Quote:
Originally posted by strandinthewind
I still maintain that the songs power comes from her IMO brilliant reference to "nag champra." For me, in that one moment and phrase she depicts and envisions herself lighting the incense a few monthws later at her LA home and the smell taking her back to when she had to burn it to cover the smell of terror, death, and scorched people and buildings (  ). Here we are almost a year later and I have chills and the same vision as if I was there with her on that day. That is pretty powerful to me. 
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Thanks for posting that quote from SaraRhiannon's site, Jason.
Have you read this one? I think it says it all....
Quote:
Well, you know I didn't write "Illume (9-11)" to try and be political. I wrote it because I had arrived in New York at 3 o'clock in the morning, in the middle of the night, and had gone to the Waldorf Astoria hotel and got there at 4:30 and then unpacked, went to bed at 7:30, and then somewhere between 10:30 and 11, my assistant came in and tapped me on the shoulder and said, "I think you need to wake up and see what's happening." And so I was in New York for three days, and it was so disturbing, and "Illume" was a poem that I wrote when I got back to Los Angeles at the end of that tour. There was part of me that thought I might never get home. It was so frightening out there. So I wrote this poem "Illume," and when I went home two months later, I wanted to write a few new songs for this record and pulled all of my poetry out from my journals that I had from over that year and the tour, and I pulled out the "Illume" poem. I thought, "Maybe I can very subtly put this to music."
I never expected it to be a song that would be anything more than for the people that were in New York City that day. Because I can't write about how everybody else felt--I can only write about how I felt and how I feel New Yorkers felt that day, that morning. So I'm very, very proud of that song. I wanted to say something for those people. That would be forever.
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Even though she wrote a poem/song that reflected
her feelings that day, I think she did an amazing job of capturing the fear and disorientation felt by those of us who watched helplessly as the day's events unfolded.
And even though the song's lyrics are specific to Stevie's particular reaction, we know that she was definitely thinking beyond herself that day... personally taking food down to the firemen working in and around Ground Zero, as well as lending financial assistance to the wife and newborn child of one of the Backstreet Boys' crew-members who died on Flight 11, as he was returning home for the birth of his daughter.
A very classy lady, who has shown on many occasions that she is generous and compassionate.
