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[ Ina May Wool | Brian Rose ]
I was still up for doing it but a little intimidated, because I'm not accustomed to being invited places to talk about international diplomacy. As I began to think about what I would say though, it occurred to me that I have no problem presenting my work in the Songwriters' Exchange, where we try to write a song a week and sing it for each other on Monday nights. That was an encouraging thought. I went over in my mind how I'd written "Boxcutters and Knives." The process of writing a song a week often brings up things you don't know you're thinking about. I'd begun "Boxcutters" after hours of watching tv on September 11th. At about eleven that morning I got up and checked my answering machine. I had been scheduled to host one of my Writers' Bloc shows that night at the Living Room on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. One of the songwriters had left a message saying, "I guess you won't be doing the gig tonight - because of the tragedy." Then I turned on the tv and saw the Towers fall for the first of many times that strange week. I had a horrible feeling that the U.S. might respond with enormous military force immediately, and that that might not be at all effective. I felt compelled to put my thoughts into a song. My traveling companion down to D.C. was Brian Rose. Brian was a regular at the Songwriters' Exchange in the early days and co-founder in 1982 along with Jack Hardy of the Fast Folk Musical Magazine. He's now living in Amsterdam. Brian came along on Suzanne's tour of Europe after the Berlin Wall fell. She said he knew so much about European politics she called him her "Minister of Information." The plan was for Brian and me to sing the songs of ours that are on Vigil, and then to participate in the discussion, explaining what Vigil is about in our own words. Brian is an architectural photographer as well as a songwriter, and photos he had taken in lower Manhattan before September 11th were to be on display. We rode the train down to D.C. together and talked a lot, which was great. During the trip, I also got a chance to listen to a tape of the WFUV show (City Folk Sunday Breakfast) which featured John Platt interviewing Suzanne and also Jack Hardy about Vigil. After
an hour to rest up and get ready, we arrived at the Goethe-Institut and
everything went very smoothly. Keith Donahue, Ellen Lovell (president
of the Center for Arts & Culture) and Werner Ott (director of the
Goethe-Institut), greeted us very warmly, along with Bill Gilcher, the
media director at Goethe, who would be moderating the panel. As we refreshed
ourselves with sandwiches, There were about fifty people sitting in the very modern high ceiling glass and stone room waiting for the panel to start. I felt good that I was opening the evening with my song "Boxcutters and Knives." Playing my guitar and singing - that I know how to do! Then Bill, who is a very intelligent and skillful interviewer, asked me questions about the Songwriters' Exchange, about how I'd written the song, and why I hadn't finished it until Suzanne put out the call for "Vigil." I talked about how striving to write a song every week keeps you limber, even if every song you attempt isn't a keeper, and how it was difficult to write about the events immediately, but inevitably, since we all had to process our fears and hopes and reactions, the songs came tumbling out in the weeks after September 11th. I mentioned that there are no anthems on Vigil but just very different takes on the feelings and observations of all of us. Brian sang "The Skyline" and then talked about how he came to write it and about his photographs of the Towers that were showing on a monitor at the back of the room. Heinz Peter Schwerfel told how he compiled his book, a collection of essays from philosophers and writers in response to 9/11. Liz Lerman, a very energetic and engaging woman, is the founder of the Dance Exchange (another art form - another exchange!). She uses dancers of different sizes, shapes, and ages. One of her most popular dancers is seventy years old. Liz told us about how one woman said to her in an exploratory meeting after 9/11, "If I could only laugh again!" So the dance they worked out involved laughter, and they discovered that laughter without sound can look like a lot like crying. When we talked more and answered questions from the audience, I began to realize that I think artists respond to a crisis like this best by being artists and that continuing to feel and think and put it down on paper or in a song or a dance or a poem is the affirmation of life and our shared humanity that is the most powerful antidote to terror and loss and destruction we have. People hung on our words when we talked about how the smoke smelled, how the sky looked, and when I mentioned how normal my neighborhood seemed that day until you'd see someone walking uptown in heels covered in ash. When the discussion was over, those present surprised us with a very loud and longlasting ovation. One young woman told me she'd cried during the songs. It felt like we'd been able to share some of the catharsis we'd felt getting together in the Exchange in the months after 9/11, and that was a very powerful and good feeling. On the train down Brian had told me he worked as a bike messenger in D.C. one summer when he was in art school in Baltimore and that he took his breaks at the National Gallery of Art. He promised to guide me through it the day after the panel. We didn't have a great deal of time before we had to get to the train that day, so it was good he knew the direct route to some of the most stunning pictures. There are quite a few Rembrandts - most amazing amongst them, I thought, was a self-portrait that looks extremely alive and human. I've thought a lot about why artists choose to paint still lifes or portraits and why we want to look at them. My mother is a painter and printmaker, and I spent a lot of time looking at art when I was growing up. One
picture in the National Gallery really affected me. It's the only painting
by Leonardo da Vinci in the U.S. A young woman looks out from the frame,
with an assured expression, and strangely she seemed a lot like a young
woman I'd taken acting classes with in New York. That woman is Japanese.
