Why do people write?

Write songs, books, newspaper articles, poetry, hate mail, dissertations, magazine articles, advertising copy, letters to the editor, letters to your friend, graffiti on the bathroom wall, John Grisham novels…

The list goes on and on.

I’m thinking about this because yesterday I forced myself to watch a large chunk of 9-11 coverage. Some of it was good (and by this I mean honest, thoughtful, and poignant) some of it wasn’t (and by this I mean manipulative, jingoistic, and pointless).

But I forced myself to watch a few hours of programming because I needed to remember exactly what happened on 9-11-01. I needed to relive it and make sure I remembered the horror, the outrage, the heroism, the luck… everything I felt that day.

I wanted to remember because I’ve been trying to figure out a way to write a song about 9-11. And in order to write a song, I needed to see the images again. I needed to hear the words again.

The reason I needed to remember is to help me make the most important decision a writer (of anything) can make: Why he or she is writing. This question leads me to consider what I want to say about my subject, and, consequently, how I want to say it

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I often wait months or even years before writing a song about even the most obvious and fertile subject matter. There are episodes in my life, thoughts I’ve had, ideas for songs, that have kicked around in my head for years without making it out to even the first stages of the “paper” songwriting process, because I haven’t come up with how I want to frame the subject, what I want to say, and how I want to say it.

This decision (whether conscious or unconscious) makes or breaks a song. Good songs, interesting songs, powerful songs derive their success from interesting choices.

So I think I’m ready to write something about 9-11. It’s interesting but not much 9-11 themed music has come out (at least into the mainstream) yet. Springsteen’s album (“The Rising”) seems excellent. Neil Young did an okay song on it (“Let’s Roll”). And somebody needs to tell Toby Keith and his ilk to get their collective head out of their collective ass.

So as I was watching the coverage I tried to retain some of the images and some of the words that were pouring forth, hoping I could cobble them together and start to get an angle on how I wanted to write, how I could write something that wasn’t cliched, forced… easy.

I will say this: the live footage of the planes crashing into the Towers, the footage of the Towers crumbling… will never cease to send chills down my spine and bring tears to my eyes. Nothing could be more horrible than that. And nothing will ever move me more than the thought of firefighters running into the Towers, up the stairs, against the thousands of people running down the stairs. That’s contrary to every fiber of human nature. Unbelievable.

So I started thinking about the firefighters, and the people jumping from the upper stories, and the victims and victims’ families, and the terrorists who flew the planes…

And I came up with “Up and Down.”

UP:
The firefighters running up the stairs.
The smoke rising from the buildings.
Where many Americans think the victims went when they died.
Where the hijackers thought they would go when they died.

DOWN:
Workers running down the stairs.
The Towers falling to the ground.
Where the hijackers thought Americans were going.
Where many Americans think the hijackers went when they died.

This contrast, this pull between the two, the different levels of meaning and ambiguity…

It would be so easy to write an indignant, angry, “proud to be an American” song about 9-11. Really easy. It would be easy to write a sad, sympathetic song about 9-11. But would either of these songs capture the ture horror, the ambiguity, the absurdity of what happened? Would it be a fitting tribute to the heroes? To the dead? Would it really provoke thought?

I guess I would rather try to create something with a little more depth and complexity. A little more horror. Something that captures the ambiguous nature of reality and the subjectivity of perception.

So I’ll get started on that and maybe, just maybe, you’ll hear it some day. Of course, knowing me, I may be completing this same exercise next year on 9-11. And if I am, I’ll just continue to work, continue to try to find my angle. Because it’s there. For anybody who goes looking.
jbg