The Passengers by Will Ashon

Author:Will Ashon
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Faber & Faber
Published: 2022-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

90.

The biggest impact on my life was deciding not to fly back from New York City on September 11 2001 and instead fly back on September 10 2001. I looked at the screen and hovered over the dates, deciding which day I wanted to come back. And I picked the same flight but a day earlier. It was chance. I just remember looking at it and thinking, What day shall I go? On September 10 I flew back, landed, went to the gym, switched on the telly, and the Twin Towers was coming down. And September 10, the last place I went to was the Twin Towers. I went from the Twin Towers to the airport, to London to watch them fall down. Giddy. Dizzy. Didn’t really know what to make of it. I just thought, Is this real? Is this for real? And then suddenly my phone started to ring. And everybody wanted to know where my cousins were and if I was alright. Then it was just action stations after that.

Eventually, I felt angry and I felt sad. I felt angry because this is what happens to normal people who don’t make these decisions, who don’t get into weird alliances for wars, for energy or fuel or just the unending desire to be rich. It doesn’t affect those people who make those decisions, it affects the average person in the street—on either side. And every time I see that, it makes me angry. We had twenty years of non-stop war after that. And who benefited from it? Some people got rich! Some people got more rich. Some people got more rich and they don’t give a shit about anyone. Certain people got more rich, lots of people died, lots of innocent people died. So I guess it makes me think about that, it makes me think about power and how it’s got divorced from morality. And that’s a problem.

A lot of my family lived and still do live in New York and I spend a lot of time there. So watching the American people consider the American Dream when you know that it might not be true, it’s definitely been the soundtrack to my life. In Britain that’s what we live in, isn’t it? What it feels like is being a bystander in a slow-motion car crash. We’re standing there in a mix of horror and glee. And all the while, the wheels are falling off. Or, you know, your legs are falling off. As you’re watching it [laughs]. And, you know, the Overton window’s just moved so much. This is incredible. We’ve got people who are clearly not fit for any office in the highest office in the world, lying to our faces. It’s just a blatant disrespect. Like, I’m watching the stuff today. Come on, you got sick, now you’re doing doughnuts in the car park. You can barely stand but you’re pulling off the mask—what is this shit?! It’s insane.

There’s this new strategy, this new strand of political thought and political action, which is to just lie.

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