Matt Hobbs

Thanks to Banksy for reminding us all of some of the less savory side effects of five years ago. He snuck a dummy of a Guantanamo Bay detainee beside a Disneyland ride this weekend.

Of course luckily for that dummy it was only ‘detained’ at Disneyland for 90 minutes as opposed to almost five years…

A pause. A moment to remember. A moment to acknowledge what happened five years ago.

My memories of that day are alternately blurred and movie screen intense. Although I was living in New York at the time, work had taken me out to State College Pennsylvania where I would spend my weekdays. That Tuesday, I woke up in my hotel room and really didn’t feel like going in – but somehow I dragged myself out of bed and into the office. I’d been there about ten minutes before one of our developers said ‘You should come and look at this’ – he showed me the front page of some news website with a drawn graphic of a plane hitting the World Trade Tower. A drawn graphic! I look back at that now and realise that means they had images ready for planes hitting the towers before it happened.

The whole of our team just looked at the page in shock. We knew people in the towers. In fact one of our team, Max, had only been working there a month or so before on the last project our company had done for Marsh McLennan. We checked other news sites – soon every site started coming up ‘server overloaded’, except BBC News who had reverted to their text only ’emergency broadcast’ mode. The headlines all said the same – plane hits World Trade Center. What was happening? Was this an accident? How could a plane not miss the towers? Was everyone OK?

One of our client team told us there was a TV in the office gym, so we all rushed down and stood in a group of about 15 people staring in disbelief. The first tower ablaze. Long distance tracking of people jumping out of the top floors. A couple, hand in hand, their business suits trailing behind them, falling down together. The smoke, thick and black pouring out of the building.

Then. A second plane. No doubt remained – this was not an accident. Disbelief ran the room. The TV commentators at a loss. Both towers ablaze. Now the cameras stayed wide angle – both towers burning seen from mid-town. Noone sure what was happening. Everyone looking dazed but trying to stay professional.

Suddenly one of the towers went down. All of us watched – mouths agape. How could this happen? What was happening? How? What? There was no sense to this. No understanding. Then the other tower went, and flatness prevailed. No emotion was strong enough to deal with this now. We sat. Staring at the now devastated New York skyline. Exchanging the odd sentence of disbelief as the screens continued to show the same nothing.

Then pictures of people covered in dust walking across Brooklyn Bridge. Footage coming in from the field of the dust clouds billowing down streets. Statements. People missing. Crowds staring. Noone sure what was happening, but everyone trying to help or make sense of it – or just breaking down in tears where they stood.

All of this was happening 300 miles away from us – back home. Cellphones hadn’t been working all morning. Email was our best friend – I mailed out to everyone I knew saying I was fine, a long way away. Emails came in from friends to say they were OK too, but who was unnaccounted for? Eventually I got in touch with my girlfriend of the time and she was ok after the whole morning of not knowing. Later I would find out that everyone I worked with was OK.

We watched for a while. Members of the client team came in to see if we were OK, knowing we were all from New York. Eventually we left the office and drove to a sportsbar. Every one of thirty or so screens, ranging in size from 10 feet across to 20 inches, tuned to different news channels. Every screen showing the same burning images. Nothing changed for the rest of the day till we staggered back to the hotel exhausted and confused.

That Friday we drove back into town as usual. Work had continued in State College – we’d seen no point in heading back, what could we do? Could we even get across Manhattan? Although looking back I’m not even sure we considered going back to any real degree. When we finally drove across George Washington bridge we got our first glimpse of the fires, still burning three days later. All of us stared out the window in disbelief. At the shattered skyline.

Back home my girlfriend came over to mine, as I still couldn’t get to her apartment being south of the 14th Street exclusion zone. That short trip had unnerved her immensely – she wasn’t even sure if she’d be able to get back home. She looked tired and upset and both of us were in tears. That was when I started to feel like a tourist again – even though I’d been in New York for almost four years. Being out of town and away from friends on that day there was now a distance, an absence of connection that hadn’t been there before. I stayed on my roof out in Brooklyn for hours just staring at the smoke rising into the sky – smoke that would continue for days yet. It was almost two weeks later before I saw the devastation at close hand.

Five years on. Is the world a better place? Are we safe from terror – or just living in fear so much that, on average, those nasty terrorists don’t seem so bad any more. Certainly more people have died in the ‘War on Terror’ then have argueably been saved. More civil liberties have been quashed in the name of freedom.

Sometimes I like to stop and imagine and world where the Twin Towers still stand. Where Gore got into government. Where Bush remained just a bad joke of a candidate, not the worst joke of a president. Unfortunately we’ll never know if those were better times – I hope they are for whatever parallel world it happened in that way. Now, please, can we get on with making this world a better one without killing everyone to achieve it.

In memorium: Roberta Bernstein Heber, Sue Clyne and John Ueltzhoeffer.

‘Crocodile Hunter’ Steve Irwin has been killed by a stingray while filming a documentary. Wow. And not only that, he was apparently swimming above the stingray when it somehow stabbed him right through the heart with its sting. That’s pretty amazing all things considered. Whenever stingrays were brought up in our diving lessons they were always considered a slight risk, but incredibly rare – the main risk being when walking along the sea bed, as when you tread on them by accident they tend to sting your legs, so you should always shuffle along the sand to scare them away.

We’ll crack a tinny for ya Steve-o.

