So It Goes (featuring Kurt Vonnegut)

Kurt Vonnegut in 1973 and Mary O’Hara in 1957 feature on this track that reflects on coping with death and grief through the use of excerpts from the former’s novel Slaughterhouse-Five narrated by the author himself. The excerpts are worked into a song based on Mary O’Hara’s version of an old Irish song called Eileen Aroon. The hook of the song is actually Kurt Vonnegut himself which may well be the only known recording of him singing. He sings a couple of lines from an old song cited in Slaughterhouse-Five called That Old Gang of Mine.

Lyrics

So long forever, old fellas and gals
So long forever, old sweethearts and pals
God bless ‘em

Robert Kennedy, whose summer home is 8 miles from the home I live in all year round, was shot 2 nights ago.
He died last night. So it goes.
Martin Luther King was shot a month ago. He died too. So it goes.

So long forever, old fellas and gals
So long forever, old sweethearts and pals
God bless ‘em

And every day my government gives me a count of corpses created by military science in Vietnam. So it goes.
My father died many years ago now, of natural causes.
He was a sweet man. He was a gun nut too.
He left me his guns. They rust.

So long forever, old fellas and gals
So long forever, old sweethearts and pals
God bless ‘em

So it goes.

Everything is alright and everybody has to do exactly what he does.