“Ladies and gentlemen, please stay calm. We cannot confirm this is a terrorist attack. Please make your way to the nearest emergency exit. Repeat: we cannot confirm this is a terrorist attack.”
It was two years post-9/11. The power had suddenly gone out. Everywhere. All over Manhattan.
And the voice over the PA system at my workplace at One Worldwide Plaza1 (49th Street, between 8th & 9th Avenues) felt it was necessary to inform us that it wasn’t necessarily not a terrorist attack. That was rattling. And a sign of just how deep and unhealed the wounds and PTSD of 9/11 still were in the city.
We hurried to the exits. Hustled quietly down eight floors to the ground floor, talking in hushed tones, checking our phones, trying to text and call out with phone lines that were swamped.
In the end, there were no terrorists. Merely the biggest blackout in history2. And thankfully so.
A few weeks later, it was the actual two-year anniversary of 9/11. My company, Ogilvy & Mather, had a Day of Service planned, in which employees could pick from a number of opportunities to volunteer around the city. A good way to pay tribute to the fallen of NYC, in my opinion.
My work partner, David, and I picked an organization just around the corner from my first apartment down in SoHo called God’s Love We Deliver, a really great charity that have a mission, in their own words, “to improve the health and well-being of people living with HIV/AIDS, cancer, and other serious illnesses by alleviating hunger and malnutrition. We prepare and deliver nutritious, high-quality meals to people who, because of their illness, are unable to provide or prepare meals for themselves.” It started in the 80’s as an AIDS services organization when the founder delivered a meal to man dying from AIDS. Since then, they’ve cooked and home-delivered millions of meals.
So we arrived, with a handful of co-workers and other volunteers, at the headquarters of God’s Love We Deliver around 9am on 9/11/2003.
It was already a tender, somber day in the city, just two years removed from the actual tragedy. Sure, it was still noisy as always, but there was a certain reflectiveness to most of the people you’d pass on the streets. An unseen fog of mourning. Millions of individual moments of silence, scattered across the day and the boroughs. About as reverent as New York gets. Even as someone who was not there, there was a palpable, close-to-the-surface emotionality that’s not entirely characteristic of your typical New Yorker.
We had a brief volunteer orientation about GLWD’s mission and food safety and then were handed aprons and gloves. They led us to a large kitchen area with rows of stainless steel prep tables. A small radio on one of the counters played songs that will always be associated with the aftermath of 9/11, either because of radio play or subject matter or the fact that the artists played them at one of the many tributes, or all of the above.
You know the songs3:
“Hero” by Enrique Iglesias
“New York, New York” by Ryan Adams
“The Rising” and “My City of Ruins” by Bruce Springsteen
“The Sound of Silence” and “The Boxer” by Paul Simon (on SNL)
“New York State of Mind” by Billy Joel
“Imagine” by John Lennon (sung by Neil Young on the benefit telecast)
“I Won’t Back Down”4 by Tom Petty
Songs are so powerful, even when I’m not a big fan they can evoke the exact time and place. I can be back in Adam’s Chevy Malibu with just the first few bass notes of Jane’s Addiction’s “Summertime Rolls.” Back on PCH when I hear Chris Isaak’s “Speak of the Devil.” Back in high school when the Swedish pop of Ace of Base kicks in. And, in this case, hearing all these songs that reminded me of that day, all the same emotions piled up right near the surface.
We were all assigned different duties to help prep GLWD’s meals for the day. A few people cut carrots over here. Some people peeled potatoes. Others chopped herbs. And then David and I got our assignment:
Onions.
The two-year anniversary of 9/11.
In New York City. Lower Manhattan, no less.
Making meals for people with a terminal illness.
To the unofficial soundtrack of 9/11.
And they had me cutting onions.
Fine. You win. I’ll cry.
A building that had two Starbucks within 20 yards of each other on its ground floor.
The worst power blackout in history, says the internet. New York. Jersey. Massachusetts. Up into Canada. Affecting 50 million people.
And to a lesser (or more personal) extent:
Jesus Etc- Wilco (with its impossibly prescient lyric “tall buildings shake, voices escape singing sad, sad songs”)
Safe & Sound- Sheryl Crow
Fragile- Sting
Where Were You When The World Stopped Turning- Alan Jackson
My Hero- Foo Fighters
and I feel like “Angel” by Sarah McLachlan was in the mix?
And the jingoistic drivel:
Courtesy of the Red, White, & Blue- Toby Keith
One of many songs that were blacklisted (DO NOT PLAY) by radio in the immediate aftermath but eventually found their way back.