It's been exactly 18 years since 9/11, and 9/11 happened shortly after my 18th birthday, so at the moment 9/11 is at a point around the mid-point of my life. Maybe it's strange that we don't make such a big deal of the date any more, considering how profoundly it changed our relationship to the media, and to concepts like 'truth' and 'justice' and 'terrorism', but then again perhaps it makes perfect sense that we don't commemorate it, because in the narrative of a heroic war waged in self-defence, it was just one attack out of an ongoing assault against which we need constant vigilance, rather than one single co-ordinated attack that nothing has come close to since.
I was probably one of the last people in the country to hear about 9/11, because that day I was doing a day's work for an agency in a panel beater's shop (back when I had proper jobs), so although there was a radio in the commercial unit, you couldn't hear it over the ambient banging and spraying. I went out for a break at maybe 3pm, soon after the planes must have hit, and waved at a bunch of people sitting outside their unit, and they didn't wave back, which I thought seemed weird. Later on I realised that they must have heard the news, but realised that I hadn't heard yet. I wonder if I would have waved back. I didn't hear about it until I got home after 5pm and saw it on the TV, and I remember when my Dad pointed out that people in New York had seen it happen and went to dial 911, and realised they were dialing the day's date, that the news was now following the rules of a Hollywood movie.
I went to work in The George at Newmarket the night after that (I had TWO proper jobs) and saw the front page of The Daily Mail that day was a photo of New York bathed in smoke and ash, with the headline 'Apocalypse'. I learnt recently that the word 'apocalypse' comes from a Greek term for revelation, or new knowledge, although it's usually used to mean a disastrous event heralding huge change. The new knowledge in this case, was that we are a real target now, so we need new morals, new ways of interpreting events to deal with this terrifying new paradigm, which we are still in. It's hard to remember sometimes that we weren't always living in a state of emergency.
I was probably one of the last people in the country to hear about 9/11, because that day I was doing a day's work for an agency in a panel beater's shop (back when I had proper jobs), so although there was a radio in the commercial unit, you couldn't hear it over the ambient banging and spraying. I went out for a break at maybe 3pm, soon after the planes must have hit, and waved at a bunch of people sitting outside their unit, and they didn't wave back, which I thought seemed weird. Later on I realised that they must have heard the news, but realised that I hadn't heard yet. I wonder if I would have waved back. I didn't hear about it until I got home after 5pm and saw it on the TV, and I remember when my Dad pointed out that people in New York had seen it happen and went to dial 911, and realised they were dialing the day's date, that the news was now following the rules of a Hollywood movie.
I went to work in The George at Newmarket the night after that (I had TWO proper jobs) and saw the front page of The Daily Mail that day was a photo of New York bathed in smoke and ash, with the headline 'Apocalypse'. I learnt recently that the word 'apocalypse' comes from a Greek term for revelation, or new knowledge, although it's usually used to mean a disastrous event heralding huge change. The new knowledge in this case, was that we are a real target now, so we need new morals, new ways of interpreting events to deal with this terrifying new paradigm, which we are still in. It's hard to remember sometimes that we weren't always living in a state of emergency.
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| 'Special Edition'? You bet |
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