I'm sorry. It's too soon.

I am actually quite amazed at my reaction to the trailer of the upcoming film about Flight 93, which crashed in Pennsylvania on 9/11. I read this introduction on Sullivan's site and thought, "Sure..., yeah, whatever":

When you see this trailer, you'll either start choking up, or think that Hollywood's exploitation of tragedy has finally gone too far. I choked up.

So I foolishly watched the trailer. There's not much to it actually; it's mostly just voiceovers. Yet suddenly, I want to crawl into a corner and cry...just cry. I'm sorry, but it's much too soon.

Comments

[lily]

I didn't watch the trailer. I don't know if I can justify this or even exsplain it but I find the idea of making a movie about the 911 attack very disgusting. It does seem exploitive to me. I guess I don't think enough time has passed. Wrenching historical events need to be fictionalized by a different genertion than the one that experienced the event maybe. Well no, I'll take that back--after all Remargue and Hemingway wrote within the generation of their repective wars and "Apocalypse Now" came out in the aftermath of the Viet Nam war. So maybe I'm not ready or I don't trust Hollywood to deal with this particular tragedy.

[Gary Farber]

"...and 'Apocalypse Now' came out in the aftermath of the Viet Nam war."

1979, which was more or less five or so years since we ran and left our friends to die. (I don't think there was much alternative in the long run, but that doesn't mean I don't think that our way of running was anything but a gawdawful horribleness and a betrayal.)

Coppola famously took more than a year in the Phillipines to make it, of course. (I've still not seen Redux; should put it at 400+something on the Netflix list, I guess.)

I started off this comment thinking about Vietnam movies, about which I know more than a bit. But then I thought about it, and felt quieter. So I'll be quiet, and sad. It's worth being sad. I'm only glad they've gone on.

It always makes me sorry, and sad.

Terribly sad.

[togolosh]

One of the men who stormed the cockpit was gay. Call me a flaming liberal, but I think that matters. I think that the fact that he took his fate in his hands, strove to live, or at least to stop a great evil, makes him a true hero. That some of the same people who get so passionate about the heros of flight 93 spend their days working to force people into second class citizenship because of their homosexuality makes me want to puke. He didn't want to be a hero, nor, I assume, did he want to be an icon for human rights. But he is, and he is.

[Anarch]

One of my friends -- though thankfully, in a horrible way, not a very good friend -- was on that flight. So I think I'll take a pass, thanks.

[Tad Brennan]

Slightly off topic, but just wanted to say:

Edward_, it is really great to have you back posting.

On topic: I flew into Laguardia a week ago, on a beautiful sunny day, coming up from the south over Staten Island, could see the whole harbor, the Statue, Manhattan. So beautiful. And I sat looking out the window, feeling this ache of love for New York in my heart, and murmuring "you bastards...you bastards".

I still feel fury at the people who altered the sky-line. And the other people, who have not made it whole again. And the other people, who let the culprits get away. I'm still burning mad. Four years later and we still haven't brought them to justice. Four years later and we still haven't replaced the Towers. I seem to recall the insurance valued the Towers at around a billion a piece. That's two days of the cost of Bush's war in Iraq. A billion dollars a day. Say, today and yesterday--the days on which 11 of our soldiers were killed. Those two days could have paid to patch the hole in the sky.

Bastards. Too soon for me, too.

[Pooh]

I hear and respect those who feel it is too soon. I watched the trailer, and my eyes are still streaming. But I still don't think it's too soon. At another blog about about month ago there was a discussion of a different 9/11 project and I had this to say:

"I see a 9/11 opus as a chance to rebuild some of the unity that we had in the months following 9/11. It can and should be a movie about American heroism - those that commandeered the plane in Pennsylvania, the FDNY, the gay priest who died ministerting at ground zero, the people who came from all over the country to do what they could with rescue operations. In these times, it seems like we could use a reminder that the things that unite us are greater than those that divide us. That's what a 9/11 movie should be."

I believed it then and I believe it now. Yes the memory is painful and raw. But perhaps by revisiting an echo of the that memory, we can also reconnect with the good that came after.

I don't expect many to agree with me, and you have very good reasons not to. A crass commercialization of this material would be the worst thing Hollywood has done since, since I don't know when. But if this film can rise above all that, I hope it can do good.

[DaveC]

I seem to recall the insurance valued the Towers at around a billion a piece. That's two days of the cost of Bush's war in Iraq. A billion dollars a day.

I think that you are vastly understating the cost of 911 by at least 2 orders of magnitude (was 100 times that), and overstating the cost of Iraq by an order of magnitude. Yes, the war in Iraq now has cost more than the attacks on the World Trade Center, but wouldn't you think it was crass if the war was defended by saying it cost less than another attack?

