Creativity is the Opposite of Terror
Reflections on memories of 9/11, twenty years later
By Roxanna Myhrum
In the ruins of the World Trade Center on the 5th anniversary of 9/11.
I remember the red phone. It was old-school style with a coiled cord and grey plastic buttons squarely arranged on its squat frame. It sat on the non-functioning fireplace in my freshman dorm at Harvard, looking like a prop rejected from a B-list movie about the Cold War.
I used the red phone to call home after hearing the news from my roommate.
“Someone flew a plane into the World Trade Center!”
“I…I think my uncle works there.”
In New York City, Uncle Sean was also on the phone. He told my aunt Beverly that he was trapped above the impact zone in the South Tower. He was running out of air as fire consumed the building. Sean told Bev he loved her, and he sent love to his family.
After an eternity of busy signals, the red phone finally got through. My mom’s voice broke through the receiver as she told me the news.
“Sean’s gone.”
Remembering Uncle Sean at the 9/11 Memorial.
September 11th crashed into my life at a formative time. I look back at that day with still-volatile emotions: enormous sadness at the loss of my uncle, anger at the cruelty of senseless violence, and compassion for my 17-year-old self, who had no idea how to act at an elite university while newly shouldering the burden of grief. I yearned for a way to make meaning out of tragedy, for a space to express and engage with my big feelings, and a loving community who could help restore my faith in humanity.
Aunt Beverly’s 9/11 advocacy.
Image: European Press Photo Agency.
At first, my main model for how to cope came from my aunt, who channeled her grief into activism. Beverly Eckert became an important advocate for the formation of the 9/11 Commission, the 9/11 memorial, and many other initiatives that increased safety and security in the wake of the disaster. Her grief, I learned, was politically powerful. Personal stories of love and loss got attention, whether in Congressional testimony or in the press. Beverly learned how to tell Sean’s story effectively on the national stage.
While Beverly’s advocacy had healing properties and led to significant positive impacts, it also took an emotional toll, as it required her to revisit traumatic experiences over and over on behalf of her cause. Her grief could also be co-opted by others for dubious political purposes, especially as the years went by and memories of 9/11 entered the realm of cultural mythology. Pundits and politicians frequently lumped together the hugely varied experiences of 9/11 families, wrapping them in the questionable rhetoric of the “War on Terror.” These tragic accounts were then used to justify violent military actions, Islamophobia, illegal surveillance, immigration bans, and other divisive and destructive policies. None of these initiatives had my family’s backing, but they had billions and even trillions of dollars in funding, held in place by the fear-based retellings of our loved ones’ tragic tales.
After college, where 9/11 always loomed large in the background of my studies, I started scrappily building a career in the performing arts. I liked being in spaces where big feelings were welcomed, and where thoughtful, empathetic, skillful people collaborated to explore the boundaries of possibility and bring imagined worlds to life.
In 2015, as the artistic director of a non-profit theater, I joined Arts Advocacy Day, a sector-wide celebration and lobbying event at the State House organized by MassCreative. We were there to make the case for increased funding for the Mass Cultural Council, whose budget at the time still stagnated below levels set in the 1990s. To prepare, event organizers asked us to reflect on our personal stories of why arts mattered to us.
For the first time, the connections between 9/11 and my creative vocation came into focus. The arts not only filled a void in my heart and helped me heal, but they also gave me a civic laboratory where I could seek meaning, engage with complex emotions, and connect with others in a way that restored my optimism and sense of possibility. For years, my creative encounters on stage and on screen, in museums and on murals, in parks and on pages all provided a powerful rebuke to the destructive ethos of terror. Where terrorism sewed fear and hatred, creativity restored hope.
On this 20th anniversary of the September 11th attacks, I want more people, and especially elected officials, to see 9/11 as a call to creative action. I don’t want my uncle’s story and my family’s grief used any more to build walls or to deploy weapons. Combatting terror requires that we reject vengeful thinking and cultivate an ability to see each other’s wondrous possibilities. The best way to do that is to invest in creativity, and to make space for us all to engage with art.
In New York City with Uncle Sean and my brother at the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, circa 1990.