Remembrance of things past

Ten years have passed and people are asking once more, "Where were you when it happened?" No need to qualify that question with "when the planes hit," or "when the towers fell."

On that freakishly bright, beautiful September morning, I was listening to NPR and getting dressed for an audition when the first plane hit. I listened to the report, incredulous-- certain that it was an accident. Secure in that certainty, I went on to First Pres, where I was meeting my friend and pianist, Joby Bell. We had just gotten to the media control room when the second plane hit; we were sure, now, that it was no accident. While we were sure that something horrible had happened, we were not yet sure what it all meant; whether or not our worlds were meant to stop-- whether tasks and errands planned for that bright, beautiful day were to be given over to disbelief and stunned numbness.

Because we weren't sure, we went to the audition at Houston Baptist University. We drove down US 59 under a bright, blue sky absent of the contrails that usually betrayed the presence of the (usually) ever-present air traffic of the country's fourth largest city. We drove, wondering what would happen next-- unaware of the planes bound for the Pentagon and that field in Shanksville, PA. As we drove, we wondered: would the music faculty of HBU still be there? Were we still expected? Whatever could be the use of auditioning for a teaching job when the world could end at any minute?

We were met at the University by the (still) calming and beautiful presence of Dr. Ann Gebuhr, who has since become a treasured friend and colleague. She shared our sense of being unmoored, of going through the motions in the absence of... of the right-side up, unassailable country we lived in when we woke up just a scant few hours earlier.

I managed to get through the audition; sang a few of my favorite things, worked with a student, and got the job. Much later, Ann (and one or two others) told me that my singing that day had been a balm for the confusion we were all feeling. I don't recount that to toot my own horn in any way. There is a long piece by Karl Paulnack, his 2004 welcome address to the Boston Conservatory. In it, he argues for the singularity of music as the one thing we use to relate to and express those things we can't necessarily verbalize. It's an amazing piece; you should read it. He writes, in part:

In September of 2001 I was a resident of Manhattan. On the morning of September 12, 2001 I reached a new understanding of my art and its relationship to the world. I sat down at the piano that morning at 10 AM to practice as was my daily routine; I did it by force of habit, without thinking about it. I lifted the cover on the keyboard, and opened my music, and put my hands on the keys and took my hands off the keys. And I sat there and thought, does this even matter? Isn't this completely irrelevant? Playing the piano right now, given what happened in this city yesterday, seems silly, absurd, irreverent, pointless. Why am I here? What place has a musician in this moment in time? Who needs a piano player right now? I was completely lost.

And then I, along with the rest of New York, went through the journey of getting through that week. I did not play the piano that day, and in fact I contemplated briefly whether I would ever want to play the piano again. And then I observed how we got through the day.

At least in my neighborhood, we didn't shoot hoops or play Scrabble. We didn't play cards to pass the time, we didn't watch TV, we didn't shop, we most certainly did not go to the mall. The first organized activity that I saw in New York, on the very evening of September 11th, was singing. People sang. People sang around fire houses, people sang "We Shall Overcome". Lots of people sang America the Beautiful. The first organized public event that I remember was the Brahms Requiem, later that week, at Lincoln Center, with the New York Philharmonic. The first organized public expression of grief, our first communal response to that historic event, was a concert. That was the beginning of a sense that life might go on. The US Military secured the airspace, but recovery was led by the arts, and by music in particular, that very night.

So, here we are- here I am, ten years later. Ten years of teaching and "raising" singers at HBU; a tenure that began on a hugely momentous day. I have always believed that what I do is important and necessary. I try to teach my students that what they are learning is important and necessary. I think, sometimes, that my sense of the importance of what I/we do is heightened by the backdrop of 9/11, of having begun this journey with these people while it was still happening and being able to use music to minister to frayed souls in those shattered moments.

There is a balm in Gilead, to make the wounded whole.
There is a balm in Gilead to heal the sin-sick soul...