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| Ed Hale studying at a language school in San Jose Costa Rica |
Throughout the Summer of 2001 I was living in San Jose Costa Rica. Having been advised that if "The Ambassador" wanted to perfect his Spanish to semi-fluency, as I had done with several other foreign languages previously, that I would need full immersion, I would need to live somewhere where Spanish was the native tongue. Word on the street was that the two best countries to learn Spanish "accent free" were Colombia or Costa Rica. (Colombia as it turns out, I would explore later). But I didn't know that then. I chose Costa Rica over Colombia primarily due to the civil and governmental unrest in Colombia at the time compared to the placid laid back atmosphere that was promised in Costa Rica.
And they were right. From the moment you get off the plane in San Jose you can feel it. The police officers in Costa Rica appear and feel more like Tour Guides. Costa Rica has no standing army. If they need help militarily they call on the United States. Gambling and other such vices are perfectly legal, though not often spoken of. The people are warm and friendly, welcoming. Not quite Brasilian mind you, but what is? A cab took me to my new school and standing outside the school there on a street corner was a young smiling Costa Rican holding a sign on a long pole that said "Bienvenido Senor Ed Hale." This was going to be a good summer.
Instead of staying with "a family" as most students of foreign languages do, I chose instead to stay at the closest hotel to the school I could find. That hotel happened to be an 18th Century French hotel. Yes this was quite an oddity. The staff at the hotel spoke a mind-boggling fusion of French and Spanish. My three square meals were either typical Costa Rican or traditional French cuisine. It was by almost any account near paradise. I had an incredible room. An incredible balcony to sit on each night smoking fantastically fresh Cuban cigars while studying. I had TV in Spanish, one of the best ways to learn a foreign language I have ever found to this day.
The school was the most famous and highest rated school in the country for foreigners wishing to learn Spanish as a second language. The staff came from all over the world; and so did the students. In my classes were Germans, Poles, Italians, Dutchies, and Swiss. There was only one other American at the school that summer. The Hodge. Hodge was from the South, a Sophomore at University of Alabama and proud of it. The first words out of his mouth when he walked over to introduce himself to me were "Duuuuude! Whazzup dog? Yer American? Me too yo. I'm getting credit for this shit. Can you believe it? I go to 'Bama. Last year we were voted the number one partying school in the country! We gotta hang out man. Being Americans, we can tear this city up dog! The chicks freaking love us here man!"
And as if to prove the prescience of the young Southern buck's words, that is pretty much what we did that summer. That is until September 11th. Due to the rather lax laws in Costa Rica, combined with the value of our American dollars, young Hodge and I did things that Summer I hadn't even done on the road as the lead singer of a rock band. Things that make it impossible for me to write about now in a public forum such as this. All we had to do was go to class all day, head home and change, hit the gym, and then hit the Casinos and Clubs. San Jose has a banging night life. Especially for Americans and Europeans. I will never forget the first night we entered our first casino. We walked in slowly, cautiously, for we were in uncharted waters, and as the smoke cleared and our eyes became adjusted to the low light, there before us stood in various shapes and forms at least fifty to sixty drop dead gorgeous young Latina girls. It looked like the playboy mansion, or something out of a tawdry reality show. They were there for one reason and one reason only. As were we.
Crammed Spanish during the day. Partied through most of the nights. We got educated in more than just the Spanish language. That's for sure. Never mind the weekend jaunts to the coasts where all sorts of flora and fauna and animals and insects abounded, in addition to beautiful seaside resorts and calm cool crystal clear oceans. This had turned out to be one hell of a Summer.
But that's when it happened. Right smack dab in the middle of day to day life. Just like everyone else I suppose. I woke up groggy and headachey from the night before, reached over in my bed to call downstairs for someone to bring me some coffee as I did every morning, and the voice on the other end of the phone did not greet me as I was accustomed to. In fact, the first words he spoke after "Buenas Dias Senor" were "We are all very sorry senor Haley (this is what they called me, never being able to quite understand the concept of the "silent e"), lo siento mucho senor..." "Sorry for what?" I mumbled into the phone with my eyes still closed. "Maybe you should turn on TV senor..."
