ON AIR
‘Maybe it was the first thing that occurred to you this morning. Maybe it wasn’t until you wrote down the date. September 11. A month and a number that have come to mean so much more. They conjure instantly in our minds pictures of burning towers, of ashen faces craned skyward, of desperate leaps toward an unimaginable death. Perhaps what you most remember—I know it’s what I most vividly recall—was that sense of collective disbelief, of sheer incredulity, a sort of numbness. It felt like everything, in a single day, had changed irrevocably. That nothing would or could ever be the same again. The future turned into a giant, terrifying question mark. Would there even be a future? Was this the beginning of the end?’ Pause. Two beats. ‘And here we are. Ten years down the track. Living in the future we doubted might exist. And things have changed irrevocably and many changes can easily be pinned to that day. Others have been more subtle, a kind of slow burn.’
Breathe.
‘Today I don’t want to talk about the political fallout from the September 11 terrorist attacks. In many ways, we talk about that daily on this show, every time we talk about protecting our borders and international security and what sort of immigrants we want and don’t want. It’s all related in some way to the brand new set of fears we inherited on September 11 and through the subsequent “war on terror”. The war on whatever.’
It’s a long intro, a little self-indulgent, but Beam figures it’s justifiable.
‘No, today I want to talk about the human fallout from September 11. Because I read earlier this week that at least ten thousand people in the US—emergency workers, police officers and everyday citizens—have been found to have post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of their exposure to the events of September 11. They have recurrent nightmares, they can’t sleep, they jump at every little thing. They no longer trust easily, they love less fully. They self-medicate to devastating effect.
‘And,’ he continues, ‘they’re not getting any better. Which is why the US government is now spending at least four billion dollars—that’s billion, folks—on getting September 11 victims to start talking again. To talk about what they saw, how it made them feel and how they’re coping. I’m in the right game, you see, because it turns out that talking about things, really talking about things to people who will listen and attempt to understand, is the best hope for the future of this damaged human race. Whatever pain lurks in your soul, the pathway out is through your mouth.
‘Today you’re going to hear from a panel of guests who were in various different ways directly exposed to the September 11 attacks. They are all Australians who happened to be in New York at the time, either holidaying or working there. And they’ve all come home with baggage they’ve never completely unpacked.
‘After you’ve heard their stories, which I think you’ll find both motivating and inspiring, I want you to call in with your own September 11 stories. Do you remember how you felt when you first heard what had happened? Where were you when you saw those unimaginable pictures on the television? Perhaps you were in New York at the time, one of the thousands of Aussies who live and holiday there on any given day. Perhaps you saw things you’ll never forget.
‘Perhaps it’s time to talk.’
And they do. Listeners dial the station in waves unbroken, many just to share their own where-I-was-when-the-Towers-collapsed-on-TV moments—a caravan park in Ryde, an arrested hangover in Kiama, a final wedding gown fitting that felt like a funeral. Some ring with unrelated tales of trauma (that Beam elegantly deflects in the manner of a batsman who respects the off-form bowler). But many others still—and this is what Harvey and his producer had openly hoped for—call in with first-person accounts of being on the ground in New York at the time. About their instinctive reactions, both immediate and now ten years down the track.
Talkback at its best: compelling pictures painted in the gaps between words, in hollow sighs, faltering breaths and the pure honesty that only hiding behind a voice can provide. The events might have happened yesterday, so vivid are many of the descriptions of smoky calamity and swirling panic. Beam is an untiring fieldsman of the storytelling, covering every position.
It’s one of those days on air, so much rarer now than when he started in this game, that finds Beam hearing each word as it’s spoken, not just in anticipation of the next question and not only hours later during another pointless attempt at sleep. He is in the moment today, the sweet spot, and he hears not only the human battle cries of loss and despair but beyond that, a clear common thread: family.
For almost every caller, every rundown soul, tells a story of a day that ended, inevitably somehow, at Point A. Blood. Family. The origin of the species.
Even those for whom family had come to represent something painful, or dangerous, or simply something so long ago that phone numbers have been erased, photos lost, heirlooms sold at garage sales … they’d each followed their legs home. Powerless, pained, lost and found. They returned to childhood homes that had long been rebuilt. To grown-up daughters who hadn’t spoken to them for twenty years. To ex-husbands, ex-wives, grandparents long forgotten. To whatever, in the face of the unspeakable and the unknown, looked like a sanctuary one might be entitled to or where, amidst the unbearable noise of it all, one mightn’t have to say anything at all.
Strip it all back and douse it in fear and all that is left in this world is family. That’s the message from today’s program. Common noses. Shared bedrooms. Drunken grandpas. Hand-me-downs. Old jokes. Irrevocable damage. Brutality. Joy. Fear. Neglect. Hope.
It all starts and ends with family.
Beam finds it deeply irritating and profoundly concerning.