[DaveC]

1979, which was more or less five or so years since we ran and left our friends to die. (I don't think there was much alternative in the long run, but that doesn't mean I don't think that our way of running was anything but a gawdawful horribleness and a betrayal.)

Yeah, that sucked. In hindsight it would haave been better to have paved over a mile wide swath between N Vietnam, and South Vietnam. I will give the Commie Vietnamese full credit for stopping Pol Pot, however. Even if a hell of a lot of people died in thr high seas trying to flee, and others were sent to camps, it was not a wholesale slaughter, which I suppose is a benefit of a long overt war - people get tired of killing. You have got to credit the Vietnamese for a sense that the wholesale killing in Cambodia had to stop, and courage to make it stop, which the US lacked in that case. I still remember George McGovern pleading for US intervention in Cambodia. I thought it was thee wierdest thing at the time, and of course it went over like a lead balloon in Congress.

Just my opinion from a jingoist anti-Communist, who thinks that a half-assed result like Korea is better than some alternatives. I hope for the best in our current adventures, which appear to be heading for a half-assed, but not calamitous or totally victorious conclusion.

[rilkefan]

The IW is estimated to have cost over $1*10^12, projecting VA costs and lost productivity etc out. We've been there just over 1k days, so $1 billion/day is about right, I think.

I'm clueless about the economic damage of 9/11.

Anyway, I agree the comparison isn't that useful.

[Phil]

"...and 'Apocalypse Now' came out in the aftermath of the Viet Nam war."

1979, which was more or less five or so years since we ran and left our friends to die.

Well, but it was being developed by George Lucas and John Milius as early as 1971. They both got onto other things, is all. Still, I don't know that anyone would have released it if they had made it then.

I think that you are vastly understating the cost of 911 by at least 2 orders of magnitude (was 100 times that)

What part of the difference between "the insurance cost of the towers" and "the cost of 9/11" do you need explained?

wouldn't you think it was crass if the war was defended by saying it cost less than another attack?

Hahahaha! That's exactly how the war is defended!

[Phil]

Having watched it, that may be one of the single most effective movie trailers, certainly of recent vintage, that I have ever seen.

[blogbudsman]

I welcome the movie, even though I'm sure to snarl at the Hollywood depiction. Keep the spirit alive. And I too, welcome Edward back. In my last comment, in my haste to be clever, I buried the lede. Too tired to argue afterward. Never forget!

[Edward_]

I'm getting a similar response on Tacitus, blogbudsman (nice to see you here, as well)...and it seems to me to be suggesting that some folks hope the war will re-rally the nation to anger or something...not exactly sure.

I wasn't thinking about the propaganda potential of the film when I decided it was too soon for this story. I was mostly thinking of my fellow New Yorkers, who I can still see in my mind's eye walking around lost and in agony, breaking down in public, eerily silent...and, well, I don't think a little more distance before we're asked to relive that day is such a tall order.

[Edward_]

and by "hope the war" I meant "hope the film"

need to get some coffee

[KCinDC]

DaveC, "Iraq war will cost $1 trillion: experts".

[CharleyCarp]

wouldn't you think it was crass if the war was defended by saying it cost less than another attack

The Iraq can be defended by saying that it costs less than the losses to worldwide productivity suffered as a result of tooth decay. That doesn't make either the mathematic or causal cases any better.

[SomeCallMeTim]

Exploitive.

[Katherine]

So good to have you post eddie.

Not sure I agree with this one, at least insofar as you're saying: they shouldn't be releasing this movie. It all depends on how it's done, doesn't it? We don't object to other forms of art about this. At least, I don't, and have actually tried to write some. And one can always just not go to the movie.

Given that you don't choose whether or not to see the trailer, I hope they erred on the side of caution. (my computer's too lousy to watch it.)

Is the issue that a movie will get you on a more visceral level because of how much it looks like watching it? Or is it a sense that it's likely to be bad and exploitative because that's what Hollywood does?

I thought 25th Hour dealt with this stuff very, very well. It was a lot more obliquely, but it was a lot sooner, too.

I repeat what I've said before about art and major world events: choosing subject matter like this is not good or bad in itself; it's just a force multiplier.

[CaseyL]

Never mind the political impact; you just know this is going to be another disaster movie.

Which means it'll spend a goodly bit of time developing 'human interest': we'll see entirely imaginary reconstructions of the main characters' interactions with families and friends; we'll see romance between strangers, and reconciliation between exes.

