This story is part of The Stranger’s Art + Performance Quarterly, Winter Edition, which is on stands now.
We will get to the 19th century, and to the music that transforms me into a merman, but first we must start with zombies.
In the horror movie 28 Days Later, a virus that transforms humans into zombies has destroyed London. Four uninfected people learn on the radio that an army base offers safety to the uninfected (“salvation is here”). The four jump into a cab and head north on a desolate motorway. During their trip, we hear on the soundtrack one of the most ethereal pieces of music ever composed. It is Gabriel Fauré’s In Paradisum (“Into Paradise”), the last work in his masterpiece Requiem—Latin songs from the Catholic Mass for the Dead.
In a funeral program, In Paradisum is for the moment a corpse is transported from its final observance in the church to its lowering in the graveyard. In the movie, the music presents a tranquil moment during the journey from humans infected by the monster virus to humans who are monsters because they are… humans.
