Annie Dawid

Not Drinking the Kool-Aide

November 18, 1978 Jonestown Over the P.A., the daily Jim Jones harangue does not wake Robert this morning but music instead – not the Jonestown Express but classical. From his other life, the pre-Peoples Temple life, he recognizes Vivaldi. But instead of Spring or Summer, which were played and overplayed endlessly in department stores and elevators, hoping their cheerfulness would prod consumers to buy, it is Winter. As a child, Robert had been a prodigy on the piano, but gave it up in adolescence when he saw how hopelessly unhip and unblack classical music was.