North Carolina Remembers 9/11 - spoken word reflections, Mozart’s Requiem & composer J. Mark Scearce’s This Thread ncsymphony.org
This Sunday, the North Carolina Symphony along with partners WRAL-TV/Capitol Broadcasting, UNC-TV and the Triangle Interfaith Alliance present a special event, North Carolina Remembers 9/11, to mark the tenth anniversary of September 11, 2001. The program includes spoken word reflections and excerpts from Mozart’s Requiem and Raleigh composer J. Mark Scearce’s This Thread, based on the poem “The Dead of September 11” by Toni Morrison.
The Dead of September 11 (2001)
Toni Morrison
Some have God's words; others have songs of comfort
for the bereaved. If I can pluck courage here, I would
like to speak directly to the dead--the September dead.
Those children of ancestors born in every continent
on the planet: Asia, Europe, Africa, the Americas...;
born of ancestors who wore kilts, obis, saris, geles,
wide straw hats, yarmulkes, goatskin, wooden shoes,
feathers and cloths to cover their hair. But I would not say
a word until I could set aside all I know or believe about
nations, wars, leaders, the governed and ungovernable;
all I suspect about armor and entrails. First I would freshen
my tongue, abandon sentences crafted to know evil---wanton
or studied; explosive or quietly sinister; whether born of
a sated appetite or hunger; of vengeance or the simple
compulsion to stand up before falling down. I would purge
my language of hypberbole; of its eagerness to analyze
the levels of wickedness; ranking them; calculating their
higher or lower status among others of its kind.
Speaking to the broken and the dead is too difficult for
a mouth full of blood. Too holy an act for impure thoughts.
Because the dead are free, absolute; they cannot be seduced by blitz.
To speak to you, the dead of September 11, I must not claim
false intimacy or summon an overheated heart glazed
just in time for a camera. I must be steady and I must be clear,
knowing all the time that I have nothing to say--no words
stronger than the steel that pressed you into itself; no scripture
older or more elegant than the ancient atoms you have become.
And I have nothing to give either--except this gesture,
this thread thrown between your humanity and mine:
I want to hold you in my arms and as your soul got shot of its box of
flesh to understand, as you have done, the wit
of eternity: its gift of unhinged release tearing through
the darkness of its knell.