Sorrow
I don't have much to say at the moment, but I thought I would share with you what I listened to last night, after reading the news, after seeing photos of the children at Robb Elementary. I couldn’t sleep, but I didn’t want to ignore the anguish I felt. To ignore it, to try pushing it away felt wrong. Instead, I put on this piece of music, which has meant a great deal to me over the years:
Symphony No. 3, by Henryk Górecki
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The Polish composer Henryk Górecki composed the piece in 1976, and each of its three movements is gorgeous, mournful, and heartbreaking. Górecki called it “a symphony of sorrowful songs.” The lyrics are in Polish, and each movement tells a different story. The text of the first movement is a lament of Mary, at the foot of the cross of Jesus; the second is a prayer to Mary that was carved into the wall of a cell by an 18-year-old girl who was imprisoned by the Gestapo; and the third comes from a folk song from Silesia (a region of Poland) about a mother whose son was killed when Silesia rose up against the Weimar Republic in 1919.
It feels impossible to articulate the pain of grief, senseless pain. But somehow, this piece captures all of that. It doesn’t comfort me. It doesn’t heal me. But it touches a part of me that I can only clumsily call my soul.
Hrishikesh