Krakow’s medieval central square, Rynek Główny, does not look much different than it did when I first visited six years earlier, in the summer of 2016. I joined the other tourists who sipped Zywiec under patio umbrellas and fell under the spell of the square’s endless movement, the ebb and flow of people in motion. We looked up to marvel at the twin towers of St. Mary’s Basilica, Krakow’s showcase of medieval gothic architecture, and waited for the trumpeter to appear from the tallest of the towers to play the plaintive Hejnal mariacki. It’s lamenting tune dies mid-note to commemorate the Polish trumpeter who died at that exact note in March 1241, shot in the throat by arrow, sounding the alarm of the advancing Mongol horde. The brutal and efficient horsemen then burnt the city to the ground and massacred most of its residents. Bloodshed, though, was the furthest thing from our minds as we watched, heads nicely buzzed, children scampering pass with ice cream cones, couples holding hands in the backseat of their horse carriage ride, and entire families motoring by on segways. The dreamy, fairytale-like setting, so wonderfully preserved and manicured, transported us back through the centuries, making history feel alive. We raised our cameras and snapped a few shots, though knowing no lens, no matter how wide and versatile, could ever capture the beauty before us. Nothing disturbed our tranquil evening studying the sun drip over church spirals and clocktowers. Nothing broke the spell. Nothing pierced the balloon and brought crashing back down into reality. The here and now.

Six years later and the central square has changed little. All the landmarks remain, and the square still attracts tourists. The trumpeter still trumpets, and the horses still pull people about. Beer is still sipped and coffee, savoured. History still comes to life. Yet at the square’s main fountain, sitting between the basilica and the cloth hall, a group has gathered to watch a female vocalist and male guitarist perform. Such spectacles are not uncommon, as street musicians pop up here and there around the city’s old heart. What is slightly unusual is that woman is singing in English and behind her and the guitarist stand a dozen or so people draped in Polish and Ukrainian flags. And among the spectators, there are also those wearing flags of the same colours—Poland’s red and white and Ukraine’s yellow and blue. The more I look around the square, the more I see those two flags, that assemblage of colour side by side—together. At the musicians’ feet is a box for donations to help those Ukrainian refugees living in Poland, and it’s in that moment I recognize the song, the lyrics, the woman sings. I used to belt out the very same words as an adolescent in my room when no one was looking. How the lyrics and imagery enraptured me and seized my soul to the point that I no longer felt stationed to the ground, rather floating above myself, freed from the constraints of body and mind.

Of course, what Dolores was singing about—war and death—did not resonate with me on a personal level, but how I loved Zombie all the same. Loved the song with all of my little heart. Shouted the chorus until my voice went hoarse. Swung my little body about to match the song’s epic intensity. Pretended I had a microphone in my hand and all the world came to watch me. God, how the song affected me, and God how it affects the woman singing by the fountain, for she belts out the lyrics as if the fate of her future rested on each note, each syllable. She bends into the microphone and directs her enraged cry right into us so we, the audience, become affected and infected by her. Yet although I recognize her passion, remembering by own succumbing to the song’s power, I sense her delivery, the way her entire body contorts to the music, surpasses my own renditions because my performance lacked two qualities central to any artistic showcase: experience and authenticity. The best acting in the world will never touch genuine experience because even the most gifted performer cannot fake what lies in the bones. Dolores speaks to the woman singing by the fountain in a more pronounced way than she ever did to me. The commonalities they share in terms of the ways in which war takes and then deforms all sacred things dwarves any allegiance I could make to the song. Such pain cannot be faked.