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TobinMueller.com

I started September 11 Project seven weeks after 9/11/01, when I realized I could no longer work on the stage play I had been writing. Actually, I couldn't work at all. Not yet. But I needed to do something. I needed to do what I do best, write music. I wrote about the only thing I could think of at the time: the collapse of the World Trade Center and it's aftermath.

The Towers fell in what felt like my backyard (I was living in downtown Manhattan at the time). I volunteered to give blood, volunteered at Ground Zero, then became the main coordinator of an effort that converted the Chelsea Piers indoor parking lot into a huge dispensary of items needed by those who were digging and searching, welding and cleaning, tending and nurturing. Our effort was completely ad hoc, spontaneous, tireless, manic. Each of us had a hole inside larger than the one created by misguided terrorists; into it we poured all our energy. As an independent all-volunteer force (my only mandate was "reject no volunteers, turn no one away"), we did a better job than the official organizations (FEMA) getting what was needed to the right places, with the help of the NYPD Harbor Patrol. The guys on the pile dubbed us "The Home Depot." Everything was donated: antibiotics, clothing, heavy duty gas masks, welding gear, buckets, food, even beer, cigarettes and singing actresses. I kept a journal during that time. You can read about it here: A Journal from the Streets.

Our efforts were included in the documentary "Answering the Call: Ground Zero's Volunteers." My personal story was filmed by Larry Cappetto for the "9/11 Remembered - A Day of Infamy" series, as well.

For the 10th Anniversary in 2011 in Manhattan, I was interviewed for another related film, "9/11 Remembered - Ten Years Later" and was part of a 12-person panel on an NYC television broadcast. When the other members of the panel, mostly retired leaders of the NYC firefighter and police communities, found out who I was (I told my story last, as the only person there not in uniform), they stood up and said, "You were the Home Depot guy!" and offered their tearful hugs. It was very moving.

After recounting everything that happened ten years earlier, I was asked what I did to cope. I told them about the music I had written, and some of it was played on the show. This caused me to revisit these songs. I decided to put them out as an album.

Because I now suffer from a lung disorder and can no longer sing, the vocals couldn't be re-recorded. I remastered each track, but did not re-record or add any vocals or instrumentals. Everything is just as I played and sang 10 years ago in my living room; songs written and performed to heal something inside me, that's all. Many other people shared their need for healing, so I am sharing the music now, even if it's a little late.

"I Will Love" was the first song I wrote, November 1, 2001. It was all I could think of to say. Although the chorus is rousing, uplifting, to me the song was more about the sounds I used than the words I sang, sounds of shock and disorientation. I had a hard to singing without crying and had to sing several takes. (Absurdly, YouTube censors have labeled this video "age restricted." Please watch the video below and you will see how everyone should be able to watch this song, regardless of age.)

Next, I wrote "Last Call." The lyrics are inspired from first hand accounts: people who had lost someone and now had only that last memory on the phone. Casual calls made just before getting to work or desperate final words from a burning building moments before collapse...these stories set up the first verse for "Last Call." The last verse refers to the following days and weeks of not knowing who had survived.

While writing the third song, "New Holy Land," I began to crystallize my experience volunteering, put it into perspective. It helped place all the tragedy and loss into a new place. That's why I decided to make it as the first track on the album: it says more of what I experienced, personally, and better summarizes what I've taken from that time. It began just as the lyrics describe: starting on the street alone, passing out bagels and pouring coffee for the ambulance workers lined up on the West Side Highway. 36 hours later, I had over 200 people helping me provide everything the fireman and EMTs needed. The last stanza wonders if the change we felt would sustain, if the new New York that was being realized all around us would translate into something permanent. It is a question still unanswered. Although I image a portion of that experience will never leave our collective mind.

The concern that something had forever been lost was what inspired "Was There Once A Time." That song ended up finding its way into subsequent musicals. It's lyrics are applicable to many times, many ages. In writing that song, I felt like I had turned the corner from my 9/11 obsession and could actually write about other things.

"Come to the Window" was actually written for my daughter, since I had just divorced her mother and wanted her to know I had not left her. She was only 11 years old at the time. But after listening to it again, I realized the song could also be sung by a father's ghost to his surviving daughter. Including it in this collection has added something special to the song. I hope you agree.

"Why Do I Lie When I Sing", was written in Cape Cod, after the World Trade Center's pile of rubble had been cleared. That hole left behind formed a sad, silent, sorry scar. Ground Zero stayed that way for so very long, far too long. Long enough for me to question whether any of the effort would ever result in renewal. The album ends with this stanza: "It's not that I don't believe./It's that I don't seem to need to anymore./It's not that I want to be free of it/Except when I sing..."

There is very deep belief running through this music, regardless of what my final lyrics suggest: Belief I witnessed in everyone's eyes with whom I worked during that time. Belief felt by those viewing it through their television screens, or through the filter of a decade remembered. A belief that, I hope, will never leave us. A belief in something better. A hunger for shared meaning. A belief that requires continued reaffirmation.