Cole Porter's "I Happen to Like New York," sung by Donna Murphy

After 9/11, I walked along 7th Avenue, south of St. Vincent's Hospital, and read the notes people had posted, describing the loved ones they were seeking but would never find. I cried for them, but also for New York, my hometown: the fallen achingly evoked on the tattered sheets of paper included bus boys and bankers, people of *every* race and sexual orientation, seniors, young parents, and people newly arrived to chase their dreams in New York. That's why 9/11 felt like an attack on the city: it was an assault not on any particular group, but on the wholeness that I experience as unique to New York -- whose inhabitants stay precisely because we wouldn't want to live apart from one another. I heard this song on NPR shortly after 9/11, and on top of the fact that I happen to like Donna Murphy, the song's aspirational confidence and grittiness made me hope that we could draw strength from New York's wholeness, so that we might one day leave off crying.

Talcott Camp