We'll also see characters reduced to Types: The Coward, The Mother, The Frightened Child, the Terrorist Sympathizer. And, especially, The Gay Hero. How much you want to bet that a passenger or two will be pressed into service as The Homophobe, just so there can be a dramatic epiphany, and The Homophobe can say something about how "My eyes have been opened!"

Which would piss me off enough all by itself, that rifling through peoples' lives and trivializing them into Types. What's going to be worse is the inevitable coda: George Bush on the pile of debris with his megaphone.

I'll pass.

[Edward_]

Hi Katherine,

I think it's more that I personally am not yet ready to relive that day in the sort of way films transport you into places and times.

I'm getting beat up a bit about this in a few other places I've posted it, with people suggesting my negative response is somehow anti-patriotic.

With all due respect to those folks, that's horsesh*t. My response is hyperpatriotic. It's because I love my country that the idea of watching that film is so painful. I know we're all supposed to focus on the fact that these Americans took on the terrorists and take strength from their courage, and I suppose if they survived, I would be more inclined to do so...but knowing their fate ... I don't know actually...like I said, I was cocksure and arrogantly defiant as I clicked on the link from Sullivan's site ("choked up...hmpff") but as it unravelled, the trailer struck some deeply repressed anger and sorrow about that day.

What I mean about "too soon" is that for me, personally, it's too soon to unleash those emotions. I'm not strong enough yet.

As I noted elsewhere, before we rush to film, I'd like to see our poets take a stab at making sense of what we experienced on that day. Film, as generally produced in the US, is a blunt instrument.

[Will]

Edward: Are poets have tried to make sense of 9/11/ Havent your listened to The Right Brothers?:

"Freedom in Afghanistan, say goodbye Taliban
Free elections in Iraq, Saddam Hussein locked up
Osama’s staying underground, Al Qaida now is finding out
America won’t turn and run once the fighting has begun

Don’t you know that all this means…
Bush was right! Bush was right!"

It was hard to write that with a straight face.

[Edward_]

I listened to that song, Will, and all I could think was those fellas are gonna have the most painful epiphany in a few years...they might not survive the shock.

[Will]

Edward:

I doubt that they do not know what epiphany means.

The songs that still makes me think of that day is Safe and Sound by Sheryl Crow. I'm not a big fan of her's, but that song brings me back to that day for some reason.

[Katherine]

I've tried, after a fashion, but I'm not really one of America's poets. I also did a charcoal drawing of Libeskind's original site plan that I'm quite fond of, but given what the "Freedom Tower" looks like these days that may become a bad joke.

Better poets have also tried with much more success.

[Will]

Adagio for Strings by Samuel Barber always makes me think back to that day as well.

[Gary Farber]

As a general rule, I feel that any art that rouses emotions in the cause to think is never too soon.

Thinking is always in order, and art that invokes that is good (feebly tiny subsect of contemporary art as that might be -- educate me, Edward).

Meanwhile, I am in abstract for that art which moves us and makes us think, particularly if it comes from important events that have changed our lives.

If it does the job badly, we should all mock it and beat the crap out of it.

Otherwise: well, I'm not noticing the context this moment.

[Gary Farber]

I also tend to think that one of the most deeply stupid reactions of the human race is to note, and respond to, labels.

[rilkefan]

Katherine, your first link doesn't work.

[lily]

Well if Steve Earle counts as a poets he has written some excellent lyrics on the Iraq war specifically and current politics generally.

[Katherine]

does this work? Second post down.

[Nataly]

Can't wait for it!

[Frank Wilhoit]

Cry if you must, but I wish that you would do it for the right reason, which is that WE WILL NEVER KNOW what happened on, or to, Flight 93.

[Phil]

In response to CaseyL, without having seen it, I'm going to guess that it's not going to be that kind of Hollywood disaster movie that you describe. Paul Greengrass's previous historical drama was widely praised for being almost documentary-like in its presentation, and very non-exploitive. He just isn't that kind of moviemaker.

Looking at the cast list, too, impresses upon me that it's not going to be that kind of movie. The only name I recognized right off the bat was Denny Dillon, and then only because I know her from a) the worst-ever season of SNL, and b) doing voices on a George Carlin album. Not exactly A-lister, glamorous Hollywood types that tend to star in "message movies."

Now, having said all that, I probably won't see it. I find watching just the documentary footage of 9/11 incredibly painful, to the point where I actively avoid it. I just can't stand to see it happen over and over again. (If anyone else has seen Munich, there's a shot that will tear your heart out. Well, several, but one in particular.)

[Phil]

And I'll guarantee there will be no pro-Bush message at the end as you imply. No way. If you've seen Bloody Sunday, there's simply no way you could imagine this movie ending with "George Bush on the pile of debris with his megaphone."

