I’d be hard-pressed in this world of pain, this world of pleasure and pain, to call one cut the unkindest.  I recall a teacher describing his worst terror, the moment he might have to take his clothes off to make a point about teaching, or character, or life.  Not a far leap from that to being forced to strip and then machine-gunned into a ditch, that’s a terrible one, unkind and also a deep cut.  A sister whose rage will never be soothed in this lifetime, or a brother who will never forgive the rage, in spite of his sacred vow.  Nation who will always lift up sword against nation.

There’s the image of being on the outside of a space craft, alone in black silence, the smug robot inside, reading out your remaining oxygen levels in that robot singsong.  Friends bailing with both hands, all their servants also there, bailing hard, all the possessions in the world under that water and no time to sing harmony or even think about music.  There are massages that will never be had, laughs never laughed, debts that can never be repaid and gifts squandered ungratefully, mercilessly.   Cancer.    There are terrors more real than the hand that is on you trying to calm you down.

There are many unkind cuts, and they all hurt.  There are cuts so unkind we can only describe them by crying.   Or bending an Eb note up to E, over and over against the vamp, another way to weep, as in this example:

see you in the boneyard