R. J. Carter Marks 25th Anniversary of 9/11 with Tribute Song ‘I See Your Name’

Twenty-five years after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, singer-songwriter R. J. Carter is marking the anniversary with the release of I See Your Name, a new song written in remembrance of those who were lost and the people who still carry their memories.

Rather than attempt to retell the events of September 11, the song approaches the tragedy through something more personal: the experience of continuing to encounter reminders of someone who is no longer there. A name. A photograph. A familiar place. The ordinary things that can unexpectedly bring someone back for a moment.

For Carter, who watched the events of September 11 unfold on television as they happened, the song is also about remembering what the attacks did to the country as a whole.

“Those of us who were there will never forget what we saw or how we felt—how we came together as a country in grief, in rage and in resolve. Everything else just stopped.

“I wrote this song as a tribute to all those who lost someone in the collapse of the towers—their family members and loved ones. But in a very real sense, we all lost them that day. We were all American siblings.

“We need to remember what happened. But we also need to remember how we came together afterward, and hold fast to that.”

The release arrives on the 25th anniversary of an event that is now crossing an important generational boundary. Millions of Americans remember exactly where they were when the first reports arrived and when the realization came that the United States was under attack. Millions more have been born since then and know September 11 only through photographs, recorded broadcasts, documentaries and the memories of those who lived through it.

I See Your Name is intended to live somewhere between those two experiences: remembrance for those who were there, and an invitation to remember for those who weren't.

September 11 is inevitably remembered through numbers: four hijacked aircraft, two towers, thousands of lives lost and 25 years now passed.

But numbers are not people.

People have names.

And for the people who loved them, sometimes seeing one of those names is all it takes to make 25 years disappear.