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Five Year Anniversary
Sep. 11th, 2006 11:26 pmBut not the one you think. Five years ago tonight (the Monday evening before the attacks on Tuesday) was my first rehearsal with the chamber group I sing with.
I was running late; it was raining and thundering and the storm moving through right as the sun was setting made an eerie light over the Manhattan skyline as I came over the Turnpike extension. I always loved that view; it looked as though you were heading down the last hill and right in through the gates of a magical place. I distinctly remember thinking what a joy it would be to see that exhilarating view on Monday nights, on the way to rehearsal.
The next morning, I watched that view destroyed forever.
We were fortunate, all of us. We lost not one member of the choir. Not one member of the choir, that I know of, lost anyone close. We were amazingly fortunate.
And immediately our thought was, "What shall we do? What can we do? We can't just go back to singing Christmas music..." And so we put together, in two rehearsals, a brief memorial offering of music. I remember that I was mostly fine until I saw the man openly weeping in the front pew, and then it was all I could do to hold it together. I remember that it seemed like the only thing we could do, and like doing nothing, and yet like the only right thing - all of that at once.
It seemed simple, for a few days at least. We will mourn, we will rebuild, we will move on.
So far, as near as I can tell, all we've managed to do is mourn. We are still mourning. We have made a monument and a hobby and a lasting occupation out of our mourning. We have not yet rebuilt. We certainly have not moved on.
That, I think, dishonors those who died more than anything else. We have not rebuilt. We have not moved on. We insist on remaining stuck in our grief and rage, like a two-year-old whose tantrum goes on out of all proportion to whatever proximate cause it might once have had. We prattle about "protecting our way of life" and we tell journalists who ask that "I guess it's okay to give up some privacy if it's keeping us safe."
Life is not safe. Life was never safe. It was not safe on September 10, and it was not less so on September 12. More than that, Life demands growth, and growth demands risk. If all we want is to be safe, we might as well bury ourselves with our dead and be done with it.
All our weeping and saccharine-sweet over-sentimentalized yearly chest-thumping and flag-waving will not bring the dead back. Nothing can do that. What they were is no more. What they are is not yet for us. Our place is here among the living. Our task is to stay here, and live.
I am not trivializing by any means the grief of those whose loved ones were lost. To lose them, and in such a tragic way, is a wound that will never heal. Their lives have been altered forever, by an act of such evil that the mind simply boggles. That grief is real, and dealing with it takes the time it takes. I would never but never suggest to any of those people that they should "just get over it."
What irritates me beyond measure is the media hype, the enforced national dragging it all out and picking open all the scabs and tearing at it for a month. There is the ritual showing of the footage, the ritual recounting of how it all happened, the ritual detailing of how there will be a ceremony and the names will be read and there are moments of silence at the Sacred Prescribed Times...it all rings a bit hollow, when accompanied as it is by the recounting of the endless bickering over what kind of memorial there should be and whether the names should be listed all together or in groups, and what the involvement of this or that group should be...there's a selfishness in some of this grieving, a me-first-ness, a to-hell-with-everybody-else-ness, that is unattractive at times.
We don't seem to have much grief to spare for the destruction our nation has wrought in revenge. We don't seem to care much about the innocents of those nations we have dismantled in our rage. Let the dead bury those dead; they aren't our concern. Neither do we seem much outraged by the acts of evil perpetrated in our name. We make light of the tortures, and say tough-sounding things about how "they" must deserve it.
We don't seem to be able to admit our faults, anymore, either. We have some kind of need to be pure, to be totally innocent, to be seen to have been undeserving of the horrors meted out to us. To suggest anything else - to suggest that America is not God's new pure and spotless chosen people - is heresy.
To say that America was complicit in the history that led to these acts of terrorism is not to say that anyone was deserving of what happened. No one is ever deserving of such horrors - not us, and not them, either. But if we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. And that empty pridefulness, I think, is what outrages me so, when we come to these anniversaries.
We have lost - no, more - we have abandoned the beliefs that made this country great. We seek security and safety, while destroying those very things for anyone else but us. We seek to protect "our way of life," as though driving gas-guzzling SUVs and shopping ourselves into endless debt were the ultimate achievement in life. We're for freedom of religion - that is, our freedom to shove our own religion down everyone else's throat. We're for freedom of speech - that is, our freedom to say whatever we want to get our own way. We're for freedom of the press - so long as it only prints what it's told is okay to print.
We need to go back, and read those old documents again. "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."
We need to remember what risks those men took, who founded this country. Freedom is risky business, for the very reason that it is free. It is not pre-defined. It can go many different ways. To be truly free, we have to be willing to fail. It can't all be safe and cozy, if we're going to be free. If we're free, everybody else gets to be free too - not just those we decide should be.
Most of all, we need to stop picking at the scabs. We need to stop having a national melodrama for a month every September. The best way to honor those who died is to live, and to live free; to fight - for freedom, for the freedom not just of those we like or those we agree with, but for everyone's freedom; to look honestly at ourselves, and confess what faults we find. Only then can we move past mourning, and rebuild a better world for those who come after us.
