It's September. And once again, the 11th falls on a crisp blue fall day.
And for me, it's a time of year that is frozen in images, snapshots, and bits of video.
Bits of paper hovering in gusts of hot air.
A hat in the dust.
I expected that day to leave scars that would last a lifetime. I didn't expect to be left with a musical legacy that still brings tears to my eyes.
This is a story about 9/11 that has a soundtrack. A magical discovery that just appeared, 6 years later. A beautiful gift from a terrible day.
But, let's start at the beginning.
In the 24 hours after the attacks at the World Trade Center, I found myself sifting through video tape trying to find answers. As a documentary filmmaker, I was used to looking at terrible things, but always with some distance. This was my backyard.
I could smell the burning buildings.
I knew it was too early to know the answers. But the raw material that would become history had drawn me into 9/11 and I knew I wasn't getting out.
On the morning of September 11th, I was preparing to start shooting a television series in NY. My office was 30 blocks north of the World Trade Center, and looking down 5th avenue, you could see the smoke rising.
My team of six videographers ended up deciding to cover the attacks, and so by the middle of the night, both of the buildings had collapsed and I was sitting with reels and reels of videotape of the attack and the aftermath.
Two days later - exhausted from lack of sleep - I went home to take a shower and return to work. In the car, I heard on the radio a song that had been released that day by Ed Kowalczyk and the band Live. It was called "Overcome". And listening to the song, exhausted, I was overcome. It was all too much. The song was posted on the Internet so that anyone could download it.
I downloaded it, and working with my partner and wife Pam Yoder - we began to cut images to the worlds and music.
Music is a magical thing. It sometimes is the only language that makes sense.
By the end of the day the images had connected with the music in a way that is easier to show than to explain.
And almost as an afterthought, I called an executive that I barely knew at VH1 and said, hey, we've got a tribute video we'd like to send you. An hour later - this video was on VH1. Our images and Ed's song, playing over and over again.
We didn't ask permission. We didn't try. We just heard the music, were moved by it, and made our piece of work. It was a collaboration. The band, in California, reached out. And sitting at 28th Street and 5th Avenue, we connected with their music. But it didn't end there.
One day later, the phone rang, it was the manager of the band Live - and he'd seen our music video.
I knew we'd used his song without permission, and I expected that the band would be unhappy. But I was wrong.
Ed Kowalczyk had been watching TV, and was very moved by the music video. He wanted to come to NY from California, and he wanted to visit the WTC site, and he wanted to perform the song - and do his part to help NY and the nation heal - or at least feel.
Just days later - with the smoldering ruins of the Trade Center still filling the night sky, Pam, myself, a film crew, and Ed Kowalczyk were walking down the abandoned West Side Highway... toward the smoking space that used to be the WTC. We didn't say a word, but once we'd gotten to the site, Ed began to sing. It was an exhausting moment. We hadn't slept in days.
But hearing his voice was the only thing even close to an emotional release we'd had.
Now, six years later - I find myself looking for a touchstone on that day, an element or a moment that would connect me with that time. And there was this video, of Ed Kowalczyk; standing on the West Side Highway, smelling that smell, and connecting his words to that terrible time in a way that made it seem both painful and survivable.
The music created a strange elixir of pain and hope. Once again, his music has meaning.
Here is the music, recorded just days after 9/11 - just on the side of the West Side highway a capella:
In a conversation later in the day - Ed told us that in his mind, the word "overcome" had two meanings. We are emotionally "overcome" - and, in the worlds of Martin Luther King, we shall "overcome".
Well, that seems like a goal worth striving for. Overcoming fear. Overcoming prejudice. Overcoming the obstacles that our country and the world now face.
Most days we forget 9/11 - and move on.
But today I'd rather remember than forget.