Back to a purely instrumental song.  There’s a lot of potential for lyrics here but I was inspired to go a different direction.  William Hogarth was very concerned about animal cruelty.  For this project I rearranged and prodded the insides of a little cuddly looking animal.  The moral of the story Hogarth depicts is roughly: do not be cruel to animals and people or you might end up suffering through the dissection of your dead body after being hung as a consequence your evil and cruelty.  I was not the one who was opened up and torn apart though.  It was I that dissected that animal ravenously and shrewdly for pleasure and for my own entertainment.  I made it shriek and cry, a helplessly suffering beast.  

    Good thing it was a child’s toy made of plastics and circuitry!  As a matter of fact this entire piece was recorded with children’s toys as a source of sound. Because Hogarth emphasized that cruelty is a way of life that starts when one is young, it seems quite appropriate.  

    There are four major sections to the song just as there are four stages of cruelty.  In addition the most chaotic part of the song is at the end when the poor little plastic animal, just like Tom Nero in the fourth engraving, suffers the deepest agony.