911- a number that once rescued people and represented safety and security, suddenly became horrific and took a dreadful turn to symbolize agony and fear. Who knew it’s meaning would change so drastically and painfully? A single day became so historic as made its way to newspapers, movies, books and even magazines. New York was shook with an earthquake of infinite magnitude as the terrorists ruthlessly hit the Twin Towers. The sleepless and miraculous city of lights that inspired awes and wonders was suddenly forced to a foreign feeling of piercing silence. Looking back, one would wonder how much NYC has changed since the attacks…I would say, so much has changed yet so little is different.
Growing up in New York City and having almost all of my memories constructed after 9/11, my perception of NY lacked a true before and after effect. I was too young to notice New York’s unique aura and life. Every city was filled with yellow cabs, bright lights and wondrous skyscrapers, wasn’t it? Like any other city, we were terrified and enraged by the attacks. The event was difficult to swallow as we fell in a state of chaos, grief, and commemoration. I knew that the attacks were a harsh reality all along. Overtime however, I came to learn that the post 9/11 perceptions and atmosphere of a unique city such as New York were worth noticing as well.
At the very beginning when the wounds of 9/11 were raw and vulnerable, the world realized that it took a serious hit such as these attacks to truly stop the NYC. A sudden fear for safety and terrorism was born, and NYC’s image of being undaunted and full fantasies was shattered. This city too could be touched and attacked; it was not as amazing as the world drew it to be. New Yorkers themselves drowned in confusion, for what they thought was a highly admired place was now being attacked. They lived in a never-ending state of fear and alarm, for their city was no longer safe. Overtime however, the city slowly began to take its original shape again. It walked out of its darkness and confusion by taking the tragedy and pain to become even stronger. It proved its miraculous nature by keeping its inhabitants and even attracting more tourists than ever. People began to marvel at NYC’s phenomenal strength to continue as a fashion, business, art, and cultural capital. People’s perceptions today highly revolve around the city’s ability to overcome its loss. Granted that the city takes paranoid and strict measures to avoid safety today, it can be seen that it learned from its experience and made sure to keep the colorful bubble of NYC floating.
9/11 is definitely much more meaningful to New Yorkers compared to those who don’t live here. Watching an attack unfold solely through television miles away is nothing like experiencing hysteria and attack in one’s home state. To an extent, a television or newspaper story is just like that of a history book. It’s filled with facts and perhaps forced emotions that one cannot possibly grasp unless they stand amidst the event. We lost friends, family members, and an icon of NYC. People who don’t live here can express sympathy, but condolences fall too short to fill in the gaps of members lost and the throbbing pain of the incident. Only a New Yorker can understand how life has changed and he/she will experience it every single day. The world will forget this incident and newspapers will begin covering crime and finance again, but NYC will remain forever changed. It will not be the same for the New Yorker who has either lost a family member or was just too used to the twin buildings towering over the city. Whether it’s the tragedy of 9/11 itself or the post atmosphere of NYC, every New Yorker has been affected by 9/11 and his/her experience cannot match that of someone who does not live here.
Artists can uptake different lens to portray the traumatic events of 9/11 in an impacting and tearful way. However, I don’t think any artwork can embody the ecaxt heart felt shock and emotions that actual 9/11 footage stirs. Artwork is after all, a work of art that’s created to represent something. It cannot ever be the actual thing. In the same way, books, paintings and movies can recreate characters and stories of 9/11, but they can’t possibly come to represent the true trauma of the event. Every person experienced 9/11 extremely differently. Artwork can’t represent the very experience and emotion experience by an individual. The Mercy Seat is just one example of an uncommonly displayed, yet probable experience of people. All sorts of people were affected. People lost loved ones during the attacks, whether the victims were workers at the buildings or firemen just trying to help. People suffered from diseases and serious traumatic disorders as a result of the attacks. People became victims of post 9/11 racism, despite being innocent and equally grief struck. Seeing racism inflicted on my fellow Muslim friends and family as I grew up, I emphasize that there is this other world of victims that don’t come to mind when an average person thinks of the 9/11 attacks. Hence, only the actual 9/11 footage can evoke those strong emotions within each type of victim, because it is that sole scene that caused so much to happen in people’s lives in different ways. It is that sole scene that every victim wishes to undo somehow. Different artworks cannot do justice in delivering the trauma of the event for everyone.
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.
NYTimes Arts
