September, a short poem

Growing up in a small town right in the middle of nowhere Nebraska, we didn’t get a whole lot of “city life”. Perhaps that’s the reason I fell deeply in love with New York City, the architecture, and culture at a young age. If I’m being honest, the whole city environment in general always mesmerized…and still does.

Here below is the visual companion I made for a short poem about 9/11/01 and how it affected me. I also did the voiceover to bring it alive. After the video, I wrote and dove in more about the twin towers and NYC.

I was a freshman in high school when the events of 9/11 occurred. I was the kid that always turned on the morning news every day before school and remember turning on “Good Morning America” and seeing the smoke suffocate the Manhattan skyline. Of course, it being before school that morning there was chaos in getting ready and off to school. By the time I was headed to school the second plane had hit, and by my 2nd period German class…they were gone.

For years before the attack, I would go in the backyard of my parents and grandparents to build mini cities out of tree bark, boxes, random objects in the yard (anything really) and would imagine it being MY city and watching it grow. I would obsess about New York and the twin towers. There’s a scene at the start of “Home Alone 2” when Kevin gets to NY and visits the top of the twin towers that stands out in my memory as a huge core moment that planted the city love seed.

I remember I would rig up two different VCR’s, one in slow motion and one recording the WTC scene (this was before the internet made these things easily accessible) and I would rewatch it’s over and over again. This was years before the attacks…the towers and that city was a part of me long before. So that was a turning point in my young life and a huge reason why I moved to Brooklyn when I graduated. So September 11th will always hold that place in my heart.