“And in my best behaviour
I am really just like him
Look beneath the floor boards
For the secrets I have hid”
From John Wayne Gacy Jr by Sufjan Stevens
This is a song about a serial child murderer with a killer ending! Stevens’ uses his literary prowess to build a character sketch of a horrible man but just as you are horrified by the broken humanity of someone else Stevens turns the judgement on himself in a “but for the grace of God go I” and you are left searching your own soul for what you hide from the world. “All have sinned and fall short...” as the apostle Paul put it. Chilling and sobering!
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