What is a creative vigil?

A creative vigil honors the past through artistic expression. Participants will write about something they would like to honor. The submissions will be collected and posted together on walls, evoking the missing person flyers that plastered New York City after 9/11. Together these words will be a shrine and testament to the emotions of our community.

Unlike an impersonal monument, passive ceremony, or meaningless buzzword, a creative vigil allows people to actively remember and make meaning of the past. We are freed of boilerplate language that directs us how to feel. Creative vigils counter loss with profusion, moments of silence with voice, and strength with vulnerability.

Why?

I think of the missing person flyers after 9/11. Haunting, ragged, desperate. They wrinkled in the wind and bled in the rain. Walls of smiling faces. Most would not be identified by their face.

There were too many flyers for them to be useful. How was someone supposed to remember all of those faces? At the time I thought that the missing, stunned from trauma, would use them to recognize themselves.

The flyers were most useful, in the end, as catharsis: articulating grief. They were less about the author than the message. In their anonymity they became acts of witness: these people existed even if they couldn’t be found.

Over time I felt less like we were collectively grieving, and more like my private grief had been exposed. It was such a peculiar thing, the public grief, the attention given to this tragedy above all other quiet, individual, everyday tragedies. What if our life stories were always shared in this raw, exposed, yet anonymous way?

The "Missing" wall captures the vulnerability of private grief turned public, a defining experience of 9/11 families. In this way, the creative vigil appropriates the symbolic imagery of a memorial, just as the public has appropriated private grief. As time and other tragedy cause our memories of 9/11 to fade, the meaning and raw emotion fades from our memorial. On this anniversary of 9/11, we will invigorate our deadened senses and make new meaning of our past.

Who organized this?

Elizabeth Moroney is a resident of Somerville, Massachusetts, writing a memoir on terrorism, illness, and loss. Her father, Dennis G. Moroney, was killed in the attacks on the World Trade Center in 2001.

This program is supported in part by the Somerville Arts Council, a local agency supported by the Massachusetts Cultural Council. The Somerville Public Library is co-sponsoring the writing workshops.

What can I share?

Tell us anything you’d like to honor: a missing thing, a personal loss, an experience of survival, a memory of 9/11 or another tragedy, or anything else to memorialize, mourn, or share. In return, readers will bear witness to what you’ve expressed.

How do I participate?

·     Share a memory on this site.

·     Drop by a free writing workshop at the Somerville Public Library, Central Branch (79 Highland Avenue) on Thursdays in August, 7:30-8:30 PM.

·     View the installation. To find out where the installation travels, email creativevigil2017@gmail.com or check back here.