9-11 Speeches

In my elementary school in West Texas, we performed songs on stage about America sometime around 9-11. My music teacher started this idea as a way for our school and town to honor those who died during the terrorist attacks. Most of the songs revolved around the states and their capitals or were songs like God Bless America. At the end of the last song though we would sit down and watch a slide show played to Alan Jackson’s (Where were you). The only problem that I had was that I was the only one who didn’t remember 9-11 happening. Every year that we would sit through the same slide show, I would try to figure out a way to relate to what every other person was feeling every year. It began to feel like everyone had a flashbulb memory but me. I began to realize that Alan Jackson’s song could help me and other people in the future, who don’t remember 9-11, relate to the devastation to some degree. The chorus and opening of the song “Where were you” makes the listener realize that this a moment in history where everyone remembers what they were doing at the time. 9-11 is a moment on par with the day JFK was assassinated or Pearl Harbor. The song starts to

Jackson paraphrases a verse from the First Corinthians: “Faith, hope and love are some good things he gave us, but the greatest is love. The greatest is love is meant to be the part that connects and supports a society. this makes “the greatest is love” one of the most important lines from the song.He also sings about going to church and dusting off a bible. These religious aspects are meant to relate to the listeners that reacted by becoming deeply religious. The song doesn’t become so religious that it turns people away from the song, but it seems to be more on par with the other reactions. The religious aspects allowed me realize how other people surrounding my family reacted. It will allow people in the future who are religious to relate to this