UN LIVRE UTILE 54

February 4th 2005

I’m writing down the post-script of the «After 9/11 » documentary which I recently acquired. Having been a privileged member of the World Premier of this Ford Foundation funded documentary on the after effects of 9/11 last fall 2003, I have since been somewhat of a secret fan of this documentary. I wish to take a minute and write down the transcript of the postscript of the movie as I feel it provides the key to keeping my eyes open and my mind awake which is my opinion, the greatest threat of all nations and peoples living on this continent.

« I only wish that I could weep. »
Walid Ra’ad +Atlas Group 2001
http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/works/i-only-wish/

It was clear to me from the get go that it was feodal(?) to attempt an assault from the outside. These irrational and often repression old yawns would not give up their power to logical reasoning or conceptual language but had to be confronted on their own turf. One had to redream the old dream, the story behind the story was in the story. If God was made in thinking story tellers image, than god could only be unmade by telling a better story. One couldn’t analyse red writing hard away, one could only crawl in bed with grany and the wolfes and hope for the best. As Nietzche said: “We can destroy only as creators.”
Perhaps it should have been more esthetically plaising had I began by the introduction. The advantage of knowing what came at the end, I think is telling of what the author is truly trying to get answers. Here is the introduction of the documentary.

“From the early age it seemed to me that we were born into the dreams of others. Dreams owned and systematized and transmitted by language and specifically by stories. And so conditioned were we to accept this mythic environment we fail even to be aware of it. This mob memory environed us and became a projection of ourselves just as it had helped to shape those selves and mostly it seemed to me to our disadvantage. Our tribal dreamtime in short was something of a nightmare. Conjured up and perpetuated by stoned, dreamers, charlatans and madmen. Or rather we were all somewhat mad, driving so by our desperate mortal condition. And this bizarre residue of dead centuries was the public manifestation of our common pathology.”

The first person to speak also stands out in a somewhat defined perspective.

“The footage of the two planes crushing on September the 11th 2001 into the two tours of the World Trade Center has been broadcast over and over again. We cannot forget it. Those who staged it certainly don’t want you to forget it; and neither those President Bush, no the other Western governments, remind will you that everything our governments are doing on this so called war on terrorism or alternatively against evil is the response to the event of Sept. 11th. Killing civilians in Afghanistan, violating the human rights of those detained, curbing our civil liberties, it’s all justified because of the events of September 11th. Remember, you saw it, thousands dead; we owe it to their memories, they say, to fight back, to make sure this does not happen again. It would certainly seem to be illogical to regard the events of Sept. 11th as cause but uncaused. And it seems to me that the US administration wants us to see the war against terrorism as an effect of Sept. 11th rather than a longer perspective of inequality, military intervention and imperialism imposition. The problem then is that the supposed respect to the dead stands in the way of debate and this is why I am asking you to forget September 11th. It certainly seems to me to be a better idea than forgetting ourselves in the names of the memories of the dead.”

Lo