(Artist Leigh McCloskey interviewed by Dean Haglund in “The Truth Is Out There”)

Last week’s anniversary of 9/11 really snuck up on me. In fact, I only realized the historic significance of the date globally after I realized it was the birthday of my dear friend Richard Waterhouse and of Ruby Murnik, the daughter of my dear friend Peter Murnik. We are instructed (by bumper stickers that I suspect still exist) to “think globally” and to “act locally”. Here I was, thinking personally, about my friends’ birthdays, and that led me to become aware of the transpersonal, a collective anniversary of an event that changed many lives forever. On 9/11 2001, Richard slept in late, and when he awoke, he checked his answering machine to find several dozen messages. He assumed they were birthday wishes. When he found out they were callers seeking to verify his well being in the wake of the horrible attacks, he thought, “Will the terrorists stop at nothing to ruin my birthday?”

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That wasn’t the only thought to occur to Richard, of course, but knowing that your birthday would always be connected with tragedy and violence can’t be a particularly fun thought. As for the people who felt the need to check in on Richard’s welfare in the Hollywood Hills, well, it was a confusing time. No one knew who might be targeted next. In fact, there was great concern surrounding the Century Plaza Towers in Century City, for they were designed by Minoru Yamasaki to resemble his iconic creation, the World Trade Center in New York. Was it possible that the terrorists were, for some reason, targeting this architect’s work?

Ruby Murnik was actually born in Los Angeles while the towers were falling in New York. There was a television on in the delivery room until her father, Peter, a man with the longest wingspan of any flightless animal, snapped his fingers and exclaimed, “Can we turn that off, please!” 23 years old now, a transplant to New York City, where she lives and works as an artist, Ruby was the first baby I ever held. And I held her for hours that first time. Partly this was because her mother had handed her to me and left the room and I did not feel I had permission to relinquish the duty thrust upon me until relieved by either Ruby’s mother or father. In the weeks following 9/11 as Peter would push Ruby in her stroller, people around the neighborhood would comment on the cute baby and ask when she was born. When they found out the date, everyone would want to hold her, desperate to connect with something beautiful to have happened on that day.

All these years later, it is safe to say a lot of beautiful things came out of that day. Leigh McCloskey literally found himself on his knees in his personal library the morning of 9/11, plaintively wondering why humanity always seems to give in to its most destructive instincts. It occurred to him in that moment that the only healthy response to an act of destruction is an act of creation. And so, he started painting, first the floor, then the walls, then the furniture, then the spines of all the books on the shelves. He did not stop until every square inch of available surface was covered by what wanted to come forward from the depth of his psyche. The result, The Hieroglyph of the Human Soul, actually continues to evolve to this day. It is one of the most important works of art anywhere in the world, and one of the most precious sites in all of Southern California.

When my partner Dean Haglund and I interviewed Gemma Bulos in 2010 for our documentary feature The Truth Is Out There, one of six people in the world didn’t have access to safe water. Gemma was supposed to have been in the World Trade Center on 9/11 and, perhaps as a way of making sense out of having been spared, Gemma chose to look for inspiration in the tragedy. “My choice was to see the world as coming together,” she told us. She dedicated herself to addressing the global safe water crisis.

Through the years, I have met many people who chose to get involved in the wake of 9/11, many of them thinking globally, many more acting locally, and all of them, in their own way, lighting, clearing and paving the path for the rest of us to walk together. 9/11 certainly caused me to understand that I craved community and soon, I started seeking it out. One of the ways I chose to get involved was by going through the training to become state certified as a Violence Prevention Specialist. In late summer of 2005, I found myself responding to the horrifying images and reports out Hurricane Katrina-ravaged New Orleans by volunteering a great deal of my time educating about violence prevention here in Los Angeles. The violence being perpetrated against so many of those rendered so vulnerable in New Orleans due to the devastation caused by Katrina, made me realize that Los Angeles, or any city, was one natural disaster away from being New Orleans, and that I could best prepare for such an occurrence by helping others to learn how to make healthy choices in the face of feelings of powerlessness.

Since that time, there have been many tragedies, disasters, and events causing public upheaval that have galvanized people into becoming involved in their communities. In just the past few years alone we have had social movements, elections, and a global pandemic lead to people becoming active on behalf of their neighbors in ways that they had never envisioned prior to these occurrences. I find myself always interested in stories of how people become inspired and where that inspiration leads them. So, I am dedicating the next episode of “The Voice of Los Feliz” podcast (available on September 30th) to exploring this theme. One of the guests I have interviewed for that podcast is the truly delightful Duncan Sachdeva. He is on the governing board of the Los Feliz Neighborhood Council and one of the most civically minded and active community members I know. Thanks to his generosity of spirit and engaging personality, the one hour I set aside for the interview turned into three and a half hours, all spent as his guest at the Hollywood Sikh Temple on Vermont Ave.