Thanks to today’s word game over at Merriam-Webster for this great quote from Muhammed Ali:

“It’s just a job. Grass grows, birds fly, waves pound the sand. I beat people up.” – quoted in the New York Times

This all fits very nicely in with my current reading of the entire Buddha series by Osamu Tezuka, creator of Astro-Boy. The main tenet put forward here, and I guess in Buddha’s teachings but that would involve actual research outside of the comic, is that everything in nature is connected, and we must all do our part without expecting others to do it for us. Combined with complete relinquishment of your ego this will, eventually, lead to enlightenment and all the good things that come with that. So it would appear that Ali was a particularly enlightened chap.

ps, as an aside my favourite word game on Merriam Webster is ‘Letter Rip‘. A good pastime, and probably less dangerous than Boggle!

Good news in the art world – Anish Kapoor, creator of some of my all-time favourite art pieces such as Marsyas and the Three Witches, is going to be installing a piece at Rockefeller Plaza in a few weeks. The new ‘sky mirror’ looks highly impressive and in the same epic scope as Kapoor’s more recent pieces. Huge, daunting yet integrated at the same time, unlike the Gates in Central Park – and I’m sure it will be a lot harder for anyone to steal a piece of this!

I first came across Kapoor’s work at the art museum in Ontario back in 1993 – the first of what has turned into many trips to Canadia. There, in the middle of the large open rooms, were three granite blocks – each with a slit cut into them brushed with dark blue pigment – facing each other. There was something dark and interesting about these holes, the blueness tantalizing, the feeling that you should be looking inside although you weren’t quite sure if there was an inside. Or maybe it was infinite in there, you had no real sense of scale. Kapoor plays with these concepts with ease, causing a mix of dis-comfort and familiarity with his viewers – active participants in sculptures that demand interaction. From then on I was hooked.

Since that first encounter I’ve tried to see as many Kapoor pieces as possible. Every major modern gallery has one or two – the dusted bright colours from his early periods, highly polished metals and curves from later years, or the epic stretched red canvas of his, all too brief, spot in the turbine hall at the Tate. Every one brings a new sense of wonder, of horizon. Once, at the Lisson Gallery, I caught a brief glimpse of the man himself, chatting with companions about his new pieces. One of those times I found no courage to go up and just thank him for the wonders he’d brought into being.

Now Kapoor is one of those international artists who cities fight over for the chance to exhibit. His new works are at a scale that, while dwarfing us, still somehow manage to embrace and welcome us. I guess this means it’s unlikely I’ll ever be able to buy one for my front room, but at least I get to share that sense of awe with more people round the world. Thanks Anish.

A big round of congratulations please for my little sister Abby – who just got her GCSE results and got… wait for it… all As! Not only that a large chunk of them were A*!!! That definately deserves some more exclamation marks!!!!! Well done Abby {:)

Exotic travel, international cartels, rogue French mercenaries and hackers – this potent blend comes together in Evans’ capable hands to create his latest highly enjoyable novel. From the very beginning I found myself drawn into the story, following from India, through France then onto America with a cast of characters who leave you wanting to find out more at every twist and turn. And twist and turn the story does in a manner slightly reminiscent of a good Bond tale, with modern (read: not sexist) sensibilities. This is a solid, enjoyable romp of a book which would be enjoyed by anyone with a mind to adventure, travel of hacking – especially if you have a nice sunny beach to enjoy it on. Wait. Is that something happening in the tropical forest next to me? I must go and investigate…

Disclosure: Jon Evans is a friend of mine and a lovely chap he is to. That said I don’t think that’s coloured my review, especially since he didn’t feature me in there as a cameo character unlike the best book in the world ever which for some reason is now out of print! Hmm. Guess I’m not the box office draw I thought I was.

Having read Martel’s very enjoyable Life of Pi a while back I was happy to find his latest in a Montreal second hand store. Turns out that synchronicity is relevant, as Martel is based in Montreal now as is a large chunk of this story of a boy who loses his parents, then one day wakes up as a woman. Martel writes with a sense of poignancy that grabs you and takes you underneath the skin of his main character. There is distance between the character and his/her life but over-ridingly a sense of joy and life. As she/he moves from place to place, person to person you get a sense of the slowness of life and growth as it can sometimes exist – a slowness that does not exist for the book, where every page pulls you forward to the next. A great book.

After reading the amazing Tipping Point, Gladwell’s famous first book, I have been avidly waiting reading his latest. Having tackled the growth of information in social contexts, Gladwell now turns his incisive and explanatory mind to the subject of split-second judgements. That moment when you see someone and fall in love. The way you can prejudice your decisions from a glance. Why the Pepsi taste challenge could never be won by Coke. Every chapter offers a new set of stories backing up a central premise, and each story is fascinating and engagingly written. However at the end of the book I felt like I had eaten a light snack rather than something filling and satisfying. True, I now have a great set of stories to relate in marketing situations, but ultimately I was a bit disapointed. Still a must read book.

Sometimes you just have to face up to the facts and realise that what you think is a good thing is actually a tattered shell of its former self, based on self-delusion and denial. These things happen, life is full of change which is a ‘good thing’. Yet sometimes it’s so hard to just let go, even when it’s for the best…

And so it is, with great sadness, that I have to announce the retirement of one of my favourite t-shirts. A classic Brooklyn Industries design purchased in 2003 on a brief stop-over from England to Australia. It’s literally been with me round the world and, if truth be told, it’s showing it somewhat. Those pad thai stains from Khao San road, the weathering from dive trips and the Jack & Coke stains from its home town of Williamsburg where it finally comes to rest.

Goodbye dear friend. You will oft be remembered… until BI makes another t-shirt I like better of course.