The_Falling_ManI recently reviewed Afro Celt Sound System’s fine retrospective album Capture for Whisperin’ & Hollerin’ . The double album compiles tracks from their 15 year career to date.

One of the key tracks is When I’m Falling with vocals by Peter Gabriel, the story in song of a man in crisis to the point that he doesn’t know up from down.

When this song was released in 2001, the video featured , without any great originality….wait for it….. a man falling.  Bad call.

He comes from the clouds, passes a plane (see those bemused pilots-one is Gabriel), then critically he is falling into a metropolis and down past skyscrpapers that look horribly like the twin towers and office workers (one is Gabriel) look to see him falling and wouldn’t you just know it, on the ground stands Peter Gabriel once more. It would have been a neat touch here if Gabriel had caught him but the man hits the ground, smashes through the sidewalk and keeps on going into the underworld.

Of course, now it’s impossible to watch this video without thinking of  attack on the World Trade Center.
Not surprising it was pulled rapidly from the airwaves as not being in the best possible taste. Many had watched the terror attack  live on TV and seen the horror of what are now glibly referred to as the 9/11 jumpers. These  were the desperate men and women who leapt from the top of the towers as the flames engulfed the buildings.

What were they thinking? That to die like this was better than burning alive? That by some miracle they might even survive the fall?

Maybe it’s that same irrational thinking I have when flying. I always feel safer when the plane is coming in to land rather than when it is taking off. I feel when it’s on the way up I am heading to a ‘no hope of survival’ zone if something goes wrong. Coming down I figure I have at least a 50-50 chance – after all, there would be emergency crews on standby and civilians would be mobilised to lend a hand.

All these thoughts of 9/11, nine years on, made me think of the magnificent essay by David Foster Wallace called ‘A View From Mrs Thompson’s’ . This can found in the collection ‘Consider The Lobster and other essays‘. I  quote it at length because it is such a stunning piece of reportage that captures the horror of the events as they unfolded:

“Everybody was staring transfixed at one of the few pieces of video CBS never reran, which was a distant wide angle shot of the North Tower and its top floors’ steel lattice in flames, and of dots detaching from the building and moving through smoke down the screen, which then in a sudden jerky tightening of the shot revealed to be actual people in coats and ties and skirts with their shoes falling off as they fell, some lunging into ledges or girders and then letting go, upside down or wriggling as they fell and one couple seeming (unverifiable) to be hugging each other as they fell those several stories and shrank back to dots as the camera then all of a sudden pulled back to the long view – I have no idea how long the clip took – after which Dan Rather’s mouth seemed to move for a second before any sound emerged, and everyone in the room sat back and looked at one another with expressions that seemed somehow both childlike and terribly old”

And this is why the TV networks reasoned no-one wanted to watch a pop video of a falling man. They were probably right but it was tough on the Afrocelts all the same.

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