Journeys of the Questress - WTC
Empty Chairs
Home
The Way it Was - 1
The Way it Was - 2
Sept 19 - When Tomorrow Never Comes
Sept 27 - Oral Interpretation
Oct 5 - A Mile of Tears - Part 1
Oct 5 - A Mile of Tears - Part 2
Oct 5 - A Mile of Tears - Part 3
Oct 11 - Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow
Oct 28 - Each Day I Search the Rubble
Nov 12 - When Spires Fall
Nov 19 - 911 The Rape of America
Dec 14 - Just A Thought
Dec 18 - A Sense of Place
Feb 2 - Final Pass to the End Zone
March 3 - Sitting on the Edge
March 14- Do You Still Remember
March 20 - Virtual Walk-Through
March 25 - When Will It End - Part 1
March 25 - When Will It End - Part 2
April 1 - Towers of Light
May 14 - View From Above
May 30 - Tunnel At the End of the Light
May 31 - Seventeen Hundred
Aug 9 - From the Margins Erased
Aug 30 - The Train Doesn't Stop There Anymore
Sept 9 - Ceremonies of Light and Dark
Sept 10 - Just An Anniversary
Sept 12 - September Holds Great Promise
Literary Reflections
Rebirth and Resurrection
The Winter Garden Springs To Life
The Winter Garden Springs To Life - con't
Underpass to the Past
Rebuilding Ground Zero
Under Hallowed Ground
Borders
Yahrzeit
What Will Fill the Void?
I Submit a Design
Footprints in the Dust
My Memorial Design Submission
My Memorial Design - Drawings
New Path Train Station
Path Station Tour
May We Never Forget
That Which Surives
War Without End
4th Anniversary
Footprints in the Dust
Void
I Miss 9/11
Time Comes Between Us
A Thousand Cranes
Fear Factor
Love Letters On The Wall
Empty Chairs
Sitting on the Edge of Forever
Walking the Perimeter of Emptiness
A Counting of Days
For Friends Absent But Not Forgotten
Stigmata
The Memory Keeper's Promise
Unbreak My Heart
Standing On The Edge Of Forever
Both Sides Now
A Memory In Time
The Gravity of Loss
The Survivors Rise Up
Flowers Will Bloom
The Fire Within Us
The Sentinel
Stronger Than The Storm
Between the Candle and the Stars
Ghosts
A Journey Through Remembrance
Canticle of Remembrance
Beyond the Crucible of Chaos
Journey Through Remembrance project
What See We Now
Forever In Our Hearts
Keeping the Flame Alive
The Rebuilding of Ground Zero continues
Does Anyone Care Anymore?
Where Is Our Story Teller of Pain
At Memory's Edge
Dust Thou Art and to Dust Thou Shalt Return
7x7x70
Heroes Never Die
The Flame Inside Our Hearts
The Year of the Heroes of 9/11
Déjà Vu
Remembering 9/11 in the year of COVID-19
Coronavirus Decimates Ailing Sept. 11 Responders
Touching From a Distance
That Which Survives 20 years later
2021 - 20 years later
Memories of Terror Return
Putin's Name Covered Over On Teardrop Memorial
The 9/11 Tribute Museum Closes
When Memories Fade Away
St. Nicholas at Ground Z is rebuilt
The Blue Wall of the Unidentified Victims
When Time Calls Your Name
When Art Gets It All Wrong

newbanner2.jpg

 
Empty Chairs - 6th Anniversary Reflections

“Why do you write about ‘it’?” She asked me. “You lost no one, you weren’t down there on that day. So why do you continue to take a tragedy and use it for your ‘art’?” My friend feels that we have become a nation focused on remembering and glorifying tragedies. She believes in moving on, not looking back.
 
However, moving on does not mean forgetting, turning our backs on this or any other major tragedy that involves human lives. Moving on, in the most healthy sense, is to become unstuck from the past but continuing to be mindful of how it impacts the present. Indeed, how can we “forget” that day when we continue to find human remains in what is now a construction pit, when more lives are lost because a contaminated building catches fire, a building 9/11’s events contaminated! The past always impacts the present, no mater how hard we try to ignore that fact.
 
The past also defines who we are. Just as the Nazi holocaust defined a generation and the following generation of 20th century Jews, Hiroshima and Nagasaki changed how generations of Japanese view themselves and their nation, so has 9/11 altered our national identity. The who we were before that day we are not now regardless of where one lived or who one lost or did not lose on that day.
 
Why is 9/11 and Ground Zero a part of my artistic reparatory? It’s not the past but the present that inspires me. I am a reporter taking notes on the transformation of things past into the emotions of today because these powerful emotions need to be expressed for healing to occur.
 
But finally, it’s about people: Those who were impacted, those who still try to cope, those whose loved ones just vanished. I fear that some day they will hold a 9/11 anniversary ceremony and the chairs will be empty. Will people then only read names inscribed upon walls? And what will those names mean to the reader? Who will understand the blood, sweat, and tears that went into the long rebuilding of Ground Zero? History is kept alive through art, today becomes yesterday and is immortalized and understood through art. That’s the only way to make sure those chairs will never be empty. 
                                          
(c) 2007 Leona M Seufert