I was running late; it was raining and thundering and the storm moving through right as the sun was setting made an eerie light over the Manhattan skyline as I came over the Turnpike extension. I always loved that view; it looked as though you were heading down the last hill and right in through the gates of a magical place. I distinctly remember thinking what a joy it would be to see that exhilarating view on Monday nights, on the way to rehearsal.
The next morning, I watched that view destroyed forever.
We were fortunate, all of us. We lost not one member of the choir. Not one member of the choir, that I know of, lost anyone close. We were amazingly fortunate.
And immediately our thought was, "What shall we do? What can we do? We can't just go back to singing Christmas music..." And so we put together, in two rehearsals, a brief memorial offering of music. I remember that I was mostly fine until I saw the man openly weeping in the front pew, and then it was all I could do to hold it together. I remember that it seemed like the only thing we could do, and like doing nothing, and yet like the only right thing - all of that at once.
It seemed simple, for a few days at least. We will mourn, we will rebuild, we will move on.
So far, as near as I can tell, all we've managed to do is mourn. We are still mourning. We have made a monument and a hobby and a lasting occupation out of our mourning. We have not yet rebuilt. We certainly have not moved on.
That, I think, dishonors those who died more than anything else. We have not rebuilt. We have not moved on. We insist on remaining stuck in our grief and rage, like a two-year-old whose tantrum goes on out of all proportion to whatever proximate cause it might once have had. We prattle about "protecting our way of life" and we tell journalists who ask that "I guess it's okay to give up some privacy if it's keeping us safe."
Life is not safe. Life was never safe. It was not safe on September 10, and it was not less so on September 12. More than that, Life demands growth, and growth demands risk. If all we want is to be safe, we might as well bury ourselves with our dead and be done with it.
All our weeping and saccharine-sweet over-sentimentalized yearly chest-thumping and flag-waving will not bring the dead back. Nothing can do that. What they were is no more. What they are is not yet for us. Our place is here among the living. Our task is to stay here, and live.
I am not trivializing by any means the grief of those whose loved ones were lost. To lose them, and in such a tragic way, is a wound that will never heal. Their lives have been altered forever, by an act of such evil that the mind simply boggles. That grief is real, and dealing with it takes the time it takes. I would never but never suggest to any of those people that they should "just get over it."
What irritates me beyond measure is the media hype, the enforced national dragging it all out and picking open all the scabs and tearing at it for a month. There is the ritual showing of the footage, the ritual recounting of how it all happened, the ritual detailing of how there will be a ceremony and the names will be read and there are moments of silence at the Sacred Prescribed Times...it all rings a bit hollow, when accompanied as it is by the recounting of the endless bickering over what kind of memorial there should be and whether the names should be listed all together or in groups, and what the involvement of this or that group should be...there's a selfishness in some of this grieving, a me-first-ness, a to-hell-with-everybody-else-ness, that is unattractive at times.
We don't seem to have much grief to spare for the destruction our nation has wrought in revenge. We don't seem to care much about the innocents of those nations we have dismantled in our rage. Let the dead bury those dead; they aren't our concern. Neither do we seem much outraged by the acts of evil perpetrated in our name. We make light of the tortures, and say tough-sounding things about how "they" must deserve it.
We don't seem to be able to admit our faults, anymore, either. We have some kind of need to be pure, to be totally innocent, to be seen to have been undeserving of the horrors meted out to us. To suggest anything else - to suggest that America is not God's new pure and spotless chosen people - is heresy.
To say that America was complicit in the history that led to these acts of terrorism is not to say that anyone was deserving of what happened. No one is ever deserving of such horrors - not us, and not them, either. But if we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. And that empty pridefulness, I think, is what outrages me so, when we come to these anniversaries.
We have lost - no, more - we have abandoned the beliefs that made this country great. We seek security and safety, while destroying those very things for anyone else but us. We seek to protect "our way of life," as though driving gas-guzzling SUVs and shopping ourselves into endless debt were the ultimate achievement in life. We're for freedom of religion - that is, our freedom to shove our own religion down everyone else's throat. We're for freedom of speech - that is, our freedom to say whatever we want to get our own way. We're for freedom of the press - so long as it only prints what it's told is okay to print.
We need to go back, and read those old documents again. "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."
We need to remember what risks those men took, who founded this country. Freedom is risky business, for the very reason that it is free. It is not pre-defined. It can go many different ways. To be truly free, we have to be willing to fail. It can't all be safe and cozy, if we're going to be free. If we're free, everybody else gets to be free too - not just those we decide should be.
Most of all, we need to stop picking at the scabs. We need to stop having a national melodrama for a month every September. The best way to honor those who died is to live, and to live free; to fight - for freedom, for the freedom not just of those we like or those we agree with, but for everyone's freedom; to look honestly at ourselves, and confess what faults we find. Only then can we move past mourning, and rebuild a better world for those who come after us.
