DAY SEVENTY-EIGHT:Nov. 27:
Former Velvet Underground lead singer Lou Reed premiered his much-anticipated tribute to Edgar Allan Poe tonight at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Entitled POEtry—a bit too cleverly – it combined Reed’s gritty urban rock and roll with Robert Wilson’s highly stylized design and directing, and performances by the Thalia Theater of Hamburg, Germany. On the face of it, nothing could seem more appropriate for New York City right now than the absinthe-alcohol-belladonna inspired poetic meditations on death by Poe. And Lou Reed --- well, who could be more New York than the man whose lyrics have resonated with the sounds of this city’s streets since the Sixties days of Andy Warhol and The Factory?I’m sorry to say that the crowd of trendy, avant-garde New Yorkers was not pleased. Having Poe’s vibrant poetry spoken in German was mistake Number One, and it ran down hill from there.
Perhaps POEtry would have seemed profound in “normal” times, before September 11 when money poured out of New York faucets and the deepest thought on most minds in this town was, “What is the trendy restaurant of this week”. But tonight, three and a half months after the atrocity, this three hour venture felt like some college student’s idea of “deep thoughts”.
Dogs, when sensing danger, circle around and around a spot before settling down, and then point their faces just slightly off from the source of the perceived threat, at an angle that allows them to smell and side glance their enemy. New Yorkers are behaving a bit like threatened canines. Since the World Trade Center collapse people in this town have turned to nesting in a big way.
For example, marriages are being performed right and left, as couples that had been sharing beds, but not commitments, have raced to form solid unions. And with that has come a baby boom that may well become the largest in New York City’s history. Here’s how AP described it today:
“It’s the ’carpe diem’ mode,” says Dr. Michael Silverstein, an obstetrician and gynecologist at NYU Medical Center in Manhattan. “They’re saying, ’Life’s too short — who knows what’s down the road.”’
Right after the attacks, Dr. Matan Yemini, co-director of the Diamond Institute for Infertility and Menopause in Millburn, N.J., says some patients put plans on hold. But recent weeks have seen a surge in interest — and an unprecedented willingness in patients to talk frankly about their fertility problems.
“In a way, it’s opened people,” Yemini says.
Restaurants report that while business is coming back up in most of New York, the clientele is largely drawn from neighborhoods: folks in Chelsea are eating in Chelsea, Greenwich Villagers dine in the Village and so on. More circling and nesting.
Similarly, movie theaters and entertainment centers that used to rely on crowds that came from outside their neighborhood, such as those located in Times Square and Midtown Manhattan, are hurting. But the little multiplexes in the neighborhoods are packed.
Nesting breaks down, however, when one hasn’t a nest to turn to. The economic downturn and soaring unemployment is pushing more New Yorkers into homelessness every day. As I walked past the subway station nearest my home tonight, for example, I was startled to see eight homeless men laying in a row inside the brightly-lit station lobby. It has been years since anyone but Rodney, the neighborhood wino, has spent the night in those grim quarters.
Even folks with money and jobs are having a hard time nesting right now. More than 1,000 downtown residents are still displaced because of the World Trade Center attack, and others have found it emotionally difficult or impossible to return. “You just cannot absorb it,” Emmy Neidick told AP. “It’s tough to look out the windows at those cranes working in the fog. It’s eerie. Things somehow normalize, but you just can’t stay.”
FEMA (the Federal Emergency Management Agency) is still trying to help families whose homes downtown remain unsafe for habitation. The agency is racing to get as many families back into their homes as possible before Christmas. But thousands of former financial district and TriBeCA residents are choosing to live elsewhere this holiday season, complaining about the emotional impact of the continuing acrid emissions from Ground Zero, endless construction noise, empty stores and the juxtaposition of Christmas decorations and MISSING PERSON posters. It’s just too much.
The construction noise punctuates the night air all over downtown Manhattan and Brooklyn. It’s one of those ongoing side effects of September 11 that nobody really gave much thought three months ago. The devastation of the Twin Towers has had ripple effects throughout the telephone, cable TV, ISDN, sewer and water infrastructures. Entire spaghetti systems of wiring and piping have had to be ripped up and replaced, from Manhattan’s Union Square all the way to downtown Brooklyn. The din of jackhammers and bulldozers is constant.
Larry Silverstein, who owned the World Trade Center and will be the lead developer in its replacement, came to Newsday today to plead his case to our publisher and editorial board. Reporters weren’t allowed in the room, but our publisher told me he was quite impressed with Silverstein’s ideas. The realtor has heard plenty from New Yorkers who want the city to rebuild, but also feel the site is sacred. He told Newsday that the excavation will be finished within nine months, construction will commence almost immediately thereafter, and the first tower will be finished and ready for occupancy by 2004. He plans four towers, ranging from 50 to 60 stories in height. An international artists competition will be announced for plans for the memorial, to be located in the middle of the site. The new World Trade Center complex will spill into the World Financial Center, which currently is separated from it by the Westside Highway. This will bring World Trade Center pedestrians right into Battery Park and the Hudson River parkway.
And as a profound memorial statement, Silverstein said, he is thinking of erecting a massive steel frame from the top of two of the towers, reaching to the height of the original 110-story towers. The frames will hold empty space, which at night will be filled with light. In this way, he said, New York’s nightscape will bear the ghosts of the Twin Towers.
An interesting idea.
Other ideas will no doubt surface in coming months, and the families of the September 11 victims will certainly continue to have strong feelings about the site. Their official numbers continue to grow. Today the State Supreme Court in Manhattan issued 63 more World Trade Center death certificates. Among them were these, whose names seemed to hold stories:
45) Trentini, Mary Barbara, 67, Everett, Mass.
46) Trentini, James Anthony, 65, Everett, Mass.
55) Pigis, Theodorus, 60, Brooklyn, N.Y.
62) Zempoaltecatl, Martin Morales, aka Morales, Martin, 22, Queens, N.Y.
Be well. Stay safe. Stand defiant.
Laurie Garrett
