On September 11, 2001, Brian Hugh O’Neill was at home with his wife in their Hell’s Kitchen apartment, getting ready to begin another regular Tuesday morning, when he first heard the news. “My mother-in-law called to inform us that she had just seen on the news that a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center,” O’Neill recalls. “I ran up on the roof to see if I could see anything, then went back to my apartment, never thinking for a moment that we might be under attack. When I saw, live on TV, the second plane hit, I knew then what was under way.” The actor (Law & Order, The Good Wife) and singer-songwriter (Free World) reacted the best way he knew how: He picked up his guitar and tried to deal with the tragedy through his music. “I wrote the song ‘Rise’ in the small hours of the morning of September 12,” he said. “After the horror of that day, as an artist and composer, I knew I needed to create something to express my confusion, heartbreak, and rage.” The beautiful track features a haunting synthesizer behind O’Neill on acoustic guitar, singing such lines as “It’s calm tonight / on Twelfth Avenue the sirens / and the red, red lights / have surrendered to the silence” and “Because these days / (I can’t explain it to myself) / I used to face it with my usual grace / That is before the sky fell / the sky fell.” The song is a family affair, featuring a closing aria sung by his wife, actress Tracy Sallows, and both Sallows and their daughter appear in the video, which was directed by Skipp Sudduth and timed to honor the tenth anniversary of the attacks. “The song was literally triggered by the smell of smoke from the burning towers finally making its way uptown that evening when the winds shifted, and it came very, very quickly after that,” O’Neill remembers. “Rise” can be downloaded for free here.
Yearly Archives: 2011
JOHN BOTTE: THE 9/11 PHOTOGRAPHS
John Botte, “Sept. 12, 2001, 8:00 am” (© John Botte)
Gallery at Calumet
22 West 22nd St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves., second floor
Daily through September 24; artist reception September 11, 3:00 – 7:00
www.cvent.com
www.morrisonhotelgallery.com
Deep, dark, and intense, John Botte stares ahead with eyes that have seen and experienced too much, belying his otherwise youthful appearance. On September 11, 2001, Botte was an NYPD detective assigned to Police Commissioner Bernie Kerik’s inner circle. When they got the call about the attacks on the World Trade Center, they rushed to Ground Zero, among the many heroic first responders who risked their lives to help save others during that unimaginable tragedy. Botte, who has been snapping photographs since he was a small boy, was authorized by Kerik to document what was happening, so he took out his ever-present Leica Rangefinder and spent the next few days and months taking remarkable black-and-white photographs, twenty of which are currently on view at the Gallery at Calumet on West 22nd St. through September 24. Being shown to the public for the first time at this size — smaller prints were previously exhibited only once before, in Germany, and have appeared in two books, 2006’s Aftermath and the brand-new collection The 9/11 Photographs, but Botte insisted that this time “they have to be big” — the stunning large-scale works capture poignant, emotional, intimate moments that will flood viewers with memories, inviting them to step inside and remember. “There was no time for grief,” Botte recalled after being dispatched by Kerik, a collector of his work, to take pictures of the scene. “You’re just a machine with the camera.”
John Botte’s 9/11 photographs invite visitors to step inside and remember (photo by twi-ny/mdr)
The exhibit, curated by Timothy White and organized by Peter Blachley and the Morrison Hotel Gallery, consists of beautifully composed photos that depict such powerful sights as a distraught cop leaning on a blue police barricade, his head hung in horror; three workers raising the American flag, recalling the famous Iwo Jima image; a group of men in white protective outfits sweeping through endless debris; and Fire Commissioner Thomas Von Essen, Kerik, Senator Charles Schumer, Mayor Rudy Giuliani, President George W. Bush, Congressman Jerry Nadler, and Governor George Pataki surveying the damage. One of the most compelling of the photos, and the one that resonates the most with Botte, shows the smoking, twisted metal atop the pile, taken three hundred feet up. Although Botte is proud that his photographs are part of the tenth-anniversary commemoration of 9/11, it’s been a particularly rough decade for him. “I’m a dead man walking,” he said, alluding to the lung disease he developed after working at Ground Zero and that is slowly killing him. He retired from the force in 2003, his wife left him and took their daughter, and he now spends more than half of his pension on health care. As he walks around the exhibit another time, he is almost like a ghost, but his inner strength and spirit still survives in the unforgettable photos he took ten years ago. On September 11, Botte will be at the Gallery at Calumet for a special opening reception from 3:00 to 7:00; prints of his photographs are available in several sizes, with all proceeds going to the DEA Widows’ and Children’s Fund.
