M.Ward, S.O.M., Ken Smith, and Omaha.........

........all have something in common. As usual, it's slightly convoluted through the eyes of yours truly.



On Thursday at 5pm, my coworkers and I raided the studio fridge of all past happy hour odds and ends beer and headed a couple blocks down to 7 World Trade - a new building and plaza built in the aftermath of 9/11. 7 World Trade was the last building to collapse on September 11, and the first to be rebuilt. I suspect it's form, materiality, and urban contribution is a prelude to what awaits the City of New York with the new Freedom Tower. The tower's flush curtain wall of alternating glass and metal grating was designed by corporate giant SOM and the schizophrenic plaza paving and voluptuous entangled cherry fountain sculpture by landscape architecture's Elvis Costello - Ken Smith. The performance stage was set for a free public concert featuring M. Ward, and more importantly, my friends from Omaha, McCarthy Trenching. Sadly, I missed the performance of Dan, Steve, et al., but it was great to spend time afterwards.



















As the typically vacuous and isolated plaza filled with a Brooklynesque crowd uncharacteristic of Lower Manhattan, I was mostly preoccupied with avoiding a $25 open container fine and the continually scrolling digital letters inside the tower's lobby that formed the backdrop to the stage. The scrolling words are all catastrophic capitalized fragments: FIRE, HYPNOTIC, SMOKE, CITY. The whole scene was such an odd combination of the brightly colored, fast moving glass framed text completely out of sync with the soft, honky-tonk lyrics of M.Ward. But the combination provided a moment so fundamentally American to me; tragic, over-the-top, yet completely humble and heart felt, inseparably jumbled. Ah America. You're so intriguing.