What's more, there will be none of the "goodly bit of time developing 'human interest': we'll see entirely imaginary reconstructions of the main characters' interactions with families and friends; we'll see romance between strangers, and reconciliation between exes," either; the movie is being done in real-time, from boarding (or take-off) to the tragic crash.

I think perhaps you judge too quickly.

[CaseyL]

Phil, I admit I'm predicting/judging the movie based on what Hollywood's done with past disasters. I dislike exploitation on principle, and I frankly don't see how the movie can be anything but exploitative - even if it's done as respectfully as you say.

Why do I think the movie will be exploitative?

Well, a 'real-time' quasi-documentary treatment will be subject to the human interest padding I mentioned, for the simple reasons that 1) there's about 120 minutes of screentime to fill, and the flight didn't last that long, so there's almost sure to be glimpses into pre-flight goings-on; and 2) we don't know what went on for most of the flight. The scriptwriters have a few phone calls and black box data to work with - assuming they were given access even to all of that.

We don't know what people said to each other; we don't know whether the hijackers chatted up the people they sat next to before they went into action; we don't know what the passengers thought was going on, when they thought something was going on, how they spread the word. We don't know whether passengers thought this was a 'normal' hijacking at first, and made nervous jokes about winding up in a hostile airport, or worried about being blown up like those hundreds of passengers were in Europe back in the 1980's. We don't know if there were passengers who sympathized with the hijackers, and if the hijackers used that to buttress whatever lies they told the passengers. We don't know if any of the hijackers tried to mutiny when they found out what the true purpose of the hijacking was. We don't know any of that, so the writers will have to make it up.

If the screenwriters want to show how the hijacking was set up, they have to weave that one from whole cloth, too. We know about a few guys taking flight lessons; we know a little bit about some of the hijackers' lifestyles. Is the movie going to try and present how they were recruited? How the hijacking was planned? What political/theological discussions led to it? Which hijackers were entrusted with knowing it was a suicide mission and which ones weren't? We don't know any of that, either, so the writers will have to make it up.

So the writers will have to fill in an awful lot of blanks, dealing with motivations and responses. No matter how respectfully they do so, even if they do their level best to make the passengers and hijackers real characters as opposed to charicatures, they're still conjecturing.

Yet, because the events are still so emotionally loaded, the movie's conjectures will be given an authority - a realness; a 'truthiness' - that will color what people think 'really happened.'

And because the writers have got to be fully aware of that, it will color how they do that shaping. Because they have - they must have - some kind of agenda; otherwise, why make the movie at all? If they don't have something to say, why are they saying anything?

I'm not saying it's a 'bad' agenda. We can always use uplifting tales of heroism. But they'll be using a staggering tragedy, an atrocity that reshaped American politics and culture, from which the shockwaves have by no means subsided... as a backdrop for a mostly-invented story. Knowing, as they must, that many people will take their invention as the definitive, true story.

That is by definition exploitative, and I just don't like it. On principle.

[Pooh]

Casey,

That's a fantastic point. I disagree with your conclusion, but I see your concern. I'm not sure how much it matters because we know the broad outlines of what happened, and we know that we don't know the details. Hopefully the film makers will preface the whole movie with a "It could have happened something like this" disclaimer.

[Akikonomu]

Obviously, it'll win the best picture Oscar next year. Like that other undeserved winner, Black Hawk Down.

[Gary Farber]

"John Milius"

Perversely, and digressionally (who, me?), I'm absurdly fond of Red Dawn, deeply insane a fantasy as it is. Not because I've ever, ever, ever, remotely had worries about being invaded by Cuba, but because it's such a nifty drama about kids on their own, and the drama therein, and as a minor additional measure, that I love the Rockies, and did so long before I moved to have them on the edge of town.

Having a crush on young Lea Thompson also helps.

But even far higher on my Favorite Films Of All Time is The Wind And The Lion.

I suppose that reveals my inner Republican Imperialistic nature, although I prefer to think it merely says that I can rant at length about certain movoies. The Man Who Would Be King is also coming soon in the Netflix Queue, having waited there since I first saw it at the Carnegie Hall Cinema in NYC, circa 1972 or so.

I've kippled, yes. None of this implies any sort of political agenda on my part, as it happens, and the suggestion that my aesthetic pleasures, such as that, might lead to political desires, continues to strike me as, um, more than silly, though the obvious tension at times strikes me as not unworthy of comment. But, sure I like silly movies, no matter that they don't relate at all to my political desires.

I guess I thought I'd cough that up, appropro or not.

Milius makes the best imperialistic nonsense evah!

[Gary Farber]

Blackhawk Down was a superb film, but it was a vastly better, important, book, which I'd hope everyone has read. The website is also fine, and should all be read, in addition to the book.