FREE 9/11 TRIBUTE SCREENINGS: WOODY ALLEN’S MANHATTAN
MANHATTAN will be screening for free all afternoon at BAM on September 11
MANHATTAN (Woody Allen, 1979)
BAM Rose Cinemas
30 Lafayette Ave. between Ashland Pl. & St. Felix St.
Sunday, September 11, free, 2:00, 4:30, 7, 9:30
718-636-4100
www.bam.org
Woody Allen’s Manhattan opens with one of the most beautiful tributes ever made to the Big Apple, a lovingly filmed black-and-white architectural tour set to the beautiful sounds of George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue.” Once again collaborating with screenwriter Marshall Brickman, master cinematographer Gordon Willis, and Oscar-winning actress Diane Keaton, Allen’s tale of a nebbishy forty-two-year-old two-time divorcee who takes up with a seventeen-year-old ingénue (Mariel Hemingway) is both hysterically funny and romantically poignant, filled with classic dialogue (Yale: “You think you’re God.” Isaac: “I gotta model myself after someone.”) and iconic shots of city landmarks. BAM will be holding four free screenings of Manhattan on September 11, paying tribute to the iconic landmark that perished ten years ago. As Isaac says at the beginning of the film, “He adored New York City, he idolized it all out of proportion — no, make that, he romanticized it all out of proportion.” On the tenth anniversary of 9/11, there will be a lot of romanticizing going on, solemn memories, and news reports that are likely to spin way out of proportion, so sitting down for a free screening of this New York City masterpiece is a great way to take the edge off and just laugh yourself silly.
BARN OWL: LOST IN THE GLARE
Barn Owl should soar to transcendent heights at Glasslands and Shea Stadium this month
Sunday, September 11, Glasslands Gallery, 289 Kent Ave., $10, 8:30
Saturday, September 17, Shea Stadium, 20 Meadow St.
www.myspace.com/barnowlband
San Francisco psychedelic trance duo Barn Owl’s new album might be called Lost in the Glare (Thrill Jockey, September 13, 2011), but there’s nothing blinding about it. Instead, it’s a forty-two-minute journey through gorgeous, ambient dronescapes. Influenced by everything from Neil Young and Popul Vuh to black metal, Middle Eastern ragas, and experimental jazz — as well as the Bay Area’s ocean and fog — Jon Porras and Evan Caminiti guide listeners across a subtly mesmerizing cloudscape on a succession of guitars and synthesizers (and Farfisa organ), with Jacob Felix Heule on drums, Steve Dye on bass clarinet, and Michael Elrod adding tanpura, Roland Juno-60, and gong. The follow-up to last November’s full-length Ancestral Star and this June’s three-track EP, Shadowland, the new record features such slow-paced, layered mini-epics as “Turiya,” “Temple of the Winds,” and “Devotion II” that both soar into the transcendent and delve into the ominous. The centerpiece is “The Darkest Night Since 1683,” a seven-and-a-half-minute minimalist masterpiece that nearly explodes in the middle before heading off into more calming windswept terrain. Barn Owl, who never play a song the same way twice, will be at the Glasslands Gallery in Williamsburg on September 11 with Helado Negro and Jonti and at Shea Stadium in Bushwick on September 17 with Gunn-Truscinski Duo and Noveller.
