If my wings should fail me, Lord, please meet me with another pair.

As devastating as the news of Chris Cornell’s death today was the fact that in his final performance just yesterday in Detroit he closed the show with the rendition of Led Zeppelin’s ‘In My Time of Dying’.

For years, I can’t get this song out of my head; it has a prominent place in one of my screenplay’s pivotal scene.

This song is so haunting and its lyrics are so visceral that one would be a fool, while entranced by the song and plunged into the depths of contemplation, to rank it on any scale of favorites. Songs of that caliber, that kind of deep reach and hypnotism are in its own class. It would be silly and glib to call this song as a ‘favorite’. Its value can not be measured in aesthetics, in the same way a religious chant can’t be described simply as a recitation of words.

It is harrowing that this song was his last choice on the stage. RIP, Chris.

But enough with the profound.

How about this brutal social commentary. More than 20 years old but still relevant.