Floating in the Wind

Over the summer I was driving in West Philadelphia and came across this small city-block-size park with what appeared to be a large number of shirts blowing in the wind. I resolved to go back another day and see what it was.

It was a memorial to over two hundred Philadelphians killed by illegal guns. Each shirt bore the name, age and dates of a person who had been shot and killed in Philadelphia in 2013. The memorial was the work of Neighborhood Partners to End Gun Violence. They move the memorial to different parks around the city. This is their page on Facebook

I went back again with a camera and took this video. It was a windy day following a night of thunderstorms so the shirts are in a bit of disarray. I wrote a song to accompany the video.

Around this time I rediscovered the hymn "Oh Sacred Head Now Wounded." I love the melody of this old hymn which I believe also appears in Bach's "St. Matthew's Passion." My friend Janice Woodcock learned the piece and we inserted it as a bridge in the song.

  

Link to the video: Floating in the Wind