Never Forget

In America it is very common to hear the saying "never forget" when discussing the horrific attack of 9/11. On September 11th 2001 the World Trade Center and Pentagon were tragically destroyed by hijacked airplanes crashing into them. These attacks resulted in the death of 2,996 innocent lives, with several thousand left injured. This horrific time in American history was something the nation grew from, came together over, and resulted in overwhelming pride to be an American. The grief was felt over the entire nation and still remains a very sorrowful innocent prominent in lives today. Many artists of this time took the 9/11 attacks as musical inspiration, to create from, shed light on and help deal with tremendous amounts of sadness during this time in history. Artists such as Nas, The Cranberries, Bruce Springsteen and many more wrote songs regarding 9/11, to help carry on the memory and seemingly "never forget" what happened, through music. 

Myself personally spent a lot of time this week looking closely at the song "The Rising" by Bruce Springsteen. This song like many of the others we listened to in class was written after 9/11. Springsteen makes many references to the heroes of 9/11 especially the fire fighters who risked their lives to save thousands of victims. "Can't see nothing up behind, I make my way through this darkness", we are put into the place of firefighters, how scary it must have been for the brave people trying through all the smoke and debris to save lives. The chorus repeats many times through the song saying "Come on up for the rising, Come on up lay your hands in mine". This chorus and the amount of times repeated signals how we as a nation are determined to rise up from the tragedy and keep growing together. It is meaningful to say that we are all together, hands in one to be strong, push through and rise back. 

Although not music, we also learned of another extremely interesting artists approach at documenting  9/11 through photography. We learned about the famous photo of the "falling man" which I found to be extremely fascinating. Like musicians, photographer Richard Drew took the photo of the falling man to show how tragic the attack was, and to have his legacy live on and for us to never forget what happened to him that day. The photo was simple in a sense, but sent home the message of fear, grief and sorrow. It was a unique photo because there was no real violence, no blood no guts, but viewers still could infer he was falling to his death. We as a nation continue to be strong since the 9/11 attacks and have artists to help us never forget the challenges we have faced as a nation.