BY LOVE ALONE: A DAY OF MEDITATION ON THE 10th ANNIVERSARY OF THE WORLD TRADE CENTER ATTACKS
Shambhala Meditation Center of New York (originally scheduled for Governors Island Parade Grounds)
118 West 22nd St. between Sixth & Seventh Aves., sixth floor
Sunday, September 11, free, RSVP recommended but not required, 11:00 am – 4:00 pm
212-675-6544
www.theidproject.org/lovealone
www.ny.shambhala.org
There are many ways to pay tribute to the horrific attacks that took place downtown ten years ago, with special memorial events scheduled all over the city today and tomorrow. One of the calmest and most personal will be going on at the Shambhala Meditation Center of New York, where such organizations as the Interdependence Project, the Shambhala Center, the Jewish Meditation Center of Brooklyn, the Village Zendo, Won Buddhism of Manhattan, and the Buddhist Peace Fellowship are teaming up for a free public meditation. (The event was originally scheduled to be held at the Governors Island Parade Grounds but has been moved because of expected bad weather.) Among the teachers who will be providing guidance and spiritual leadership to people of all faiths are Acharya Judy Leif, Shastri Ethan Nichtern, and Alison Laichter. The five-hour meditation will include a Loving-kindness (mettā bhāvanā) contemplation focusing on compassion.
MICHAEL BUCKLEY: NERDS 3 BOOK LAUNCH
BookCourt
163 Court St. between Dean & Pacific Sts.
Saturday, September 10, free, 6:00 – 8:00
718-875-3677
www.bookcourt.org
www.abramsbooks.com/nerds
Nerds! No, it’s not another Revenge of the Nerds movie. Instead, it’s the third book in Michael Buckley’s NERDS children’s book series, The Cheerleaders of Doom (Abrams, September 1, 2011, $14.95). Buckley, who hit the New York Times bestseller list with his wildly popular Sisters Grimm series, is back on the list with NERDS, which began with National Espionage, Rescue, and Defense Society and continued with M Is for Mama’s Boy. Dedicated to “dorks, dweebs, geeks, spazzes, waste cases, and nerds everywhere [because] someday you too will change the world,” the series features such wild characters as Flinch, Choppers, Gluestick, Pufferfish, Wheezer, and Braceface and is illustrated by Ethen Beavers. Buckley, an effervescent fellow who has also written and developed animated shows for the Cartoon Network, Nickelodeon, MTV, and other outlets, will be at BookCourt tonight for the official launch of The Cheerleaders of Doom, discussing the project and signing copies. Buckley’s whirlwind U.S. tour will also take him to such local spots as Clinton, New Jersey, on September 23, Huntington Station, Long Island, on October 14, Cherry Hill, New Jersey, on October 20, and Rhinebeck, New York, on October 23.
SEPTEMBER 11 ANNIVERSARY SCREENING: MAN ON WIRE
MAN ON WIRE will have a special screening at the Museum of the Moving Image in honor of the tenth anniversary of 9/11
MAN ON WIRE (James Marsh, 2008)
Museum of the Moving Image
35th Ave. at 36th St., Astoria
Sunday, September 11, free with museum admission of $12, 4:00
718-777-6800
www.movingimage.us
www.manonwire.com
Winner of the Audience Award at the Sundance, Edinburgh, and Los Angeles Film Festivals, Man on Wire is a thrilling examination of Philippe Petit’s attempt to walk on a wire connecting the two towers of the World Trade Center. Using archival footage, home movies, still photos, black-and-white re-creations, and new interviews with all the primary characters, director James Marsh (The King, Red Riding: 1980) sets up Man on Wire like a heist film as Petit and his cohorts discuss the detailed planning that went into the remarkable event, including getting the wires and cable to the top of the South Tower and hiding under a tarp as a security guard has a smoke right next to them. Petit, who had previously — and illegally — traversed Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris and the Sydney Harbour Bridge in Australia, had become immediately obsessed with the Twin Towers as soon as he learned they were being built; Marsh intercuts scenes of the construction of the WTC as Petit puts together the seemingly impossible caper, leading to his August 7, 1974, walk between the two towers, more than a quarter mile above the ground.
Petit has a relationship with the World Trade Center unlike anyone else’s; interestingly, Marsh and Petit do not so much as even hint at the destruction of the towers on September 11, 2001, a questionable decision that leaves a gap in the film. (They could have at least mentioned it in the end captions.) Still, Man on Wire is an exhilarating documentary; even though you know that Petit survives, you’ll be breathless as he balances high above Lower Manhattan, one tiny step from death. The film is having a special screening on September 11 at 4:00 at the Museum of the Moving Image in honor of the tenth anniversary of the tragic events.