I love Scotch whisky. I love it on the rocks in a heavy crystal glass. I love it
when my friend Isobel comes to visit from Edinburgh and smuggles a fine bottle of
the stuff in her suitcase—Royal Lochnagar, The Glenlivet. (And when I go to
Edinburgh, the role of smuggler changes.) In fifteen years, I have never been out
of Scotch. She is welcome in my home anytime.
A Scotch is what you will need after visiting the 9/11 Museum (or pick your own
poison). That is exactly what I needed and how I wound up at Bill’s Bar &
Burger afterwards, with a Glenmorangie in my hand, talking with Steven the bartender.
Sidebar: I chose June 9th, my birthday, to visit the 9/11 Museum. If nothing
else, this fact encouraged Steven to provide me with free shots.
I don’t particularly like that there is a 9/11 museum, but I do accept
the fact that it has to exist; this after a freshman student said that watching
footage of the planes flying into the Twin Towers was “like the movies.”
This museum, sunken below the footprints of the World Trade Center, may actually
change that line of thinking.
Never in my life have I been more grateful for film, for tape, for video, for all
manner of recording devices, than I was when I visited the museum. There were thousands
of MISSING posters that people displayed like placards on their chests for days
after the towers fell. The signs are replicated (originals are in rooms downstairs)
via projections on walls, along with two enormous color photographs, side by side:
one of the Twin Towers in the glorious city skyline around dusk, and the other from
the same vantage point, but with gray smoke in place of the towers. They are there,
and then gone.
Phantom firemen and policemen were a ghostly presence inside. I sensed a proprietary
anxiousness as I looked at the mangled red corpse of Ladder Company 3. They lost eleven
firefighters including their Captain, Patrick “Paddy” Brown. His black
fire helmet is presented as it was on the day of his funeral, which would have
been his 49th birthday.
On a tall iron beam, wrapped in flowers, were notes and scrawls of graffiti in bright
colors. One note said, “The ironworkers were the first to descend upon the
site after the WTC collapse.” They were responsible for the cleanup. A large
touchpad tells the whole story of this beam, 13 pages of what the ironworkers did
with all the debris, metal, and concrete. I try to imagine what they saw. I can’t.
Or I can, but I can’t.
“You can’t help but look at your life differently.” —Larry
Keating, Ironworker
In a film room called “Reflecting on 9/11,” talking heads on screen
answer a series of questions:
“Why do you think it is important to remember 9/11?”
“What have you learned from 9/11?”
“How significant do you consider the events of 9/11 within the context
of history?”
“How do you think America has changed since 9/11?”
Of all the opinions offered as answers, the best came from Bill Clinton (not a surprise)
and Colin Powell (a surprise, at least to me). People are invited to contribute
to the conversation, so after listening to all of the questions and answers, which
takes about forty-five minutes, I recorded my own and gave permission to use it
for the archives. Mainly, I addressed why it is important the museum exists; why,
for my incoming freshman students, 9/11 becomes something real rather than fictional.
Particularly because they will be studying here, I tell them, for as long as you’re
here, you are New Yorkers. This is your city. You need to know what happened. And
you need to know about the aftermath.
If I had time, I could describe perhaps ten thousand items in the museum, all on
the periphery. In the center are the rooms that come with a guard and a warning
that “what you will see beyond this point may be upsetting...” It’s
nice they don’t assume you will be upset. But these were the rooms where grown
men were crying. One room, darkened enough that words could appear on a screen and
where people could sit if they chose, played the recently released cell communications
from people inside the towers on 9/11. I lasted under a minute, impossible grief,
impossible.
Numerous items found in the wreckage are displayed—id tags, a restaurant receipt
from brunch on the day, a teddy bear, high-heeled shoes, a handbag, iron crosses
and other symbols. All heartbreaking. A black-and-white photograph of an iron column
taken at Ground Zero revealed this message: “Paris, France is here to
help.” Everyone seemed to be grasping for some sort of meaning, but there
wasn’t any.
The most congested rooms were the ones that exhibited photos of those who died that
day. In those rooms, it is possible to touch any name, which brings up a photo and
a small biography. Another room has larger photos and bios, but it was so full I
could not get in.
There is no happiness in this museum, but it is easily one of the quietest and most
respectful places I’ve ever visited. Its only rival might be the Holocaust
museum in Washington, DC.
A Circle Line tour takes sightseers around the island of Manhattan by boat. It takes
about 45 minutes to an hour, and though it is something I have only done when friends
or family have come to town, I enjoyed it, the nice weather, especially. They have
had the same tour guide, a facetious, funny man, for years.
My cousin came to stay with me about six months after 9/11. We took the Circle
Line tour. When we got down to Ground Zero, the tour guide said, “And that
is the site of the former World Trade Center, where almost three thousand people
were murdered on September 11, 2001.” A shock of recognition ran through me.
The tour guide’s tone mimicked my own feelings: Outrage. Hurt. Anger. Sadness.
I wonder what he will think when he visits the museum. The new #1 World Trade
Center is up and running; if you stand in the middle of 6th Ave at dusk, the sun
reflects fuchsia-silver off the building, which seems to twist upwards into the
sky. It glitters—a New York City building. But replacements are only ever
that: replacements. Not the real thing, what was real to me, to my New York.
As I ascended the long escalator of the 9/11 Museum, I could hear the faint
strains of “Amazing Grace,” played on a penny whistle, the simplest,
most common instrument associated with Celtic and folk music. Unadorned. A pure
sound as I came up into the light.
originally trained as a classical singer and completed a post-graduate program at
LAMDA (London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art), living and performing in London
before moving to New York City. Her plays, “Clare’s Room” and
“Samaritan,” have been performed off-Broadway and had public readings;
while “St. John,” her third play, was a semi-finalist for the 2011 Eugene
O’Neill National Playwrights Conference.
Her writing has appeared in a variety of publications, including The New York Times,
The Literary Traveler, Serving House Journal (November 2014), Young Minds
Magazine (London/UK), Time Out New York, The Huffington Post, The Neue
Rundschau (Germany), Jetlag Café (Germany),
Writers
On The Job,
and One Magazine (London/UK), for whom she writes theater reviews.
She is working on a collection of essays and teaches writing at NYU.