*Many of the victims of 9/11*
Wow. Six years since 9/11. The world has changed a lot since that day, and like other major events in the world, I will never forget who I was and where I was when it happened. Long hair, Iron Maiden t-shirt, working as a web developer at The Delta Institute in Telford. I got into work and heard about the attacks. None of the news sites worked apart from Sky News, all bogged down as people scabbled for scraps of information. It felt like the sky was falling in, and for a little while, nothing felt safe.
One of the hardest things when composing a vision in your head of an event like that is defining a scale, and trying to get an accurate hold on the sheer level of destruction and pain inflicted on so many innocent people. I don’t think I will ever understand, and I never want to cast an illusion that I do understand. I will always remain shocked, disgusted and repulsed of what happened.
Everyone pays their respects to those who were lost in their own way, and in Seraphidian we wrote a song called Act Of War which highlighted the many issues involved – the loss of life, the insanity behind it, the extremism and the senselessness. In fact, it is the only song we ever self censored on – the original version we produced in the studio had some news clips from 9/11 at the beginning of the song, but having played it to some friends, it led people to tears. We decided to remove the clips from the record and the live show.
Extremism in any form is bad, but in a world in which extremism can be the only solution to get your voice heard, more and more people resort to it. The dominance of one should never drown out the choir of reason. Lets hope this is a lesson more and more people learn.
