20 years on, what do we know?
As any of my friends will tell you, I have a terrible memory. These days, I’m on a mission to do nothing twice, so that everything at least has a chance of lodging somewhere in my deeply flawed memory bank. But I remember vividly how I felt, on this day 20 years ago.
On 9/11, I was hosting a big meeting for volunteer-managers running volunteer programmes for young people. It was in the very fancy and historic surroundings of the debating chamber at the University of Birmingham Guild of Students. I was just a few weeks into my first proper job, and was keen to make a good impression on all my contemporaries. We finished the event around 4pm, and I went back downstairs to my office. My boss Max asked me how it had gone, and then said “OK, that’s great. Now, I need you to go up to the bar and watch the TV. Just go.”
I remember, like many of you, just watching replay after replay of what had happened. I remember the feeling of disbelief. The surrealness of watching a disaster movie that wasn’t Hollywood fiction. I remember talking to colleagues “will they close the university tomorrow?”, “I guess the 5-a-side is cancelled tonight?”, “do you think this is a war?”.
The next day, I remember walking to work, with Herbert’s now-classic album ‘Bodily Functions’ on my CD Walkman. Although it’s an album made out of samples of knee-clicks and tummy girgles, it’s tuneful, melancholic and at times it’s deeply unsettling. It was the perfect soundtrack to that time for me, and whilst certain songs on there have taken on new memories over time, putting on that album takes me back to that eerie week where… we just didn’t know anything. Everything felt lost. Up for grabs. Different, somehow. We couldn’t see it yet, but we could feel things changing in that moment.
I sensed this same feeling as a child in 1989 when the wall fell and then when Nelson Mandela was released, but those were childhood memories. It felt like the adult’s world, and nothing to do with me. But 9/11 was my era. In September 2001 I was, by just a few weeks, now a full time working adult. Looking back, 9/11 felt like the end of the childlike 90’s era of my teens and the start of what the kids these days refer to as ‘adulting’. That turbulence was felt again here in the UK and around the world when we stared down the barrel of banking collapse in 2008, and then of course, y’know, more recently.
Beyond the obvious things to say about the incredibly sad events of 9/11, there are two things I’ve been thinking about this week.
The first is how rare these turbulent, world-changing, life-threatening crisis times seem to be when you’re lucky enough to live in relatively stable countries. A couple of weeks ago, I sat in a tent at a festival, listening to Herbert’s ‘Bodily Functions’ album in full on a brilliant sound system (part of a talk he was giving about the 20th anniversary of its release). My terrible memory gets good where music is concerned, and I was transported back, walking the streets of Selly Oak in Birmingham in my new-job-shoes, with the same unsettled feelings from that week turning over in my stomach. It struck me that it’s such a privilege to go years or even a generation between feeling those feelings. The feelings where certainty, and the nature of reality, and stability itself all start to feel drunk and distorted. If I’d have been born in Afghanistan, or Syria, large parts of Sub-Saharan Africa or to be honest most of the rest of the world, those feelings would be with me more often, for sure.
And the second reflection I had was about the nature of truth. In the 90’s it felt like all the best TV was anarchic and ironic because the status quo felt quite stable. That ended after 9/11. Suddenly, the truth was up for grabs, and trust in institutions has been a problem ever since. I tend to find that anyone who says they know the truth, or is a ‘truther’, or is on a quest for ‘the truth’ is invariably the furthest from it. 9/11 ‘truthers’ were aided by the early internet, of course, but these days it feels like advertising platforms like Facebook and Google will send people to all sorts of irresponsible anti-science if it brings them in that precious attention-dollar, and politicians are cottoning on to exactly how brazen they can be with their lies, in an age where there’s no consensus anymore and the waters are muddied.
Of course, there’s a huge link between turbulence and peoples’ need for simple narratives. It’s worth remembering that, and showing some compassion rather than getting angry when you’re faced with anti-vaxxers and the like (remember, I write these emails as much for myself as I do for you..!). Because when times are turbulent, it’s no wonder people grab onto all sorts of things. We are a species of story-tellers, and our brains love simple narratives to explain bumpy rides.
So this week, as life gets ‘back to normal’ for many of us, I invite you to reflect on life-changing turbulence and the weirdness and distortions we’ve all faced these last couple of years. And to spare a thought for those who don’t have the privilege that is relative stability and normality right now.
And of course, to remember all those affected by what happened on that sunny morning in New York, 20 years ago.
