i studied southeast asian music in my most recent semester of college. indonesia in particular relies very heavily on the gong. there is an entire genre called gong orchestra. the large gong, called the gongageng, is revered and considered to be the heart of the orchestra. it is almost a rule that at the end of any given piece of music the gongageng will be struck last, as happens in the song. and yes it is a gong in the song- most gongs dont sound like those seen on TV, which sound like crash cymbals. danny obviously has been studying south asia music for some years now- perhAPS HE IS EXPANDING IN TO southeast asian. makes sense to me. and maybe it does signal marie's death- i dont speculate on such things as im more likely to be wrong than right. i choose to analyze (sp?) the emotions that the music conjures, erather than assign a specific meaning to any one sound. but thats just me. what i want to know is, who the hell is marie? was she 28 at death, or did she suffer for 28 yearas prior to it? hmm...