By Martin Popoff
"Because you see, I grew up on Staten Island, and I could look out my bedroom window, and I could see the Statue of Liberty, and beyond that, the World Trade Centers. You know, my family was in construction. We had people who worked on those buildings, friends and family. So for me, it wasn't just the idea of somebody doing something to me as an American. It became much more deeply personal than that. I swear to you, and I probably sound selfish, but it was like somebody came into my yard. Because if all your life you've been used to looking out your window and seeing something in your yard and somebody comes in and steals it, that's exactly what it felt like. It was just this enormous sense of personal violation. That's the thing that really hit me the most. Like they say, it may sound selfish, but it's like... I went down to ground zero the next day and nothing can prepare you for that. None of us in this hemisphere has ever seen anything like that in our lifetime."
So you saw the site fairly early on?
"About a month after it happened I guess. Again, the first thing that hits you, if you've ever smelled electrical wires burning, there's a very acidic smell. That's what it smelled like. The whole thing was like a giant funeral. Everybody was really quiet, people were crying and the pictures of the missing people were plastered all over the walls down there on the other buildings. Nothing can describe that. It was beyond horrific. But the thing that hit me a couple hours later after we left and we went to get something to eat, what I had been smelling was draining down the back of my throat and I could taste it when I was eating. And that's where a line in Hallowed Ground comes from, it says 'I have tasted Hallowed Ground,' and that's what I mean by that. It's unlike any other experience I've ever had."
What have you thought about as the solution to all this?
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