The girl in the picture is Caucasian, and the painting was done in the
16th century. Still there was The painter struggles with color and line, a good one masters anatomy and light, and a great one captures some spirit that someone a few centuries later can feel. I resolved to go home and to do the best I could to master melody and rhythm and rhyme - to keep trying to render what I see and feel into song to the best of my ability - because no one alive can smell the smoke I smell, see the sky exactly as I do or feel what I feel. I continue to think there is something crucial and urgent in that work and in sharing it.
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We first met the two sponsors of the event, The Goethe Institute and the Center of Arts and Culture. The Goethe Institute is, of course, involved in promoting German culture, but they are also interested in exchange projects as well as a sharing of ideas between and among cultures. The Center of Arts and Culture is one of those uniquely Washington institutions’ think tank. To quote from their website they seek to “enlarge the public vision of the centrality of the arts and culture in everyday life.” The panel for “Considered Response” consisted of Ina May and me, representing Vigil, Liz Lerman, a choreographer and director of the Liz Lerman Dance Exchange from Tacoma Park, Md., and Heinz Peter Schwerfel, a German filmmaker and art critic. I was actually wearing two hats as a songwriter and photographer. My photographs of the World Trade Center were presented as a slideshow on a computer screen in the hall. The moderator was Bill Gilcher of the Goethe Institute. About 50 people attended, but I don’t have a clear picture of who they were and what drew them to the discussion. We started the evening by performing our songs from Vigil and talking briefly about how the songs came about and how Suzanne came up with the idea of creating an album based on the writing of the Greenwich Village Songwriting Exchange dealing with September 11th. Ina May performed her “Boxcutters and Knives” and I played “The Skyline.” Liz Lerman showed videotape of her dance/performance piece call “Hallelujah!” This is an ongoing traveling show that includes extensive community participation as well as set pieces performed by her dance company. It is an expression of the American experience and explores historical roots as well as recent history. Heinz Peter Schwerfel talked about his book, “Kunst nach Ground Zero” (Art after Ground Zero), which consists of essays by various writers and critics about the state of contemporary art. At the risk of over-simplifying things, he believes that much art of the 90s and the present has lost touch with matters of real concern to people outside of an increasingly insular art community. The events of September 11th present a challenge to that detachment. After we had each had a chance to present our work, the moderator asked us questions, and opened things up to questions from the floor. Lots of topics were discussed, such as the need and/or appropriateness for art to address events as shattering as the attack on the WTC. I talked about how I went back to my archives of photographs and found many images that included glimpses of the WTC, and how I began to scan the negatives and put together a presentation on my website. I related how I woke one night in December with some of the lyrics to “The Skyline” in my head, and how I completed the song after getting an e-mail from Suzanne asking if I had something to contribute to Vigil. And I also talked a little about the personal nature of what happened to us as individuals and our community of musicians and writers. We were rather surprised by the enthusiasm and length of applause that followed the conclusion of the evening. It seems that people were appreciative of our efforts to respond to September 11th, and I came away feeling more confident about both Vigil and and my project re-examining my photographs of the WTC. It’s unfortunate that the Vigil CDs had been lost. I think we would have sold them all. Brian
Rose
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