And that was it. That was the moment. The moment for all of us. Conservative suburbanites and liberal rockers alike. It didn't matter what channel I had turned on first. Every channel was showing the same thing. There right there right in front of my blood-shot and dreary eyes was a picture of a freaking airplane jammed into the side of what appeared to be a giant skyscraper. Fire. Smoke. A marquee at the bottom of the screen said "American under attack." What the fuck? America doesn't get under attacked!!! America attacks, sure, every few years America finds some reason to invade some foreign country that we've never heard of somewhere in the world. But America does not get attacked back. It's impossible. But it was possible. I was seeing it with my own eyes.
Every few seconds they would show the plane slamming into the building again, in case we missed it the first fifty times they showed it. I was awe-struck. Dumb-founded. Shocked. I sat at the edge of the foot of my bed with my mouth hanging open. As everyone I'm sure, I was completely aghast. And then the unthinkable happened. Another plane appeared in the sky and the announcers on television started attempting to describe it and predict just what the hell the plane was doing. But to most it was obvious. Merely by the strange angle, its trajectory, and the speed at which it was flying. That plane was headed right for the other tower. And so it was. In real time, sitting in a strange old French hotel in Central America, I watched this second plane smash into this giant indestructible skyscraper in New York City.
It was at this point that I screamed. I didn't move. I couldn't move. I was too shocked to take my eyes away from the television. Instead I just sat there screaming. As loudly as I could. These were not shrieks of terror. They were screams of anger. I never felt so angry. Nor have I since. I knew that after two to three minutes of repeated screaming at the top of my lungs that I must have been scaring the living hell out of all the other guests, and the staff, of the hotel I was in that morning. I also knew that being the only American staying there that they wouldn't dare say anything to me. What we all just witnessed was too horrific for blame or recrimination for "disturbing the peace." Tears were rolling down my face. I felt helpless. All I could do was watch. Anger and helplessness. Soon turned into a very strong desire for vengeance.
The phone in my room rang. I picked it up. "Boss boss oh my God boss have you seen?!?!" It was my executive assistant, Lena, calling from my office in the States. She was hysterical. She kept asking me if I was OK oddly. Shock. Panic and shock. I calmed her down and instructed her to start calling and emailing everyone I knew in New York to see if they were OK. I could only think of about five people. But we knew there were more. She said she was already on it. She had Outlook open and had sorted all my contacts and was staring at the list and would keep trying to reach each and every one of them until she got through and then get back to me. Luckily for us, everyone we knew was alive we eventually learned. Though not well. How could they be? I then asked Lena to book me the first flight out of Costa Rica to JFK. "No boss, you can't go there now. No boss, I'm not going to do it..." "Lena, please. You already knew I was going to ask you this. I have to be there. I cannot just sit here in freaking the middle of nowhere while this is happening. Please, just do it."
As it turned out, sitting there in the middle of nowhere was exactly what I would do over the next three days. The US government had shut down all incoming and outgoing flights. This made sense. But it also made one feel entirely helpless as an American. I needed to get up and go out. I didn't need a shower. I couldn't eat or drink. I just threw some clothes on and walked out of my little room. That is another thing I will never forget for the rest of my life. The staff at the hotel. My room was on the third floor. No elevator. A long and beautifully ornate wrought iron winding staircase. As I exited my room I began to see the staff. Black slacks, white shirts, some white aprons or coats. As soon as I began to descend the stairs all eyes were on me. But whenever any of them caught my eye they immediately looked away. The looks on their faces was not shock. It was pity. And fear. I could tell what they were thinking. This didn't happen to us. This happened to the United States. We are lucky. This man is American. It happened to him. It was almost as if they were as frightened of what I might do as they were sorry for what I had just seen on television.
Like every other morning that summer, the man at the front desk said "Can I call you a taxi senor?" "Yes, thank you." I headed to the school. I wanted to see Hodge, the kid from Alabama as soon as I could. We were the only Americans we knew in that whole darn country. If I was to be trapped here, I would attempt to maintain some sense of normalcy. Or so I thought. But it was not to be. No sooner did we walk into the school building did the owner/manager gently but resolutely approach us to see what he could do for us. Everyone in the building was in the main lobby watching the TV. The media continued to show the footage of the planes crashing into the buildings over and over again. Everyone was quiet. Everyone was speaking. I have no idea which is true. I was in a daze.
