What Mr. Wolcott Says!

Upon the sixth anniversary of the second attack and actual destruction of the World Trade Center:

The 9/12 Afterture

The never-ending shame of September 11th is that the souls of the dead have not been allowed to rest in peace but have been conscripted again and again into the garish rationales of fools and knaves for unending war and conquest. For the neocons, those original 9/11 deaths have compounded nicely, provided an impressive rate of return. With each anniversary, 9/11 becomes harder to disaggregate, analyze; the smoke-pouring towers have optical landmarks purged of historical-cultural-psychological-political-human context. Like Brian De Palma's forthcoming Redacted, Roger Copeland's meditative mashup The Unrecovered--which I wrote about here--explores the modes of perception in an age of fear, paranoia, and messianic fervor; it has the persistent throb and hallucinatory jabs of a nightmarish hangover. Appropriately enough for a film of such reflective mood, The Unrecovered--yonder lies its YouTube trailer--will be shown the day after this year's 9/11 memorials, on Wednesday, September 12th, 8:30 PM, at Manhattan's irreplaceable Anthology Film Archives. Rather than wander around lower Manhattan like Joe Buck without a clue, directions to Anthology can be found here.

Last year we went to a “rally” of sorts with the Reverend Billy at the Seaport. We, unexpectedly, met up with fellow travelers. It was wonderful and inspiring! This year I plan to go to the memorial service for Molly Ivins. I expect that it will also be wonderful, inspiring, but sad at the same time.

I am sure that she will be with us! And there will be no fear allowed because Molly wouldn't have allowed it!