For this piece, I used audio I had collected last year for my studio arts senior thesis which explored the effects 9/11 had on the children who lived in lower Manhattan and witnessed the devastation through young, impressionable eyes. I interviewed kids I had grown up with, and three who I had been at preschool with that morning. I asked them all to share with me the memories they had from that morning, and to explain what, if any aspects of their lives they see some influence from 9/11.

I also discovered declassified CIA files about 9/11 on a database found through the Lafayette Library’s research tools. The documents I chose to use are dated from late 1998 to early 2001, all acknowledging and warning of an imminent threat to Americans.

I created a dialogue between what the kids shared with me and the recordings of the CIA documents. I hope the piece provokes listeners to consider how 9/11 affected those who are often thought to have been too young to remember, through hearing their own accounts of losing innocence contrasted with the government’s unemotional, rigid approach.