Okay, the Ambien is starting to click in, so I should stop posting before the incoherence strikes further.

Any news of Hilzoy?

[Gary Farber]

"...which is that WE WILL NEVER KNOW what happened on, or to, Flight 93."

We'll never know everything about anything, but in this case we do have a bunch of tapes and such, so it's not exactly a complete mystery. This seems to make the all caps assertion of utter mystery rather odd and even peculiar.

[Gary Farber]

"But they'll be using a staggering tragedy, an atrocity that reshaped American politics and culture, from which the shockwaves have by no means subsided... as a backdrop for a mostly-invented story."

Perhaps so. Whether bad art or good art is made of that remains to be seen. Either remains possible, after all. It could be great, it could be horrible, or it could be merely mediocre pap. All those are always possible from that sort of source material.

[Gary Farber]

"As I noted elsewhere, before we rush to film, I'd like to see our poets take a stab at making sense of what we experienced on that day."

Um, well, if there's been a movement to suppress our poets, I oppose that. Absent such rounding up and repressing our poets, I'm unclear how or we we should suppress others from expressing themselves.

I suspect that if someome similarly suggested that artists should not express themselve by not carving and painting and creating, you'd be out fron decrying any such call, rather than supporting such.

In other words: wtf?

[Gary Farber]

Abstractly, I don't think it's ever "too soon" for art to address reality.

Practically speaking, three's a direct relations between how well a work address a topic, and how well it succeeds and is appropriately appreciated, of course, but that should be obvious to any 2-year-old, even up to Bill O'Reilly.

[Gary Farber]

Put another way: if a great work of art that affects and changes us results: great. If something merely meaningful is produced, okay.

And if anything less happens, we'll condemn it. It does't seem to me to be a complicated question.

I might be missing something, to be sure.

[Bruce Baugh]

I watched the trailer and was moved in a good way, and I had a very strong feeling that I want to see these people's lives and deaths rendered well.

We live in the midst of an official culture dedicated to systematically lying about what happened on 9/11 - who the perpetrators were, what they did, who the victims were, and what they did. The Bush administration has never for one moment cared to talk about any of this honestly; it's always been for them a tool of their preexisting drive to crusade. But there is a truth of 9/11, or rather there are at least two kinds of truth about it...

- There's the factual record: who all of these people were and the moment-by-moment account of their words and deeds, with varying degrees of certainty and doubt. (I find it useful to remember that history always comes with the equivalent of statisticians' error bars. We never get to 100%, but we can establish why we think we know something.)

- There's the emotional record: what people thought and felt about it all at the moment, and how their internal worlds changed in response to changing circumstances. Good fiction is true to this second kind of truth even when it doesn't hew with perfect fidelity to a best reading of the external data. When it clicks just right, the distortions of data end up conveying a truer sense of the experience, mapping things onto the contours of the soul.

There's been at least one very, very good piece of 9/11 art, Bruce Springsteen's album The Rising. There's no way to tell from the album which parts are specifically his own experience rendered in lyrics and music and which are his imaginative effort to connect with the experience of others. Nor does it actually matter. He and his band produced a set of songs that resonate with what I know of survivors' and bystanders' stories. Is it all "true" in that sense? I don't know. I do know that it helped me think and feel more clearly about the whole thing, and has been a comfort to me in dealing with some personal tragedies this last year, precisely because the inner experience of grief, confusion, and being separated from what you love by outside forces is in some ways the same regardless of what caused it.

The official account of a crisis will always simplify and often lie. Some of that's even necessary for the sake of coordinated action. But not every bit of official simplification and denial is necessary, and we have needs as individuals as well as subjects in the official story. An imaginative reconstruction of the stories around some available data seems to me a very good idea, if it's done with craft and heart. I don't know whether this movie will be done that way, but there's reason to hope for it, and I think that the effort is actually overdue.

[Gary Farber]

I swear that I'm going to hide my keyboard next time I take Ambien. Apologies for putting my stripped semi-brain on public display. Yikes and yikes again. Can I pretend it never happened? Please?

We'd all be better off if I stopped commenting, and we all just read Bruce Baugh instead. This is not remotely a new thought by me, which is typical.

[Bruce Baugh]

Actually, Gary, some of your comments all through this thread helped me pull impulses and inclination into, you know, words annat. So you get the assist, at a minimum. :)

[Gary Farber]

Thanks, muchly, Bruce.

My fingers are strumming madly waiting to hear: any news of Hilzoy?

I realized shortly after the last time I exchanged e-mail with her that although I had a vague sense which hospital she'd be in, that I'd not asked for any further specifics. I didn't want to bother her further, then, though I knew I'd want a number to bother people at.

