September 10, 2001

I was working on my album during that time, stressing out over artwork and when it would be done. Everyone helping me with the album were friends working for free so I felt weird about rushing them (reason #1 why you should just hire people for projects and pay them money).

I had seen Radiohead in concert for the first time three weeks earlier, so they were a new obsession of mine. I was probably also still listening to Madonna’s “Music” a lot. I was working part time as an assistant at a hedge fund. They would later offer me a full time job and I’d turn it down—something I still wonder about in terms of how that would’ve affected not only my finances but my eventual career trajectory.

I was living on the 24th floor of a Columbia University graduate student building in Washington Heights with a former college roommate. She was studying biology and graciously let me move in with her a year earlier after a serious relationship of mine had ended and I needed a place to live.

I was at the mid-point of what would be a two-year relationship. At the time, we weren’t getting along very well and on September 10, we decided not to talk for awhile. We thought it would be better if we had some time apart to figure things out.

That moratorium only lasted about 12 hours. We called each other the following morning. I went to his place where for the next four days we sat around, ate pasta and watched dumb tv comedies. We probably watched every episode ever recorded of “Whose Line Is It Anyway.” We avoided the news, something I now regret and probably wouldn’t do today.

On September 15, 2001, I had an overwhelming urge to take photos. Of something. I just knew I wanted to try to preserve whatever it was that was happening in NYC at the moment. I wound up in Union Square and took these pictures.

I distinctly remember subway rides being eerily quiet for the next few weeks. People mostly stared, shell-shocked. Everyone seemed unusually polite. A friend postponed a birthday party for a couple weeks, eventually having it on the night SNL had its first episode of the season. We watched the beginning of that episode at the party. Some of us cried.

Mine is not a terribly compelling story. Most of our stories from that time are not, and I think that in itself fuels our desire to tell them, to remember how normal life can be when it isn’t.