It probably seems like this story was inspired by something like black widow spiders, or some other species where the females have a habit of eating the males after mating. But ironically, this one was inspired by a song. Some folks I know have trouble "hearing" and understanding the lyrics of a song; I'm the opposite. It took me years to learn how to hear the beat of a song well enough to dance to it. This is one of the reasons I like folk songs (especially Irish Punk). Songs like [The Sick Note](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_Vfxuk8x_A&list=RDEaoqJ6hr1Dc&index=2) and [Darcy’s Donkey](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C6N6W59nQh4) rank among my favorites. I like stories, and not just in prose; I like stories in my music. All my favorite songs have strong narratives. It’s not just folk music that tells a good story, though. For example, Rock and Roll lays claim to David Bowie’s tale of Major Tom. For those who aren't familiar with it, [Space Oddity](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZT3h0cs54eM) is about an astronaut who loses contact with Mission Control and winds up drifting in space. It came out in 1969, and the protagonist, Major Tom, reappeared in 1980’s "Ashes to Ashes" and 1995’s single "Hallo Spaceboy.” The tale of Major Tom would have been perfectly at home in a science fiction magazine if it weren’t already set to music. It even spawned the musical equivalent of fanfiction, like Peter Schilling’s Major Tom (Coming Home) in 1983 and [Mrs. Major Tom](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2AZBshVJMCw) by Kirby Ian Andersen (later covered by Sheryl Crow for William Shatner’s space-themed album [Seeking Major Tom](https://williamshatner.bandcamp.com/album/seeking-major-tom)). Every time I hear one of these, especially Space Oddity ("tell my wife I love her") or Mrs. Major Tom ("When you didn't come back, and didn't come back / My nova heart collapsed to a black, black hole"), it reminds me of an article I read back in 2018 about how the early NASA space missions represented an American death cult. [Rocket Men and Grieving Girls: On The Myth of the American Astronaut](https://www.tor.com/2018/08/22/the-myth-of-the-american-astronaut/) specifically references the behavior of astronauts' wives (metaphorically the high priestesses of the cult). It talks about how there was a weird sort of prestige that came along with risking one's life, and with mourning. It also frames American history through the same sort of anthropological lens — national myth, rituals, death cults — that many books about history use, in a way that made me feel like I _understood_ ancient societies through the lens of my own. Before, whenever I would read something about a "death cult," I know I'm supposed to think of stuff like the [Jonestown suicides](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonestown), but my head usually goes to fantasy novels like _The Black Company,_ in which a religious cult worships a death goddess by assassinating people bloodlessly. They're known as "the stranglers" and based on Indian [Thugee bands](https://www.damninteresting.com/the-thugs-of-india/). The article about astronauts was the first time that I finally understood what people meant when they accused various groups of being a "modern death cult," and gave me the emotional context to imagine how a Carthaginian "death cult" might have felt like in a way that doesn't make ancient humans seem incomprehensibly alien. Ironically, though, I have to admit that somehow _Rocket Men and Grieving Girls_ always gets a little mashed up in my head with [The First Wives Club](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0116313/), a 90s movie I barely remember about women who get revenge on husbands who left them for younger women. The idea of a death cult kind of has two versions; the version where people sacrifice themselves and their culture celebrates their sacrifice to the national glory (NASA), and the version where people murder outsiders as a sacrifice to their god (Thugees). Add in the angry-ex-wife motif and of course I'm going to start thinking of black widows, of sacrificing fathers for the survival of the brood, and of how that would look at a fancy dinner party if it were normalized... ## Lingering Questions - Do gangs with initiation rites where you have to kill someone count as death cults? - How does this relate to [[2022.01.26a broken heart syndrome and human sacrifice customs]] ## Read More - For more about [NASA Wives and Families](https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/moon-nasa-wives-and-families/), here's the Public Broadcasting Station version.