9/11 BLUES

“New York was his town and it always would be." - Issac Davis (Woody Allen)

I remember staying up late one school night and watching Woody Allen's 'Manhattan' (1979) on TV and not really understanding too much about it other than the palpable cinematic atmosphere of New York that was emitted through the screen, accompanied by the rhapsodic sound of George Gershwin's music.

The black and white cinematography of Gordon Willis obviously helped greatly in creating the perception of a city that was made for romantics, dreamers and artists, as did Woody Allen's famous opening narration that set the tone perfectly for his unapologetic infatuation with the city where he's spent his entire life.

“Chapter One. He adored New York City. He idolised it all out of proportion. Uh, no. Make that “He romanticised it all out of proportion. To him, no matter what the season was, this was still a town that existed in black and white and pulsated to the great tunes of George Gershwin." - Issac Davis (Woody Allen)

Was this the beginning of my own love affair with the city? I think probably it was, followed by Scorsese's 'Mean Streets', 'Taxi Driver' and 'Raging Bull' as well as Billy Wilder's 'The Apartment'. And how could I fail to mention my Seinfeld obsession (even if it was shot in Studio City, Los Angeles) to say nothing of Broadway and the 'Kid from Hoboken' who reigned supreme as 'king of the hill' over all my other New York obsessions.

The New York I came to construct over many years in my mind, built on a foundation of sublime cultural references, was thankfully impenetrable despite the attacks on the World Trade Center on 9/11/2001 although I did take them personally. Perhaps because I had stood on the observation deck of the South Tower myself two Septembers before the terrible event on a similarly perfectly clear, blue sky morning, the incomprehensible tragedy affected me just as if it had just happened in my local town and not three and a half thousand miles away.

Sitting in a state of shock with my fellow New York-loving friend later that day on the upper landing of my family home, we listened to Beethoven's Sonata No. 32 which seemed to anticipate Scott Joplin and George Gershwin with its vampy ragtime strides that arrived almost violently out of the peaceful serenity of the rest of the adagio, reminding us that art can be just as uncertain as life and we took comfort in that idea for a brief moment. But in the silence after the music had finished, the eerie disquiet of what had happened in New York filled the space around us and there was a shared sense that our 9/11 blues wouldn't be shaken off anytime soon. This was certain to be an existential hangover to rival pretty much any in human history.  

And although my New York was safely locked in my mind, I could still feel the shockwaves of the devastating assault on the real New York threaten to cast a long shadow over what had been a dream of a place to me. 9/11 was like waking up from two dreams: the one I'd constructed for myself and the one I visited in reality just two years before.

It would be impossible to deny that a lot of people woke up after the shocking events which took place in the heart of the financial district that morning of 9/11. There was a sense that things had changed irrevocably for both New York, America and the West. And so it has proved to be. Declinism, stoked by historical re-evaluating, collective self-loathing and cultural apathy has meant that it wasn't just the Twin Towers that were reduced to rubble that historic day but our civilisational self-esteem.

"Boom! Boom! Just like that. The towers are gone now, reduced to bloody rubble, along with all hopes for Peace in Our Time, in the United States or any other country. Make no mistake about it: We are At War now -- with somebody -- and we will stay At War with that mysterious Enemy for the rest of our lives." - Hunter S. Thompson

So now the timeline of my life has been divided between Pre 9/11 and Post 9/11 and the Pre 9/11 is found mostly in the cultural riches that had been amassed prior to the terrorist attack, those same riches from which I built my own New York up from scratch in my head.

In this sense, nothing's changed.

Except everything has.