Sorrowful Songs - Representative Giffords and the Tragedy of Having No Feeling

Eleven years and two months ago Henryk Gorecki, the Polish composer, died.  Think back to Gabby Giffords being shot in a parking lot rally to fix the original posting of this in your mind. Of many interesting works, one, his 3rd Symphony was universally famous (it won a Grammy).  The second movement has as its text (lyrics) a short message carved on a cell wall at a Gestapo prison in Poland. The prison had a courtyard where executions were carried out without remorse or conscience. The lyrics are:

No, Mother, do not weep,
Most chaste Queen of Heaven
Support me always.



The music is chilling and beyond a sorrow that we can easily express. I'm mostly struck by the hopelessness of the situation.  We, as a people and nation, always have or seem to have a way out - a chance.  The young woman who wrote on the wall had no hope. Nothing. None. She quite likely died alone in that courtyard having committed no sin or transgression - just died at the whim and will of another.  A killer, a national of killers, who moved without a shred of moral restraint.

Tucson is like that in a way.  The judge, the little girl, the aide, others unidentified were living normal lives until some unseen hand that cared not a whit for them, randomly shot them and killed them as sure as a black-souled thug did this girl 70 years ago. That he was after a seemingly good and kind Congresswoman who hopefully will survive but in what condition and did this to others who just happened to be there - well in Poland and all over in Europe during the war, there were people who did no wrong, who did nothing, but just happened to be there..

He executed people as sure as if he lined them up at the killing wall. Remorseless, twisted by devils playing to his mind and emotions, obedient to an authority so black and terrible as to make his actions acceptable to him. It is beyond sadness to review this. 

I make a distinction here as well between mass murders in other settings and this unspeakable darkness.  Death is, of course, death and tragic no matter what the circumstances - 9-11, Columbine, Fort Hood  and the others; all completely senseless and insane.  This was a person screaming at what looks like to be our government - not as an act of war like 9-11, but a hatred and distortion egged on by the rhetoric and pure propaganda that echos 24/7.  It doesn't matter if it is left or right, silly or not, in jest or not; it is just there and to a mind struggling with what is real and human v. what is fantasy and in the mind only, it played out.

No, Mother, do not weep, Most chaste Queen of Heaven Support me always.