My Grandma Is Telling Me From the Beyond To Write My Book
I haven’t called her in six years.
My wife and I got tattoos at a new-to-us shop a couple weeks ago. Next to us in the back were two college-age young women, each getting a tattoo of a butterfly with the year “1943” written down its body. Later we asked each other: did you see them? What could that have meant?
Because I am a gigantic nerd, my brain went directly to a choral work I sang in high school. It’s called “I Never Saw Another Butterfly,” and it’s based on a collection of children’s drawings and poems from Theresienstadt, or Terezin, a concentration camp in the Czech Republic where Jews were held before being transferred to death camps. The poems are from 1942–1944.
It is obviously very upsetting to listen to. The notes are discordant and jarring; the chords make you cringe. There are times when the music is shrill and militaristic and imitates the stomping of an army — deliberately, of course. And even if the music were soft and beautiful, well, the lyrics are based on children’s reflections on genocide. Difficult on the ears, difficult to sing. It’s been 15 years and the music hasn’t left me.
Butterflies are a resounding theme, per the title. They symbolize fleeting beauty, freedom, hope, but also the innocence of what’s been lost. And the…