The Swiss and the Germans students began pontificating about how "they deserved it. Everyone knew this was going to happen to them one of these days... they're the bullies of the whole planet. Now they know how it feels." These were girls saying this. I would love to write here that Hodge and I kicked some American whoop ass on these heartless commies. But we did not. Precisely because they were girls. Instead we just left the building in a fog of sadness, confusion, anger, and shock. The owner came running after us. He advised us that he had been in touch with the American Embassy in San Jose and we were to immediately go there and "check in."
For the first time in the ten years since this incident I will tell the truth about what happened next. Hodge and I didn't go to the American Embassy as I have written about and reported before in prior posts. We didn't want to be held captive by some governmental suits for God knows how long "for our safety." Instead we went to the place where we felt the safest in San Jose, the Casino. If we couldn't fly home to help, we sure as hell weren't going to sit in classrooms with people insulting our country to our faces. So we decided to take refuge in the things that felt the most American to us: booze and girls. By noon we were hammered. The tragedy was on every TV in Costa Rica, as I'm sure it was in every other country. The girls were more than sympathetic to our cause. I must say, now, looking back, this was one of the strangest three days of my life. Being American in a foreign country and unable to leave while your own country is under attack. Strange. Spending three days drunk as a skunk in a brothel lightly disguised as a casino during such an event.... just plain other-worldly. But we didn't know what else to do. We felt lost. Forsaken. Sad to the core. Angry. Beyond angry. But no way to seek vengeance or justice or retribution.
Every night after Hodge and the girls would eventually leave my room I would sit on that balcony and write in the Transcendence Diaries while smoking a cigar. The images of what we kept seeing on TV wouldn't leave my mind. No matter how much I drank. The worst? The images of fellow Americans arm in arm jumping from the tops of these skyscrapers knowing full well that they were jumping to their deaths. It is still something that I don't think any of us can truly wrap our minds around fully. It is too harrowing, saddening, horrific to contemplate or fully fathom. Would we too do the same? I don't know. I wasn't there. And for that I feel a tremendous guilt. I don't know if others feel this sense of guilt or not. But I know I do. For everyone who lost their life that day, I feel a sense of shame and guilt that I lived and they didn't.
I eventually made it home to America. When the plane touched down everyone on the plane applauded. That was a trend in America that would last for a few years actually. I am not sure if people from other countries even know that. As a touring musician I do a lot of flying. And it is just hitting me now... this strange phenomenon. Every single flight I was on that safely landed for the next few months elicited applause and cheers from nearly all the passengers. A sense of relief I guess. Things were different now. That was obvious from the moment I entered United States air and stepped on its soil. They still are. In those first few weeks there was a unity that I had never felt as an American before. Long gone were the partisan arguments, debates and anger over "the stolen election." Like him or not, G.W. Bush served us well as Commander and Chief in those first few weeks. Perhaps anyone who was acting president during that time would have equally risen to the occasion. We'll never know. But there was something about the cowboy in him that seemed so down-home American. His tears. His vigilant commitment speeches about "bringing justice to the evil-doers." As corny as it seems now, especially in light of what he actually did, it served its purpose during those first few weeks and months.
I know a girl who was in one of the Towers that morning. She is my friend. An associate from the music business. We all watched as her life began to crumble around her over the next six to twelve months. As the story goes she was on one of the ninety-something floors. And somehow she managed to run down the stairs of all ninety floors and out the building before they crumbled. She recalls how many hundreds of people she had to literally hurtle over who had either passed out from exhaustion or from the fumes of smoke. She recalls how many of her fellow co-workers she stopped and tried to drag down the stairs with her only to realize that they had already given up and weren't going to go any further. I still get chills and start to cry when I try to picture the scenes she describes.
