September 12, 2002

• Respect.

  
  

  Well I deliberately avoided posting anything on 9-11, since I figured my voice would be lost in the crowd of clamouring people. But its over now.
  I don't want to talk about bombing the shit out of terrorists. Or their families. On that path leads more death and destruction and more weeping.

  
  

  I want to talk about respect. Respect for lives lost.

  
  

  I lost 3 friends in the World Trade Center.

  
  

  I lost my friend Ed, who danced with me at my wedding, whose wife Elaine taught me how to make 7Up cake and frybread and whose warmth and graciousness will stay with me forever. Ed came out here on a 2 year business transfer, and became a friend that I will never ever get over losing. We took on aussie racists who'd never seen an african-american and taught them a lesson or two in politics. Ed taught me how to appreciate early blues - not the Stones ripoffs and he and I got drunk and silly and stayed up till the sun came up and we had to cab it back to work. I shall miss him. And I shall miss the family that he had, since it will never be the same again.

  
  

  I lost my friend Penny - an old friend from Toronto, then New York. She was a woman who was witty and beautiful and sharp as a knife. I stayed at her apartment on the Upper east side and saw how the rich lived. It was fun - since Penny wasn't above junking work for a day and dragging me down to Greenwich Village to get our palms read. I'd known Penny for 15 years. It seems funny I'll never get another email from her with scathing commentaries on the big swinging dicks she worked with - or a letter with a cartoon from the New Yorker inside and a 'please explain' scrawled in the margin. Dammit.

  
  

  I lost Luis. Another friend from Toronto - who stayed with me for a couple weeks on his dream trip down under, and who never failed to wish me happy birthday or let me know about the new bands happening in New York. Luis had beautiful curly long hair, which he wore in a sparkly furry scrunchie with his Hugo Boss suits and Ferragamo ties. That sense of irreverence is one I tried to cultivate in myself. His loss leaves a terrible hole.

  
  

  I couldn't watch the so-called tributes. The endless replaying of the planes crashing and the building collapsing. It seemed as if the world was using what happened as marketing ratings fodder. People died when those planes hit - it wasn't some action movie trailer. I wonder how the families of the lost felt watching it being replayed over and over again, with some suitably sombre faced talking head intoning fake words of grief in the background. Shameful. Shame on us for watching it and proving the networks point.

  
  

  There isn't a news anchor in the world that can make me believe that they understand what howling grief I feel. There isn't a so-called tribute program airing anywhere that begins to touch on what impact that day had on ordinary people who were going about their lives and then suddenly their lives became anything but ordinary.
  
  The mothers who dropped their kids off at daycare, juggling careers and motherhood, knowing it was just 'a little longer' till they paid off the house/boat/car and they could breathe a sigh of relief. The husbands who phoned their wives and asked them to make reservations for dinner because they'd finally got that big break they'd been waiting for and easy street had come at last. The guy who got up every morning at 4am to work a second job so his kid could afford cool running shoes or piano lessons. The immigrant who'd sacrificed everything to get to America and send money home to make his family's life better. The parents who kissed their kids goodbye, proud that their son or their daughter had finally made good and they could stop worrying.

  
  

  Gone, all gone.

  
  

  I say a big "Fuck you" to the phoniness. The televised bagpipes, the closeups of grieving widows and stunned and staggering families. Shame on you for marketing loss and grief. Shame on you.

  
  

  If we really really wanted to honour and remember the dead - a simple service would have sufficed. Not endless footage played for dramatic effect. Not some junior league president using this as a reason to go out and cause more deaths so he can be assured of a second term in office. Not some senator trying to increase a crediblity quotient or a friend of a friend of a friend getting their 15 seconds of fame on a newsbite. Where's the honour in that?

  
  

  I remembered by writing letters and calling the families of those I loved. And by not watching a damn thing on 9-11.
  

  • 8:08 pm
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