Strength Through Music

This haunting song was inspired by the Columbine school shootings. On April 20, 1999, Columbine High School seniors Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold killed 13 people at their school before killing themselves. In our interview with Amanda Palmer, she explained: "When Columbine happened I was really affected. Everyone in the world and all over the country was really affected by it. But I had a special interest in it that didn't go away. I encounter so many really disturbed, angry, lonely, frustrated teenagers, because of what I do. And I think what Marilyn Manson said in Bowling For Columbine was brilliant. I was so upset, especially having been a misfit in high school. I think it was really upsetting for people to look at these kids being so demonized with so little thought given to the larger questions. And my imagination was really captured by what the quality of these boys' lives were like, as they were sitting in their rooms playing video games and plotting this catastrophe. It really was my view of the whole thing, and my emotional impulse was to actually feel real sympathy for them, because I see so many kids feeling so misunderstood, and the culture around them is so hostile. Not to say that what they did wasn't completely abhorrent. But on the other hand, when you've got a culture of 15-year-old kids going around shooting each other, you need to ask yourself bigger questions. And I think people are really afraid to ask those questions, which is: what's their cultural diet? And why would this happen?

I certainly don't think my high school experience was as extreme. I went to a liberal New England high school where there was a lot of tolerance. And even though I stood out as somewhat of an outcast and a freak, we were bred to respect each other. And no one ever really got beat up. No one yelled names at me in the hallways. But high school is just brutal no matter what way you cut it. It doesn't matter that on the whole, people were tolerant. I still felt really isolated, and I think it's a very common teenage thing to feel wherever you are."

Ben Folds produced the album with Palmer and played on this track.

The voice at the beginning of the song comes from an animated short called Strindberg and Helium: With Iron & Sulfur. The short is based on the writings of the Swedish writer August Strindberg (1849-1912).