May 27 - Pigs That Ran Straightaway Into the Water, Triumph

This song is two things. First of all, it's a song played on a bus while someone is being taken to jail. Second of all, it's a song of the heart and of triumph.

We Shall All Be healed is a remarkable and powerful album, but it's also kind of a beginning-to-end bummer. It's an album about addiction and the ways people survive it and don't, and neither of those options comes without pain. it's possible to sing beautifully about pain, but pain is also exhausting. This book of days isn't in strict order, but on the album this is the last track, and as all last tracks should it gives us the dream of hope.

You're not on the bus, you're not going to jail. You're not going back into the cycle you've been in where every day is a slightly worse repetition of an earlier day as your karma gets muddier and muddier. You're flying away. You achieved escape velocity and broke off the wheel. You're free.