I am a worrywart. One big worrywart.

My best beloved died at this time last year, and so I worry more than I should about these things. I will say no more here.

But any good news of Dr. Hilary would be good. There are times and things I pray for, even when I don't in the least believe in God, because, hey, I don't think it's going to otherwise make me less sensible or accurate in my understanding of the universe, and it's one of the few things left. It's not more harmful than strumming my fingers, so far as I can see.

So I visualize Hilzoy's resting in a comfy bed, able to access things that please her, and feeling only as mildly bothered by the agonizing pain and weird tubes and the like as possible, and working, slowly, towards feeling better.

I don't believe visualizations make things happen, but they can't hurt, and they're all I have, absent information.

When someone has information, I'm sure they'll post it.

Soon, please?

Feel better, Hilzoy. Feel better now. Be better, to.

Okay, back to strumming, and praying to no one.

[Bruce Baugh]

Hilzoy's patron deity should obviously be a fusion of Athena, Kwan Yin, and Wong Fei-hung's mom as shown in Once Upon A Time In China.

For your devotional convenience.

(I'm also hoping for news soon, and that it's good.)

[rilkefan]

Mrs. R had an amnio on Friday (since we're older and etc.) - we could use a patron deity to pray to, though we're mostly coping by assuming everything's ok and going La La La whenever the thought comes up.

[Bruce Baugh]

Very best wishes to all the sundry Rilkefans. Here's hoping for good news soon for you, too.

[DaveC]

(since we're older and etc.)

From now on, I'll picture you as Tony Randall.

I sat in on my wife's amnio for our 1st, and the doctor missed. When he was swearing and put the blood-filled syringe with the foot long needle on the table next to me, I almost passed out. Funny thing is that if things are far along enough for an amnio, then everything will probably work out ok anyway. Best wishes, and get your pre-school application in right away ;-)

[xanax]

You'll all be pleased to know our dearest hilzoy lives, is home from the hospital and is recouperating nicely. Just talked to her at length and she sounds more upbeat and well than one might reasonably expect under the circumstances.

Yay, for good doctors.

[Gary Farber]

"When he was swearing and put the blood-filled syringe with the foot long needle on the table next to me, I almost passed out."

A peaceful person such as myself would consider neck-breaking moves, and throat-thrusts, and the like. Fainting is the better, and completely understandable, option.

Going for a drink of water, or whatever, says you're a good person.

How soon is it reasonable to expect some word of Hilzoy, anyway? Do I really need to start looking into numbers for Baltimore and John Hopkins? The time the thrumming fingers will need to do something else is approaching, selfish as it purely is on my part.

Hospitals make me anxious no end, these days. Irrational, too. I'd be far happier if I were only pacing in the right state, Maryland, rather then in my own apartment. I couldn't remotely explain why, but it's so. Instead I'm anxious like to burst. Selfish, like I said. If I had a room number, I could send a stupid card or something. Anyone know the address?

[Gary Farber]

"You'll all be pleased to know our dearest hilzoy lives, is home from the hospital and is recouperating nicely"

Oh, thank goodness. Ignore my last comment. Might you have a snail address you could e-mail me with, perhaps?

[xanax]

GF: Read my 3:35 post. You can stop strumming or drumming your fingers. All's well.

[Bruce Baugh]

Thanks, Xanax!

[Gary Farber]

Huge sigh of relief from me, xanax, although, of course, I never stop worrying about anything entirely. I stopped worrying about Sharon every minute, and see where it got me.

But I'm grateful and thankful, and less tense with worry over hilzoy, and since it's all about me, me, me, me, me, that's what matters. Feel free to give her my best, next opportunity, though. Our bodies do heal, in my experience, mostly. And our abdomen is less important a site than our mind.

Laying aside all that eating and pissing and having children and whatnot.

Hilzoy home. Very comforting. I'm going to focus as best I can on that. And work on forgetting that anyone ever read these comments by me.

As usual. (If only someone thought I was cute, rather than, you know, nuts. Dreams.)

[xanax]

We all think you're cute, Gary.

Re your other question. Don't have hil's home address on my home computer. Even if I did, I went to Amygdala and discovered I am not clever enough to figure out your email address. Sorry. But Hil might very well be back on line shortly so you can all share the love.

[Gary Farber]

"Even if I did, I went to Amygdala and discovered I am not clever enough to figure out your email address."

It's hidden under the copyright notice. It is, for now, gary_farber at yahoo dot com.

(Huh. If typekey is masking it, why, exactly, do I have to keep typing e-mail address and home URL in every time? Schmucks.)

