It’s funny—my view of New York has not changed much, if at all, since 9/11. It’s probably because I don’t remember New York City before 9/11, before the National Guard swarmed around Penn Station and before the city’s unofficial motto became “If you see something, say something”. It also definitely has to do with how my family handled the event. I know each family had to deal with it in their own way, but my parents were actually exceedingly calm about it (at least in front of my brother and me). A few minutes before nine on September 11, I was getting ready to leave for school when my mom clicked over to the news because the picture on the cartoon I had on was fuzzy. As chance would have it, the image in front of us was of smoke pouring out of the North Tower. At that point no one knew what was going on, but my mom instantly reassured me that my dad was nowhere near the World Trade Center (at the time he worked at Teachers College). From that moment on my parents tried to keep things as normal as possible. They decided not to pick my brother and me up early from school that day, and although my dad came home late that night, he still went back to work at 7 in the morning the next day, just like he always did. (But to be fair, my dad is also infamous for going to work in snowstorms and hurricanes. And to think he hasn’t been a mailman for 40 years.)
Although my view of New York City was not really affected by 9/11, that certainly wasn’t the case for everyone. I feel like at least in my town of Seaford, Long Island many people now view the city as an unsafe place. There are plenty of people around here who never go to the city anymore because they’re terrified, and a bunch of my district’s field trips to the city were cancelled for years and years after 2001. I also definitely think people began to view New York as a target. I had never been on a plane until this past April, but you’d have to live under a rock to not know how much airline security has been tightened in the past decade. I witnessed it for myself for the first time when I went with my school’s foreign language classes to France from JFK—I knew I had received my airline initiation when I had to take my shoes off and put all my belongings into that plastic cubby. Even in this very class we witnessed New York being seen as a target when our first performance was cancelled because of the threats of terrorism on the tenth anniversary of 9/11.
Although I do think the attacks on the Twin Towers are more meaningful to people who lived in New York at the time, I also think there are other things we need to remember about September 11 that don’t directly involve New York. The Pentagon was also hit, the planes originated from Boston, DC, and Newark, and we’ll probably never be 100% sure where exactly the fourth plane was headed. My brother Chuck was actually in DC for a meeting that day and said it was the eeriest thing—there was one guy in the meeting who had one of the original Blackberries, and everyone was watching the events in New York unfold on the tiny screen when the news cut in to show the Pentagon up in flames. So while I think that more people from New York have a direct personal connection to the Twin Towers collapsing, I wouldn’t necessarily say that all of the events of September 11 are most meaningful to New Yorkers.
Now, as for the art—I definitely think it’s possible for artists to accurately portray the events of that day. We read Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, which I think captured the essence of a child missing a parent who had died in the event. We also read The Mercy Seat, which conveyed that sense of “…well, now what?” We watched Fahrenheit 9/11 which, despite (or perhaps because of) its sometimes unfair anger towards President Bush, serves as a manifestation of the post-9/11 disillusionment and anger. We saw the 9/11 Peace Quilts at the Met, which show September 11 through the eyes of children in New York City. There have been various concerts over the years in tribute to 9/11, and Bruce Springsteen’s album The Rising focuses on the aftermath of the tragedy. The one thing that makes the emotions in these pieces believable is that each artist was personally moved by the events. But really, I think for any work of art to be believable, the artist needs to have an emotional connection to the subject.
To bring everything full circle, I’d like to leave off with a little anecdote. I mentioned that a lot of people in Seaford are afraid of the city—one person who surprisingly isn’t afraid is my mom, who is a chronic overreactor. After our trip to the street performance got cancelled, we were talking about all the terrorist warnings and how they affect everyone’s lives. She put it to me like this: “Em, Dad is in Manhattan every day. If something’s going to happen, it’s going to happen and he’s going to be there. But I can’t live my life being afraid of that every day.” Even ten years after the events occurred, we as a nation still fear an attack of that caliber or even worse. Now I’m not saying I don’t sometimes fear that myself—I actually didn’t want to go to the city on September 11 of this year. But I think it’s so important to work toward realizing that while being afraid is a lot easier than being brave, our strength and unity as a nation is just as powerful as any weapon.
