The Suspension of Distraction

Excerpt

In the week following 9/11, an editor at the Village Voice was asked on NPR how he perceived the effect of the attack on the psyche of the city and its inhabitants. He characterized it as a “suspension of distraction.” He had noticed that people were making eye contact with each other as never before, that they were communing silently with passing glances, taking in one another’s faces. They did not seem to be absorbed in life’s usual preoccupations and mind states. The inconceivable event, the horror of it, the huge loss of life, the evaporation of the city’s two signature buildings, had plunged New Yorkers into wordless presence in the face of the enormity of what had occurred. …