365 project:"woke up to a brand new skyline. licked our wounds and mourned the dead"

91.

artist:thrice
album:the alchemy index (air)

this album is home to the song "broken lungs" which still shakes me up every time i hear it. its clearly a song about the events of 9/11 and the aftermath. while I'm not sure how much i agree with Dustin's political viewpoints in this song, the overall message of pain and sadness is one that i will carry with me for the rest of my life.

most of us remember that day quite vividly. its the day that our kids and our grandkids will ask us about. "do you remember what you were doing when you heard about the airplanes?" they'll say. with a sad look in my eyes, i know that ill be able to give them every detail, down to the color of the sweater i was wearing, the shape of the clouds in the sky, and later the taste of the dust that had blown across the bay.

as this is a music blog, I'm not going to get on my high horse about that day or the resulting war, because my views tend not to be the same as most of my friends, but i will say this...on that day, and for the days, weeks and months after we swore we would not forget. i can remember not being able to drive two minutes without seeing flags everywhere. i remember all of the we will never forget stickers on the backs of cars and the ribbons and everything else that went along with it.

now i know that it has been nearly ten years and i don't expect the ribbons and the flags to still be flying everywhere that they once were, because i am an American and i know how Americans are, but i feel like that day just passes by without an eyelash batted these days. i was talking to my friend Kaite about this the other day, and i was saying to her that i feel like people just forgot, like that day never happened, or happened so long ago that its a distant memory...like the JFK shooting or WW2.

this breaks my heart.

i know that i take things more personally than a lot of people. i know that i was in a lot closer proximity to the events of the day than most of the rest of the world, because while i wasn't in Manhattan, we were right over the bridge, and on a clear day could see the towers, so i wasn't far. i was so freaked out that day. i knew that it was never going to be the same again. i was wrong. it hasn't even been 10 years and things are right back to how they were.

i think the whole of the problem is that i was so close to it. i think that its the same thing as the earthquakes in japan or us bombing Libya. I'm not there. i cant physically see the destruction. i can turn the TV off and pretend that none of this horrible stuff is going on around me, and that outside of my house is sane and safe, although i know that's not the case. its just a lot easier to disconnect when you don't actually see it with your own eyes.

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