We’ve just returned from our trip to the Czech Republic, where we recorded the orchestrated tracks of our original score for THE LIST in a studio just outside Prague. As Kevin and I walked in we were stunned when we heard John’s compositions played by live musicians for the first time. It’s unbelievable to me that we had forty members of the Czech Philharmonic recording tracks for our film. It’s something we’ve never experienced before and I don’t know how we lived without it.

Our composer, John Califra, has really inspired us through the score he’s composed. It’s unified the vision that Kevin and I have had for this project since the beginning. John said it best, “This is about Kirk and what he’s done as an American being [in Iraq]… He represents an ideal of what [America] pretends to be but isn’t.” John’s vision for this score has always been to avoid trying to reference an Arabic style of music in any way. Trying to emulate a certain style, he says, makes it all about the emulation of a “foreign” sound and puts up a barrier between the audience and the film. This story is really about people connecting to people, not just Americans connecting to Iraqis.

Working with Christo Pavlov, our conductor, has been wonderful, and he’s really brought some great insight to the music. He and John have been communicating about the score for a while now and it’s clear that they’re on the same page with what needs to be done. The recording day was incredibly successful and we’re all excited to put the music together with the final cut of THE LIST.

“…characters are not born like people, of woman; they are born of a situation, a sentence, a metaphor containing in a nutshell a basic human possibility that the author thinks no one else has discovered or said something essential about… The characters… are my own unrealized possibilities… an investigation of human life in the trap the world has become.”

As a little girl I had dreamed of studying at BU; it was my Dad’s alma mater, and some of my best memories as a child are of traveling there from our home in Connecticut to watch my Dad play his trumpet in the alumni band. While he practiced, my Mom and I enjoyed the school and the city. One year that meant picking through all the treasures at a tag sale being held in the Music Department. There was a luxurious red snow fox stole—with glass eyes, four legs, feet and a tail—that for $1.50 was clipped around my neck and coming home with us. The next year’s big find: a red plastic clown nose from a convenient store. Another visit brought introductions to Julia Child and BU President John Silber.

Since Dad died at the end of May, I have had the overwhelming sensation of being forced to perform in play for which I never wanted to audition. How I would love to be back at that tag sale just outside the band room, sounds from his brass section muted by the closed door. Instead, the whole summer has been somewhat of a blur. Important training time for the 270-mile ride from Ground Zero was replaced by frequent trips home to CT, and long rides alone were bittersweet: beautiful times to reflect, but too much time to think. I would return red-eyed, swollen — all the while thinking, “I just don’t feel like ‘me’.”

Yesterday, veering onto Comm Ave from Beacon Street, I had a sudden, clear, unexpected realization: For the first time in three months, I did feel like “me.” And I have Susan Retik, founder of Beyond the 11th and organizer of the ride, to thank for that. Susan created a community of riders who shared a powerful sense of purpose—to remember 9/11 in a way that connects us with each other and our world.

Susan lost her husband, David, on September 11th. They had been college sweethearts. She was seven months pregnant. In her darkest hours she chose to understand the pain of others–particularly those beyond our borders affected by the same tragedy. She forged a kinship with Afghan war widows who are among the most oppressed and impoverished people in our world. In the 8 years since she co-founded Beyond the 11th, she has helped 10,000 Afghan widows to help themselves and their families. At the end of the ride, Susan told an Esplande crowd of 5,000, “We cannot literally force the rest of the world to be our friend. We have to befriend the world.”

Three days earlier, overlooking Ground Zero on the first day of the ride, Susan said, “The events of that day were completely out of my control. Even just getting on the bike from the hotel, I felt – I’m in control.”

Together, 44 of us spent three days pedaling 262-miles through four states. We made our way from Ground Zero through busy intersections in Manhattan and Brooklyn. We watched the sun come up along the Connecticut shoreline as cranes caught their breakfast. We dodged chipmunks, squirrels and turkeys. We pounded pink and blue Powerade and wild berry power gels. We were cheered on by strangers, accused of being menaces, given an escort by the Mayor of Bridgeport, and were mistaken for Neil Armstrong by a man who quickly wished he’d yelled Lance. We talked and talked. Laughed and laughed. And we cried when Susan had her accident on Day 2, wishing the broken collarbone and concussion had happened to ourselves instead.

For the final 25 miles, our spirits were buoyed as nearly 200 riders joined us for the final leg to the banks of the Charles River. As we made our victory lap around the Hatch Shell in front of 5,000 people, the Boston Pops Brass Ensemble began to play – and I could hear Dad’s trumpet ringing in my ears.

Towering near the hotel is One WTC — a structure that continues to climb 84 floors. Below, construction vehicles buzz around the haunting crater where the World Trade Center towers once stood. I can hear the jackhammers and loader engines in my room as I catch up on emails: forms for fiscal sponsorship need filling out; a meeting for our Executive Producer at the Toronto Film Festival needs confirming; licensing fees need to be worked out with Brazil’s largest TV network. Everything needed. Needed now. Distracting me from connecting with this moment, and the reasons I have chosen to be here.

And then I open an email – one of the most beautiful I’ve ever received – from Bonnie Pedota of Ontario who has just watched our film BEYOND BELIEF. This is it in its entirety:

I am a mother and wife (most importantly, but among other things) living in Brooklin, Ontario, Canada, just outside of Toronto. I borrowed Beyond Belief from my public library.

Bonnie Pedota

Thank you, Bonnie, for reminding me how much what is happening outside my window right now is connected to the rest of our world.