Attacks stir an artistic rejoinder

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Maine artists in many instances have been deeply affected by last year’s terrorist attacks. The following is a sampling of their reactions and their insights a year later.

Camden author Tess Gerritsen was in Seattle on Sept. 11, 2001, trying to get back to Maine. It took her six days longer than expected to return to the East Coast. “You just couldn’t find a plane,” Gerritsen recalled. She tried to rent a car but none was available.

“I was stranded,” said Gerritsen, who has made The New York Times best-seller list several times.

Gerritsen’s stalled-out existence in Seattle didn’t make much difference, in the long run, to her work. The physician-turned-author recalled the professional “paralysis” that took over her spirit.

“The effect was immediate. For the first couple of months after September 11, 2001, I couldn’t work,” Gerritsen said.

“I was questioning whether or not novel writing had an actual role when real tragedy was happening.”

She questioned her goals as a writer. “Why write fiction when it’s so irrelevant?” she asked herself. Time and thinking about her craft have changed her point of view, said Gerritsen, who now is on tour promoting her newest book, “The Apprentice” (Ballantine Books).

Writing mysteries is a psychological process, according to Gerritsen. “I’m interpreting good versus evil in a particular genre. It’s a way for me and for others to work out things. Mystery books are very therapeutic,” Gerritsen said.

Xiao-Lu Li, new music director and conductor of the Bangor Symphony Orchestra, lost a personal friend when United Airlines Flight 93 crashed into a Pennsylvania field on Sept. 11, 2001. A board member of the Eastern Connecticut Symphony Orchestra, where he served as conductor, died on the flight. Twelve days later, Xiao-Lu Li played an exquisitely beautiful piece as part of his audition for the Bangor post. The poignant “Meditation de Thais,” for solo violin and orchestra, was made more haunting by the maestro’s interpretation during a concert on Sept. 23, 2001.

“The fact he could play the violin as superbly as he did so soon after his loss, it was remarkable,” recalled Catherine LeClair, marketing director for the Bangor Symphony Orchestra.

In a telephone conversation, Xiao-Lu Li said Sept. 11, 2001, and its aftermath “have taught us to know better and to become more deeply convinced that our symphony orchestras not only provide enjoyment but they are also part of healing and recovery for the human soul.”

Though the economy is affecting support for the orchestra right now, Xiao-Lu Li said, “Eventually, people will know how important it is to support the local symphony orchestra because it offers a direct connection to the community for healing and for joy.”

The world is watching New York City

Washington and PA

Red eyes crying for my country

Blue skies feel so dark today

Is this real what I am seeing?

Looks more like some bad TV show

I know soon I should be leaving

But I don’t know if I can go

Lyrics from “Forever Free” Copyright 2002, Anni Clark

Maine singer-songwriter Anni Clark was stunned by the awful television images the morning of Sept. 11, 2001. A feeling of emptiness overpowered her after viewing the second plane crash into the World Trade Center, stifling whatever creative momentum she possessed, Clark said. Several months after the tragedy, Clark penned “Forever Free,” a defiant yet hopeful song about the survival of the human spirit. The song is part of her fifth CD, “Big Water,” to be released in October. It can be downloaded now from Clark’s Web site, www.anniclark.com.

Clark was at her Old Orchard Beach home that day.

“I hardly ever turn on the television that time of day, but I was getting ready to leave on my first vacation in seven years, and I had to pull all my office stuff together. I needed a break, so I came downstairs and turned on the TV and I saw it live,” Clark recalled.

“I heard them [news commentators] talk about the first plane and then I saw the second plane. I turned the TV off and thought it was a mistake. Then I tuned in Maine Public Radio and everyone was saying the same thing. There was a blank in me for a while,” Clark said.

Then she turned the television on again to hear the Pentagon was bombed. She called her mother in Yarmouth. “She was the best,” Clark said.

“I just wailed, ‘Mommmm!'”

“She said, ‘Honey, just because those people are doing this, don’t stop being your giving, believing self.'”

The song, “Forever Free,” was “written months later and is about what I had to decide to do in the next six days after the bombings,” Clark said.

It was the hardest song she ever wrote, Clark said.

“I was stopped-up lyrically, and it didn’t come until I had recorded my CD. Then I realized this song was inside me and was ready to bubble up.

“I really needed to record it now because 9-11 is coming up again and I had to know how I had been feeling. It was not an easy spilling,” Clark said.