mattlawyue
Currently in Tanzania, Africa doing media relations for the School of St Jude in Arusha.
Spent some time in public relations in NYC, and have written for SLAM Magazine, ESPN NewYork, the Boston Herald and BusinessWeek.
The College of New Jersey, '10.
Frank Sinatra Has a Cold
Frank Sinatra, holding a glass of bourbon in one hand and a cigarette in the other, stood in a dark corner of the bar between two attractive but fading blondes who sat waiting for him to say something. But he said nothing; he had been silent during much of the evening, except now in this private club in Beverly Hills he seemed even more distant, staring out through the smoke and semidarkness into a large room beyond the bar where dozens of young couples sat huddled around small tables or twisted in the center of the floor to the clamorous clang of folk-rock music blaring from the stereo. The two blondes knew, as did Sinatra’s four male friends who stood nearby, that it was a bad idea to force conversation upon him when he was in this mood of sullen silence, a mood that had hardly been uncommon during this first week of November, a month before his fiftieth birthday.
| Esquire | Apr 1966
(via atavist)
One thing you learn in journalism school is that the media loves an anniversary. It’s an easy pitch, with familiar plot lines, characters, story arcs, statistics, etc. Great (re: tragic) stories are rewound, fast-forwarded, paused, contemplated, and dissected. Slide shows of pictures then and now, past and present roller coaster through history. Broadcast, both TV and radio, film footage from the epicenter, accompanied by the sights and sounds of what used to be.
It’s one big fucking spectacle, honestly, and more often than not, I’ll do my part of reading the stories, watching the broadcasts, immersing myself with whatever occupies the news cycle.
9/11 is the exception. My entire life and family are, and have been for decades, in the New York City/Northern New Jersey metro. I don’t need a 10th anniversary media package to remind me what happened, where I was, who I was with, or why it impacts me now.
My memories of that day, like everyone else, no matter how hard I try to ignore or erase, are stained in my history book for eternity. I don’t want to read any more stories or stare at any more footage and pictures. It’s terribly counter-productive to grieving, but it’s how I choose to compartmentalize what happened.
I still haven’t stepped foot on or seen the WTC since it happened. My memory is standing on the George Washington Bridge and watching the black smoke snake its way into the atmosphere; of armed soldiers standing watch for months after the attacks; of cheering for the soldiers as loud as I could at Knicks and Yankees games; of people crying.
My memory is my father sitting on our front steps, face and shoulders covered with soot and ash, explaining in a hushed tone how he ran down 50+ flights of stairs in the 2nd tower, after he saw burning furniture falling from the sky, and helping up strangers who were being trampled, swallowed by the stampede of people running for their lives.
My memory is thinking, what did this man, who taught me how to shoot a basketball, to be patient, to work hard and be humble, who grew up poor in a 3rd world Caribbean island eating wet bread for dinner, who dropped out of college to raise a child, who worked his way to a successful career in New York City finance, who raised a family with all his love - what the fuck did he do to deserve this? What did any of us do to deserve this?
Maybe because he hasn’t spoken a word of what happened since that day is why I choose to ignore this anniversary as much as possible. Perhaps not so much ignore, but remember it in my own way: with two stories, The Falling Man by Tom Junod and Lost and Found by Colson Whitehead, perhaps a couple innings of the days’ Yankees game, and a good meal to tide me over until it’s September 12, and only 364 more days until I have to repeat this cycle all over again.
