Try To Remember....
I was in New York, sleeping in a little before I was to get on a train at Penn Station to go to Boston to see my Grandmother, when my parents called to tell me to turn on my TV. The rest of that day is a little bit of a stunned blur. It was fashion week, I was supposed to lend jewelry to an up and coming designer who was having a first show at the tents and had no way of communicating with anyone via cell phone. So, I got on my bike and began riding to midtown to the hotel where I knew everyone was gathering just to make sure that they were all OK, and to be sure they all had the good sense to know that on a day like that, the show could not go on. By this time, it was about the time that the second of the two towers came tumbling down. Even in my neighborhood, the upper west side, there was a sea of people making the trek on foot uptown and on every corner were people in tears, embracing one another, cab drivers stopped in the middle of intersections rushing to the aid of people who were collapsing in grief. I rode my bike past the American Red Cross building and they were turning people away -- not that they had too many volunteers, but because there were simply not enough survivors that needed help. I remember what I was wearing - cropped JCrew khakis and a simple black T shirt and Chuck Taylors. It's funny how in the midst of all kinds of chaos and commotion, the brain can register all of the details. September has always been my favorite month in NYC. That particular Tuesday was the most gloriously beautiful day in New York - the kind of day that would make anyone want to live there. It was a cruel irony, that on such a heavenly, magnificent day the most horrific of tragedies was perpetrated on innocent people and so many lost their lives. Music has always been the thing that has gotten me through everything -- the highs and lows, laughs and tears. A few weeks after 9/11, I was at the taping of a Bravo TV show when Shawn Colvin brought the entire house to tears with her version of Try To Remember from the Fantasticks. Every time I hear it, I am reminded of everything I remember about that day, the old world we knew on Sept 10, and the new world we have come to know in the years since. Listen here....
