Beyond Weeping
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Submitter Comments
I’m a retired elementary school teacher, so when I heard the news about the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary in 2012, I was shaken to my core. While there had been school shootings before then, like Columbine HS, it was incomprehensible to me that innocent first-graders would fall prey to such massive slaughter. My impulse to write a song to express my heartache was immediate, and the overwhelming grief carried in both the tune and the lyrics like an instant message. While the song was a reaction to that particular massacre, its application for most any time of deep despair may be fitting. The message is twofold: recognition of the horror and solidarity in holding the pain. I’m most proud of how the discordant chords convey the haunting loss, and that the lyrics feel congruent in expressing that anguish. —Annie Garretson, 8/31/22
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Lyrics
Beyond weeping,
Even the sun has lost its shine.
Beyond wailing,
Your pain I feel as if it were mine,
As if it were mine.
Your ink, black, dark
Is mine, too.