Thread by @ooana

There’s an outdoor bar at #wtc now. It plays music that fills up the nearby space around the site. The first I heard was The Piano Man as I kept walking from St. Paul’s Chapel down toward the water.

I found myself there and, despite initial reactions to the surreality, as I walked back into Manhattan I found that place is in fact…well, right. It felt right. It also allowed me the time to drink a glass of wine in memory of my friend and …of a lot.

I hit record when some songs came on both for my own keepsake and to share privately with some who were part of that time in this city when we were just starting our adult lives and horrified that so many just like us had theirs cut short- often the best amongst us.

It’s very odd to have a phone that can do all it does whenever I travel back to that time in my mind. But this felt like something I wanted to use an amazing tool, when minded, to help recall and share - not just here. Some things are too intimate.

Casey had a knack for bringing people together who loved the dance floors of NYC. Love loved. We were not part of a group that never made headlines or acted all that “unusual” except for one thing….how much we loved being on a dance floor with each other.

She organized dinners and meetups in crowded clubs where you could, if you wished, get lost in the dark and the crowd and find a kindred spirit effortlessly. It wasn’t about attention or a scene. It was always about the floor and the music. It was House - a feeling - & awesome.

On 9/11 some of our friends were headed for the airport for a morning flight to Ibiza. Casey had, of course, planned it. But…a few weeks earlier she had nailed a new job. She had recently been engaged (one of the first among people I knew and for NYers, rather young.

But you could see why it was something you’d not wait to do if you knew them. She was planning a life. She was kicking ass at being that age at that time. The job was on the same floor as Cantor. She got to work early that day and posted to the message board her excitement for

those who were gonna be flying out without her. It was 8:20am.

The name on the message board(s) was always Blue Angel. It still seems so surreal. But…last night, it felt like she was, in a way that wasn’t just unthinkable, there.

Some people I hear think in images, some in shapes. For me it’s words. I heard this by Tennyson and hit record.

The sound…I could fix it. But something about how it did record feels…right. Like being back under lights and feeling that free but looking at it through 20 years of…life.

“Of old sat Freedom on the heights,
The thunders breaking at her feet:

Above her shook the starry lights:
She heard the torrents meet.

There in her place she did rejoice,
Self-gather'd in her prophet-mind,
But fragments of her mighty voice
Came rolling on the wind…”

Remembered and missed always, Blue Angel. Meetup under the disco ball.

*ever made headlines