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i am really ambivalent about the making "sacred" of the wtc site.
i have been to the city many many times since 9/11/2001 and have not been to look at the place.
for me, looking at the manhattan skyline while approaching the city, particularly the first couple times after 9/11, was enough.
i am not sure what function is served by turning the wtc site itself into a tourist attraction, complete with merch.
i could maybe see someone writing an article about the place, had they hung around since 9/11, seeing in the shifting patterns of activity/usage a kind of grassroots-level fight over the meaning of the space.
but that assumes that the making over into a tourist destination itself is not some way of cheapening and commercializing the whole thing---collective grief as a commodity you can buy---a space for fetishizing shock--a kind of fucked-up voyeurism disguised as respect....i dont get it.
maybe someone could explain it to me?
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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