I said this, because I tend to show how nuts I am, rather than hiding it. At least people have a better idea as to when to run away from me, is my theory.

Hilzoy home. It is good. Xanax be thanked, even though the real pill would likely be even better (probably a triple dose). But maybe not!

For now, I'll stay with the all good, and the thanks. Yes.

[Gary Farber]

"We all think you're cute, Gary."

Through some cosmic oversight, no pretty and thoughtfully interesting women have yet knocked on my apartment door to inform me of this.

I'm convinced, of course, that I need make no effort to help that happen, beyond blogging and chatting on the internet. It will happen any day, if I write more!

But I digress. I'm sure I should go click on what felixrayman has to say about Sharon instead. All our lives will undoubtedly be enriched by that. I go click now, without trying to reproduce the finger-snapping in West Side Story, because they are far cooler than ever I will be. It's all I can do to try to stay cool. Cool, boy. Real cool.

[MS]

If it is any consolation, Paul Greengrass is directing the film, and if anyone has seen Bloody Sunday, I can't really think of anyone more suitable for the project.

I have my doubts, but I think that's one of the factors for me at least.

[MS]

Well, looking up, I realized that someone had already pointed it out. That said, I also agree with the poster who pointed out The 25th Hour.

[norbizness]

I like my exploitation straight, no chaser:

"Trapped on the other side of the country aboard Air Force One, the President has lost his cool: 'If some tinhorn terrorist wants me, tell him to come and get me! I'll be at home! Waiting for the bastard!'

His Secret Service chief seems taken aback. 'But Mr. President...'

The President brusquely interrupts him. 'Try Commander-in-Chief. Whose present command is: Take the President home!'"

(From 2003's DC 9/11: Time of Crisis)

[hilzoy]

So, as xanax said, I'm back. It went well, the doctors said. I particularly liked the ones who introduced themselves by saying: "Hi, we're from acute pain!"

Now I am all sore and wiped out, but otherwise perfectly functional. I don't know when I'll be up to reading the papers, etc.: I have no idea what happened for the last few days, other than Sharon's stroke, and the miners being almost all dead.

Just as a preemptive warning: if any of you should ever happen to store a roomful (floor to ceiling, packed) of boxes in my garage, and then decide to move across the country, do not assume that it would be OK to leave the boxes in my garage in perpetuity. And if I tell you that you'll have to move them, please try to have them out sometime during the three weeks between when I tell you and when I come back from major surgery. Do this even if you think that the task of moving the boxes is a major organizational task worthy of weeks and weeks of thought and preparation. If I should happen to arrange for a storage company to provide pods for you to put the stuff in, please do not tell me, when I come back from surgery, that you don't think that there will be enough room in the pods for the boxes in the garage, because during the three weeks that they've been there, you have moved so much other stuff from your apartment into them that they're full. If you disregard the above advice, don't be shocked to discover that I am somewhat annoyed when I come back from surgery and find that it's all still there, and that strange guys you've hired will at some point be tromping thorough my house. Among other things, I will be annoyed at having to figure out what on earth to do to make it the case that my house is, well, my house, rather than the staging ground for the apparently endless process of your move.

If I had been clever enough to run through this entire set of hypotheticals with one of my friends a few years ago, when they were just hypotheticals, we would both be happier just now. So I thought I'd take to announcing it preemptively.

(Note: she's in a bit of a crisis just now, and she's not like this normally. This did not prevent me from laying down a total deadline after which the nice people from Goodwill will remove whatever is still around, but it does prevent me from being anywhere near as annoyed as I would be at someone who did this in non-extenuating circumstances.)

[rilkefan]

Yay (sp?) !

[Jay C]

Good to see/hear/read that you are back and recovering, hilzoy: your faithful fanbase/readership/cult-following has been somewhat worried in your absence. Of course, it is always pleasing when our trepidations prove groundless; here's hoping that your recuperation is swift and thorough.

[Anarch]

RF: I think it's more a "yay?" at this point ;)

[Anarch]

Oh, and hurray for hilzoy! Nice to have you back.

[CharleyCarp]

H:

Glad it worked out. Check-o on the scenario.

[DaveC]

Great to hear that you're okay hilzoy.

Please come back and get rid of this Edward_ fellow soon, because he is stirring up trouble ;-)

[Jesurgislac]

Hilzoy: So, as xanax said, I'm back. It went well, the doctors said. I particularly liked the ones who introduced themselves by saying: "Hi, we're from acute pain!"

Hee! And yay! you're good. Well, we always knew you were good, but you're better!