I cannot imagine it. I don't know if I would have the physical stamina to run down ninety floors of stairs. In fact I damn well know that I do not. And therefore I wouldn't be here writing this now. But she did. And instead of feeling grateful for it, she felt intense shame and guilt. Because she made it and so many others did not. I understand that. Luckily for us all, she, like many who share a similar story, is doing much better now. But it took a long long long time. According to her and so many others, the government did very little to help her. Like so many others she lost everything, got very sick, was forced to move back in with her folks and eventually sue her insurance company just to get her medical bills paid. This was just one of the myriad travesties that ensued post 9/11.
I and the boys from Transcendence were already in the recording studio working on our next album when the events of 9/11 transpired. That is how the song and music video called "Rebuild America" came to be. We stopped working on the songs for the Sleep With You album and in one night all five of us recorded all of our parts for that song. Making music is what I do best. So it is easily how I can serve best. There is no magic to it. I feel what I am feeling, pick up an instrument, any instrument, and I begin singing. Songs come out. "Rebuild America" is exactly how I was feeling those first few weeks and months after 9/11. That no matter how catastrophic this event was for us, we would rebuild. We would recover. We would heal. And so it was. That was how the song came to be.
Of course it didn't turn out quite like that. We all know that now. We know that as a country we are more divided now than we've been since at least the Vietnam War, if not the Civil Rights era of the early sixties. I wish that sense of unity was still with us. When we all felt like one people and one country. Every time I hear one of the Republican Candidates for President say something insulting, rude or nasty about the current President of the United States, it makes me feel sick. Sad. Disheartened. As if they didn't learn from the events of September 11th. As if they weren't there to feel that sense of unity that we all felt as a people. Don't get me wrong. I understand the game of politics. Their mandate is to attempt to make themselves appear more appropriate and capable for the job. But I just wonder if its possible for them to do that by touting their own worthiness and credibility rather than bringing another man down and attacking him publicly as if in a school yard; especially when that man is the President of what we used to call "the Greatest Country on Earth." Just because one person says that the person they want to replace is a jackass doesn't mean that they're any better. It simply means that they think the other guy is a jackass. It speaks nothing about who they are or why they would be better at the job.
There has to be some sense of pride or respectability left in us as a country, as a people. I wonder why they don't feel it. If they don't feel that sense of respect for the position of President now, how do they expect others to feel it if they ever become President? Is that part of our nation's history over now? Has the position of "Leader of the Free World" been so denigrated over the last ten to twenty years that it no longer carries any clout or respectability at all? What do we teach our children about our Presidents? That only the really old ones from one hundred years ago were good? That all the new ones are crazy stupid incapable rejects? Because that's exactly what the Children of America see and hear now all over the media. Depending on who your parents are, you either like or hate the President of the United States now?
As sad as it sounds, it's exactly what we are experiencing now as a country. The puppets on FOX appear just about as dumb, mean-spirited and alien-like as anything one would see in a sci-fi movie about "the future." And the lunatics on MSNBC seem like bitter sarcastic little hippie bitches. Each and every one of them competing for the "who's right" trophy of the evening. When in reality neither of them are right or wrong. They're just opinionated. And opinions are just about the last thing in the world we need right now in a post-September 11th America in a recession.
So in a way, a big way, the perpetrators of September 11th, 2001 won. America is more broken than it's ever been. Add to that the mammoth debt President G.W. Bush racked up for two simultaneous wars and countless departments of National Security, throw in a few more trillion to bail out Obama's Wall Street cronies, and according to Defense Secretary Robert Gates, America is less safe now than it was pre-September 11th. It's a haunting proposition. One that we need to turn around immediately. Maybe at least in that, those of us who are Independents, who still actually love America rather than one of the two "Political Parties," we can once again feel that unity that we felt ten years ago today. There may be tens of millions of people spread all across this once great land of ours who feel angry bitter mean spirited and blindly partisan. But there are still plenty of those of us who just want to get along and see America great once again. If anything good could possibly come out of the horrendous disaster we experienced on September 11, 2001, if that is even a possibility, then it is most likely the memory of how unified we all felt as Americans that day and the following few weeks. We are capable of it. It's in our blood. And it's in the blood that soaks the earth beneath our feet. God pray we feel it again soon.
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