Interview

From The Rubble, Song Rises In New York City
Sunday Age (Melbourne)
May 26, 2002 Sunday
By Warwick Mcfadyen

A city's songwriters have given voice to September 11, reports Warwick
McFadyen.

What reply can be made to the crashing, falling World Trade Centre towers?
What response can be uttered to 3000 lost lives? To prominent New York
singer-songwriter Suzanne Vega, the answer is the human voice. Vega has
gathered songs from fellow city performers that give form to the anguish,
grief and dislocation of the spirit that rose from the dust of September
11. The result is a CD called Vigil. Vega said from Manhattan last week
that Vigil was the chance to communicate the emotions that New Yorkers had
been feeling after the attacks. The songs were from members of the
Greenwich Village Songwriters' Exchange, to which she belonged. They are
sparse, raw and achingly bare to the soul - more like home demos of the
heart. "I was really impressed that people could assimilate what had
happened so quickly and come out with such articulate statements," she
said. "The songs were haunting and immediate.

"People were writing their own testimonies. I thought it would be a good
thing to channel this into some kind of statement that might help us all
to deal with the loss." It was better than just "wringing your hands and
staring at this hole in the ground".

The attack seemed to grind the degrees of separation between New Yorkers
to zero. Everyone was affected, not least Vega and her songwriting
colleagues. Vega's brother Tim worked at the World Trade Centre, but had
called in sick that day. His life, however, did not have long to run. "My
brother, who had survived the attacks, died three weeks ago," she said.
"He struggled a long time with alcoholism and while his death was not
directly attributable to the World Trade Centre, it certainly didn't help
anything. Even though he missed that day, he was drawn back to the site
and was very involved with the people he had been working with. It made
everyone more fragile."

Jack Hardy, the host of the songwriters' exchange, lost his brother in the
attack. When everyone was running from the destruction on that morning,
Hardy was walking towards it, knowing his brother was there. One of
Hardy's songs is called Ground Zero and explores his guilt at being a
survivor.

The songs deal very little with the terrorists. "These immediate songs are
about the losses we endured," Vega said. (Though Vega is writing another
song called 72 Virgins, which looks at what rewards awaited Mohamed Atta.)
The attacks drew out of Vega "a reluctant feeling of patriotism, which is
a new experience for some of us".

The shadow of the World Trade Centre over the lives of New Yorkers looms
larger now that they are not there. To Vega, 42, who moved to the city
with her mother when she was two, the act and its consequences are still
near the surface. "Every day there's a new statement of some kind (of a
terrorist alert)," she said. "We're constantly getting these kinds of
threat. It's very hard to think of life as being normal. We read the
papers, we try to figure out what to do." The problem is, "How are we
supposed to respond to this? It's not specific enough that we can do
something."

On the day of the attack, she was home on Manhattan's Upper West Side. "I
was horrified because I had lived 15 blocks from there for 10 years," she
said. "I used to look out my window and see the World Trade Centre."

The effects on New Yorkers, especially children, has been widespread and
traumatic. The Federal Emergency Management Agency is to give New York
State $US132 million ($A236 million) for crisis counselling, including $7
million for public schoolchildren. However, a Board of Education study
believes that many pupils are still traumatised and that $40 million is
needed to tackle the problem.

Vega said she and her daughter Ruby, aged seven, talk about the attacks.
"It's part of everyone's consciousness." Some families from her daughter's
school had left town and not returned. Some friends had children at a
school only six blocks from the collapse. On the day, they were despatched
in a cab from the scene. "Turning around they could see the buildings on
fire," Vega said. "I don't know if they saw people falling, they don't
talk about it. Those people in the immediate area probably saw some pretty
horrible things and even imagining these things, we all still live with it
and wake up thinking about it."

On September 11, the clock stopped in New York City. People live and talk
pre-9/11 and post-9/11. Vigil is New Yorkers reaching out to the world
through song, trying to explain their state of mind. As Vega said: "I'm
still trying to make sense of it all and figure out how to live my life."

But would she leave New York? "I've thought . . . I should move to the
ocean. I don't feel that way at the moment, but if something else starts
to happen maybe I would change my mind."

The Vigil CD is available through amazon.com. Profits to charity.

LINKS
* www.vigilcd.org