New York: 9/11 and redemption songs
Translated from the French original — read it here.
New York, 16 September 2015
Today I went to the World Trade Center site in New York. When you arrive, straight out of the subway, you come upon the new "Liberty Tower".
It's a magnificent tower, but looking at it I can't help picturing people jumping from the highest floors :-( .
I've had a chance once or twice to talk to Americans about 9/11, and it seems that almost everyone remembers what they were doing that day before they learned the unthinkable. Coming here makes it all a touch more concrete too..
There's also that panel with the name of every victim... That's a lot of people... And seeing all those names stops you in your tracks.
At one point during my walk here, Bob Marley's "Redemption Song" came into my head. I didn't understand why I thought of it.. And then I remembered how I felt as I grasped the scale of the catastrophe unfolding fourteen years ago now: I thought it marked the end of the world... I was genuinely terrified (I was young ;-) ). And yet here we are in 2015, still here... If that date changed the world we live in, we're still standing, and now an even taller tower rises on this spot.... That's more or less one of the messages I take from the great Bob's song — its refusal to be afraid of the forces of the age, and its reminder that no one can hold back time.
Let's all have no fear: of migrants, of the future.. Let's have faith in what's ahead, whatever happens to us.... And let's listen to Mr Marley more often! :-)