 THE
WORLD CHANGED FOREVER
This
issue marks the one-year anniversary of the terrible events
of September 11, 2001--a day, that like Pearl Harbor Day,
will forever "live in infamy." Of course, 9/11 still lives
with us in other ways, as well. It lives on in our hearts
and minds as a daily reminder of how quickly and indelibly
the lives of an entire nation's people can be turned around
in one single, shocking millisecond. One year later, it is
clear: America as we know it changed forever on that one dark
day. Humpty Dumpty, as it were, will never be back together
again.
 No
longer do boy bands and warmed-over greatest hits compilations
for 70's-era metal bands top the charts. Since 9/11, the sense
of gleeful innocence that made that music relevant to our
people has vanished. We are now gloomier, more thoughtful,
and have been forced to seek in our entertainments more depth
and spiritual meaning. Celebrity biographies and self-help
books are giving way to histories and classic literature.
Our movies are less violent, and our television shows more
probing and topical as we Americans increasingly demand a
better understanding of the world around us.
Before
9/11, our culture could have been described as a dreary, endless
cycle of sales and consumption. Our pre-attack lives were
dominated by the daily exposure to thousands of commercial
messages and by seemingly unshakeable worries about our health,
our appearance, and our overall consumer profiles: what kinds
of cars we drove, what sneakers we wore, how big a television
occupied our living rooms. Before we came together as a nation
and learned to appreciate each other as people, many of us
were plagued by profound feelings of unworthiness that had
been inspired by media messages. We worried whether our teeth
were white enough, our stomachs flat enough, our hairlines
in place, our deodorant strong enough to get us through the
day. Popular magazines asked to consider whether or not we
were satisfying our partners in bed, or even if we ourselves
were really satisfied. And when we looked into the eyes of
our loved ones, we were often met by the same critical glare
that we had learned to train upon ourselves.
Our
political lives were equally empty. Before the attacks, we
had reached a point where we were accepting as leaders a series
of third-rate shysters, human haircuts in suits, who baldly
campaigned for their own interests while we lazily looked
on with only the vague attention of disinterested spectators.
Indeed, most of us typically felt far more involved watching
a Sunday football game than we did watching our politicians
debate each other.
That
changed after 9/11, when the specter of death and violence
awoke us to the necessity of taking a more active role in
our lives. Now we talk about things more. We're not just on
the sidelines.
Here
at the BEAST, we remember tuning in to our televisions with
mouths agape on that fateful day last September and realizing,
as we watched that towers fall, how wrong we had been to think
that history had ended somehow. Before 9/11, we were like
most Americans, so content with the present that we seldom
saw the need to seek out new stimulus in the future. Like
most people, we cheered as Madonna sang "American Pie and
groups like Smash Mouth brought a modern feel to old-time
favorites like "I'm a Believer." For new fashions we alternated
between 70's chic and 80's retro, getting a kick out of each
new twist to the old fads.
Those
innocent days are gone now. For the first time in a long time,
the past feels like the past. We are in a new world since
9/11, and it no longer makes sense to listen to cover tunes
and chuckle over afros and bell bottoms. Hollywood, realizing
the change, has stopped making features out of old sitcoms
and cartoons. Our new world has a new aesthetic and we are
making our way, like it or not, into the future. There is
a new look and a new sound in the air. It is frightening to
some, but it is here, and we are sorting it out together.
There
was a time, before 9/11, when few of us thought to wonder
about life at all. We went from day-to-day mainly concerned
with vulgar worries about bills and with vague plans to buy
a bigger house a few years down the road, or maybe put a pool
in the back yard. In our focus on our careers and on the achievement
of a narrow kind of sarcophagal domestic comfort the entire
direction of our American lives suggested a lengthy and surprisingly
dull preparation for the most painless possible death. The
attacks changed all of that. Watching the towers fall, we
realized that life is fleeting, and the wisdom of the heavens
inscrutable. No longer sure of tomorrow, we found ourselves
in a mad dash to find true meaning in our lives before the
end. We found that meaning in a shaking off of our indolent
past, and in the embrace of each other and the future. We
are stronger now. Different. Better.
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