[Slartibartfast]

Welcome back, hilzoy, and glad you're back among us. I hope (I didn't want to say this beforehand because...well, I don't want to be a jinx) that your experience with coming out from under anaesthesia was much more pleasant than mine. Imagine a recurring, unfulfilled compulsion to vomit, after abdominal surgery.

May the pain medications remove all pain while leaving you just exactly as lucid as you want to be.

And may any implanted bits of foreign bodies (so to speak) not take over your own and turn you into a flesheating zombie philosopher/bioethicist.

[dutchmarbel]

Glad to hear things went well and you're on the mend Hilzoy

[Jay C]

I know it may be a niggling point, but shouldn't we have an independent "Get Well, Hilzoy" post, all by itself?
Maybe it's just me, but isn't it a tad jarring to read all these (very sincere) messages of congratulation attached to a post titled "I'm sorry. It's too soon"?

[Marblex]

the alleged crash of Flight 93, like the rest of 9/11 is fiction...except of course for the DEAD people.

Those bastards did it. It's been their excuse for EVERYTHING.
http://www.tvnewslies.org/html/loose_change_dvd.html

[James Casey]

the alleged crash of Flight 93, like the rest of 9/11 is fiction...except of course for the DEAD people.

Those bastards did it. It's been their excuse for EVERYTHING.
http://www.tvnewslies.org/html/loose_change_dvd.html

Elvis? Is that you?

[Simon]

Say, did anyone notice that one of the characters listed on the (admittedly unreliable) IMDB page for Flight 93 is none oher than Jeremy Glick, better known as the son of a Flight 93 passenger, who appeard on the O'Reilly show to protest the Iraq War and was shouted down by Falafel Bill?

[Bruce Baugh]

Edward, a thought struck me during the night, as I finished off some World War II history. This may or may not affect your judgment but it is at least a point I don't recall being made here.

One of the reasons, I think, that this war is so often unsettling is that it's so anonymous. We have very few heroes of the battlefield. We also have very few honored dead, the fallen shipped back in secrecy, their arrival unmarked. It's all of a piece with the generally corporate style of the administration, I think; Bush and Cheney simply don't find most individuals very interesting, unlike successful politicians in a more traditional vein, and the apparatus takes its leads from the top, as it usually does.

But as Gary Klein points out in his very interesting book Sources of Power, it's the transforming of events into narrative that guides a lot of decision-making. And narrative calls for protagonists and antagonists. We can't do some crucially human things without having people along with data points. It's hard both to mourn and to celebrate properly with that dimension of specific humanity.

The administration doesn't have any interest in giving us that. But we need it. This seems to me a circumstance in which good drama might be very important, in offering some humanity to focus on. Fictional details, certainly, and always the fictions created by composition, editing, and so on. But if it's broadly true to the record we have, and particularly if it lets us see the people and deeds around the spoken words we have, then it could be important in helping us build some narratives with which to judge the whole.

[Bruce Baugh]

Shorter Bruce Baugh: We need faces and voices to deal with crises. When they don't come other ways, fiction can help.

[Edward_]

good drama might be very important, in offering some humanity to focus on

I would agree. I realize after a few days that this post struck some as an opinion directed at the filmmakers (i.e., that they shouldn't have released this film so soon), when it was actually meant to be a personal statement (i.e., I'm not ready to watch such a film yet).

Everyone has different healing process times, I'm sure. Had this film been rushed to theaters in early 2002, I'm sure many other people would feel as I still do.

Not sure at all why I feel that way either...as I note in the post, I expected to watch the trailer and shrug it off...I was amazed it brought back all that anger and sorrow so effectively. Which may make it good art (and certainly make it effective propaganda, which, let's face it, it can't help but be), but still remains something I'll wait a bit longer to subject myself to.

Regarding the president's interest in individuals, I think his penchant for nicknames might argue both directions on that point. To some it seems endearing, suggesting he does like to connect with people on an individual level. To others I think it seems distancing...like so much of his percievable persona, he comes off as mocking.

I never really liked Reagan's use of individual stories to drive his point home, though. It struck me as manipulative and fake. With Clinton, it was a bit less so, but still not to be trusted. Bottomline, I don't think the president has time to see the world as a series of individuals, whether he finds them interesting or not. I prefer he speak in generalities that let me project what I want/need onto his statements. Personal preference. YMMV.

[Bruce Baugh]

Okay, that's a useful distinction at the top, Edward, and I have a strong appreciation for folks willing to say "this is/isn't right for me, right now".

The use of stories in decision-making is a complex subject. I really do recommend Sources of Power, whose author spent time studying and talking with - and working alongside - experts in a wide range of fields that call for quick, wise choices. Like anything else, it can be done well or badly. It's certainly not a substitute for evidence and logic, but it should be there iwth them.