek then drifts elsewhere before returning to the subject around the 8:15-mark, describing in graphic detail what he would do to the man who committed the attack:

So, anyhow, I came home and I turned on the news
Angry as I always get when these things happen, trying to think of what I could do
To help the cause, to influence people to do what I can do to change gun laws
For starters, I'm going to dedicate a song to the kids from Florida who didn't live long
Whose families grieve while the rest of the world gets on their phone, and their lives go on
And maybe in this song, I'll share my own private thoughts
In fact, I think I will
I think they should go Django Unchained on the killer they caught
Hang him upside down, and cut off his balls
Bleed him to death and let him bleed a slow, bloody death
When 17 kids are murdered, you skip due process
I don't care if he was born into a home full of drug abuse and incest
Or allegedly brainwashed by white supremacists
Whatever the case may be for him, yeah, it's very sad and unfortunate
But escorting this man from the planet is in everyone's best interest
When a guy kills 17 kids, dispose of him quick and fast.

You can download "Day in America" for free here.

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