I have always felt a genuine sense of pride in my neighborhood that the first Sikh temple to be established in the United States after India achieved independence in 1947 is on our beloved Vermont Ave. That beautiful building is not just a spiritual center, but a civic and community center as well. It is also inextricably linked with my personal memories of 9/11 2001.  Most mornings back then I would carpool with my old college pal, Steve Lem, to Pasadena, where he worked for the city and where I worked at a production company. That morning, Steve was told to stay home. So, instead of catching a ride from him, I took the bus. I think it was the 181. Given the events of the day, I was surprised at how full the bus was. Surprise soon turned to shock, however, when I witnessed the looks of anger and expressions of animosity being directed by several of my fellow riders towards two turban-wearing passengers who were members of the Hollywood Sikh Temple.

Word had already spread, of course, that America was under attack by Islamist terrorists. I suddenly found myself in the position of needing to explain to my very angry fellow passengers a couple very important points. The first was that the two individuals they had decided were worthy of their animosity were not, in fact, Muslim. The second point was that even if they had been Muslim, they still wouldn’t have deserved such treatment. I was astonished by what I had witnessed. I thought that we the people were better than that AND better educated than that. For me to not immediately think of moments like that when another anniversary of 9/11 rolls around, but instead to think first of the connections I have with beautiful people whose birthdays fall on the eleventh of September, I take as a sign of wounds having healed.

My mother died on my birthday in 2019. It was not the first time the woman upstaged me on my birthday, either. One time, upon making it to my parents’ home for a birthday visit, I found my mother making me a cake. On it, she spelled my name wrong, incorrectly spelling “Philip” with two ls instead of one. I pointed out to her that not only had she misspelled her son’s name, but also her husband’s name, for he, too, was a “Philip” and she had been married to him most of her life!

My mother replied, “Well, maybe if you came to visit more often, I would remember how to spell your name!” If there had been a microphone anywhere in that kitchen, my mother would have been well within her right to find it, pick it up, and then drop it.

There is no way to compare grief. If grief is a land, it’s a land with no road maps. To me, the grief that visited when my mother died, unpacked as if it planned to stay for quite a while. Even when it was no longer a constant resident, it felt like a mugger in a dark alley. I never knew when it might leap out to assault me. Grief was heavy. It was hollowing. My mother was gone. I could no longer feel her or sense her, and she took some profound part of me with her when she died. In short, I never expected I could approach my birthday again without being confronted by feelings of loss, of regret, of anger, of … finding that purity of joy we wish for people on their birthdays to be forever a thing of the past for me.

This past year, my birthday fell just after Thanksgiving. On the day before Thanksgiving, I found myself at the Breakfast Club where the wonderful Joanna Linkchorst was filling in for our beloved Reverend Barbara Adams as the club’s Chaplain of the Day. She spoke to us about how challenging it was to face family Thanksgiving without her own mother, who had died earlier in the year. As Joanna made her remarks, I realized that I had not thought about my own mother’s death even though my birthday, the anniversary of my mother’s death was only days away. At one point I had wondered if the pain of her death would always cloud my enjoyment of my birthday and here I was realizing that time really does ease the pain of wounds we think might never heal.

For many years I served as the on-stage announcer at the Breakfast Club, getting the ball rolling in the morning’s program by trying to express all that is best about the Democracy of Ham an’ Eggs and setting the right tone for the proceedings. That morning, listening to Joanna talk about her mother, I flashed back to the first meeting of the Breakfast Club after my mother died in 2019. I had no idea how I was going to go on stage, and once there, how I was going to muster the energy necessary. Earlier that morning, Joanna had greeted me with a whispered “happy birthday” and had slipped something into my pocket. Right before I stepped up to the microphone, I looked to see what it was and found a beautiful old-timey pocket watch. It made me cry. Almost four years later, the memory made me break out in the biggest grin imaginable. It was as if that pocket watch had an alarm that had finally rung, symbolizing my freedom from grief.

Each year, I see people put up signs or social media posts on the anniversary of 9/11 that all express the need to “never forget” (#neverforget). What we aren’t told is what we are supposed to remember. If you are old enough to remember the beginning of this essay, then you will remember that I wrote about Richard Waterhouse. Richard’s husband, the marvelous character actor Dan Butler, once told me a story of what he witnessed on a train bound for New York City on that fateful morning in 2001. Back then we weren’t all connected to a constant flow of information via smart phones and Wi-Fi as we are now. Everyone on the train knew of some of that morning’s events, but details were sketchy, and it would be some time before anyone knew the full scope of what was transpiring.

Their train had been delayed on final approach to the island of Manhattan for quite some time. Finally, a conductor came on the speaker system and broke the news that because of the tragic events unfolding in the city, no trains were being allowed into the city. They were to head back to Connecticut and all passengers would have to find alternative transportation into Manhattan. The conductor didn’t know that all bridges and tunnels would be closed (if they weren’t already).  I am sure the information the conductor did announce only served to increase the stress all those on board were experiencing. One business suit and tie clad, briefcase-sporting gentleman Dan witnessed was experiencing much more than that, however. This man threw down his rolled up newspaper and yelled, “Why does this always happen to me?!”

9/11 was happening to him. And it had, apparently, happened before.

I am poking gentle fun, of course, because we all know the feeling he was expressing.  I am not sure what it is we are to “never forget”, but I do know that I want us all to remember not to be THAT guy!

No matter what happens, we certainly have to be better than that.

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