i guess everyone has a 9/11 story and mine ended up very tied to music -- specifically one divisive album.
TLDR: neutral milk hotel's 'in the aeroplane over the sea' is my 9/11 album
for a variety of circumstances, i ended up as the lone business traveler of my team who flew out of DC on 9/8 and landed in london on 9/9. the rest of the team was supposed to join later in the week...as was my wife, who was planning to join me for my second week in london and some vacation time.
needless to say, no one else joined me in london as planned after the events on 9/11 since all air travel was completely shut down for over a week. the clients i had only just started working with shut down their office for the week...although i really didnt have close relationships with any of them...or anyone else in london for that matter. so, i was alone in london during the single most horrific event of my lifetime with far fewer means of communicating with my family and friends than we have today. phones lines were jammed for days...so i could only email my family.
what i did have with me was a sony discman and about a dozen CDs, including a new one that i had not yet heard. the new-to-me-at-the-time album -- 'in the aeroplane over the sea' -- was given to me with a strong recommendation on how much i would love it by a friend who's life actually is music: he's been in multiple bands, founded a sound studio, worked as a sound engineer, and toured internationally with the likes of sting and herbie hancock. he knew that i was a long-time fan of 70s/80s punk and was really just starting to get into the emerging "indie" sound of the late 90s.
so, alone in london, i began walking all over the city with my discman and CDs just to stay out of my hotel room where i felt the loneliest that i'd every felt in my life. if you know the album, then you likely immediately understand why i connected with it so deeply given it's range of emotion and subject matter.
a lyric:
And here's where your mother sleeps
And here is the room where your brothers were born
Indentions in the sheets
Where their bodies once moved but don't move anymore
and, a video for the song 'holland, 1945' if you've never heard the album (warning: it's sort of high-concept punk...not exactly a top 40 / popular sound):