Twin Tapers - the 9/11 memorial lights

via cellphone, 9/11/2010

As we do each year we went down to Battery Park city to see the World Trade Center memorial lights.  This year for the first time there was a public action that was beneath the dignity the day demands.  That was, of course, the protests against erection of a mosque a few blocks away.   Sad.

Tonight's stroll reminded me of this piece I wrote in March 2002 - six months after the catastrophe, when the lights first appeared.


Twin Tapers


Two weeks ago, on a clear night, at 7:00 PM sharp, as I drove home on the George Washington Bridge, two columns, like giant flashlight beams, stood out against the almost blue sky of the city after dusk, at the spot where the WTC  stood.  For now they shine nightly.  Visible for 20 miles, they evoke an ineffable sadness.  They recall but cannot restore the skyline.  They highlight the towers’ absence, and those lost.


The two columns stand apart, quite like the towers.  But they are evanescent, not steel, and the City turns them off at 11:00 PM, or when the FAA flight controllers call to douse them.   Dozens of powerful lamps are needed to create these light shafts that now pierce the city night.   The beams change.  Faint at dusk, they sharpen as the sky darkens, and blur when the city’s competing lights illuminate the night when clouds are low, and the air is thick.  In their light low clouds glow.


As a child my favorite place in church was the votive candle rack.  Perched on a wrought iron frame in ranks like the seats in a stadium, yellow flames flickered in red glass.  Lighting a candle made a prayer special.  The call lasted as long as the candle burned.  These new twin tapers are our votive candles.  Their evanescence captures the loss so palpably that it is both disquieting and reassuring.  Turning a corner in the city, glimpsing the lights, we welcome the new landmark.  They anchor us, as the towers once did, showing us where we stand, like a lighthouse beacon aids the mariner.  The lights remind us that but for chance, there were we.   Ethereal, they express our fragility, our vulnerability.  They assure us that we do remember, that we have neither forgotten, nor forgiven.

The two lights quickly became part of our landscape.  Yet the City says they are a temporary memorial, to be turned off April 13.  But there is little precedent for turning off the lights in New York.  They temporarily lighted the bridges for the New York World Fair 40 years ago but the necklaces of light burn every night on every suspension bridge in the city.  After the Chrysler building got its art deco zig-zag lights, many other towers were illuminated.  First the commercial cathedrals of the Woolworth,  New York Life, and the Empire State buildings, then the Riverside Church campanile, and a dozen other lofty towers were bathed in spotlights every night. These new lights have earned their keep, and will become, I hope, part of the permanent 9/11 memorial, an aid to recall all we lost.

- George  Conk  March 25, 2002