Inside Audio: Dave Moulton
The Media’s Role on Sept. 11
By the time you read this, it’ll be early November and you’ll
be sick of reading about the sad events of Sept. 11. But as I write
this, it’s only been a week and I’m still stuck in those
events – I’m sorry, but I can’t write about anything
else quite yet. So, I need you to rewind, briefly. I’m going
to share with you some feelings I had that day, feelings that hopefully
may have some relevance for readers of TV Technology.
On that awful day I was busy preparing to attend the Audio Engineering
Society Convention in New York. After the two towers collapsed,
I found myself hoping that AES would cancel the convention –
I wanted no part of that awful, terrible, tragic place. (In fact,
AES ended up postponing the convention, for very good logistical
reasons, but not out of the kind of horror or grief I felt.)
Later on, however, during that long and appalling Tuesday afternoon,
it became clear to me that it was actually quite important for us
to have a convention, in New York City, as soon as possible. This
should happen for all the sorts of reasons that you already know:
We need to carry on and to be seen carrying on; we need to bear
witness to our loss and acknowledge it; and we need to grieve, publicly,
with our friends and colleagues.
TRIVIAL PURSUITS?
At the same time, in the face of the terrible magnitude of that
awful array of events, I had a feeling that I’m certain many
of you shared: I felt my own work was trivial. What value, what
merit is there – in the face of such overbearing horror –
in what I do for a living? What significance is there in my efforts
to write about things like "bad audio," or in trying to
develop "better loudspeakers," or in teaching people how
to make "better recordings" – even to my efforts
to "write music?"
These things all feel utterly unimportant, utterly insignificant,
utterly irrelevant in the face of the wholesale death, destruction
and desecration of human values that we have just experienced. I’m
sure many of you must have had similar thoughts. Getting out a sitcom,
dubbing in SFX, grinding out ADR must all have felt almost surrealistically
useless and absurd that Tuesday.
But what also occurred to me, as I continued to worry about it,
is that what we do – all of us in these various media industries
of TV, records, music, movies, etc. – is honorable work. By
honorable work, I mean work that is recognized and admired for its
qualities of humanness, work that illuminates and enriches human
life, work that gives us comfort and an enhanced awareness and understanding
of the world we live in.
Think about it. We are honorable people, doing honorable work
that has value and merit. And that is something that none of the
perpetrators of this horror can ever again have. To achieve their
ends, they sacrificed their honor, descending to base criminal acts
that are utterly incompatible with honor and human merit.
They befouled themselves forever by their abandonment of honorable
ways. Honor embraces a code of personal integrity and dignity that
elicits respect and admiration from all humanity, a code that characterizes
the highest qualities in humans.
We work to make things better for all, not to make things worse
for some. Our work may seem trivial, but it is nonetheless honorable
work of real value. By that simple fact, we stand apart and above
the miserable, deficient miscreants who sought to hurt us on Sept.
11. In comparison to us, they are nothing.
WITNESS TO HISTORY
The other thought I had that day, glued as I was to the television,
was how immediately visible and audible it all was – and from
how many perspectives. Everybody had a video camera, it seemed,
and we got to see and hear it all. Aside from the long telephoto
shots from midtown network vantage points, amateur handheld shots
gave us a series of views that were compelling and, at the same
time, oddly comforting.
I tell you this as a survivor, not out of ghoulish fascination.
You see, years ago my first wife was killed suddenly in a violent
accident. I found myself needing to go to the site of her death,
simply to understand what happened, to know how she really died
and to accept that she was really gone. I needed to bear witness
to her death, to share with her as best I could her final moments,
and to say goodbye and wish her well. This is, of course, extraordinarily
painful. It is also necessary.
Something like that was at work as we watched every scrap of tape
showing what happened that Tuesday. By seeing it over and over from
those many different perspectives, we could tell much about how
it happened, as well as where and when. It will help us, finally,
to say goodbye to our loved ones.
And it is important to note that it was often the most poorly
shot stuff, in the technical sense, that was the most compelling
and somehow "truthful" in this regard. It was the most
amateurish material that was least like a movie and most like real
life that hit us the most.
For instance, there was a segment that showed, on an innocently
bright Tuesday morning before the first crash, a shot of a fireman
standing on the street being videotaped for something unrelated
to the disaster. Suddenly the camera cut away to catch an improbably
low-flying airliner traveling south, which then even more improbably
plows into the North Tower. A very rapid, amateurish shot zooms
in on the fireball. That was no movie. That was what really happened.
Or the shot upward from the base of the South Tower, just as the
second plane came into the frame and disappeared – surrealistically
– into the building. What? What was that? Did you see that?
What?
Finally – the footage taken by a doctor who had come to help,
his videocam capturing the tragedy. The camera continued to run
as he got swallowed up in the cloud of soot and debris as the North
Tower suddenly collapsed on the area around him. Here was another
case of some really bad audio – after the soot engulfed him
and his camera, the sound was darkly muffled (I assume the mic was
coated with soot – and of course the dust also would tend to
dramatically muffle the sound). And finally, that dark muffled ambience
– like the sound when heavy snow is falling in still air, quiet
except for the keening of some bizarre high-pitched wailing looping
over and over like a distant agonized banshee stuck in endless grief
– was unforgettable.
Yes, it really happened. We all were there.
Thanks for listening.
Dave Moulton is in mourning. You can write to him at moultonlabs.com.
© 2001 by David Moulton
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