Dispatches From the Edge_ A Memoir of War, Disasters, and Survival - Anderson Cooper [3]
It’s a strange way to start 2005. We’ve been covering the tsunami around the clock this week, and each day brings new details, new horrors. There’s been talk of canceling the celebrations, but in the end it’s decided that the show will go on.
I’ve always hated New Year’s Eve. When I was ten, I lay on the floor of my room with my brother, watching on TV as the crowd in Times Square counted down the remaining seconds of 1977. My father was in the intensive care unit at New York Hospital. He’d had a series of heart attacks, and in a few days would undergo bypass surgery. My brother and I were terrified, but too scared to speak with each other about it. We watched, silent, numb, as the giant crystal ball made its slow descent. It all seemed so frightening: the screaming crowds, the frigid air, not knowing if our father would live through the new year.
I grew up in New York but never went to see the ball drop until I volunteered to cover it for CNN. For most New Yorkers, the idea of going anywhere near Times Square on New Year’s Eve is inconceivable. It’s like eating at Tavern On The Green; the food may be tasty, but it’s best left to out-of-towners.
I’ve always thought that New Year’s Eve is proof that human beings are essentially optimistic creatures. Despite hundreds of years of pathetic parties and hellish hangovers, we continue to cling to the notion that it’s possible to have fun on that night. It’s not. There’s too much pressure, too many expectations, too few bathrooms.
The truth is, I began volunteering to work on New Year’s Eve as a way to avoid having to do something social. This is my second time covering the Times Square festivities, and I’ve actually begun to enjoy it. There aren’t many opportunities in this city to feel part of a community. We scuttle about the streets each day, individual atoms occasionally running into one another but rarely coalescing to form a whole. In Times Square, however, as the ball descends and the crowd cheers, New York becomes a very different place, a place of pure feeling.
When midnight arrives, the air explodes into a solid mass, a swirl of colored confetti that seems to hang suspended in space. For several minutes I am not expected to say anything. The pictures take over. The cameras pan the streets, wide shots and close-ups; people sing and shout. I take the headphones out of my ears and am surrounded by the waves of sound. The air seems to shake, and for a few brief moments I feel part of something larger, not lost in the crowd but swept up by it, buoyed by the emotion, the energy, the joyful pandemonium. It overwhelms my defenses, my hard-won cynicism. The past gives way to the present, and I give myself up to it—the possibilities, the potential.
It doesn’t last long. By 12:30, it’s over. I thank the viewers for watching, and the broadcast ends; the lights go out. The crowds have already dispersed, pushed along by tired police and armies of street sweepers cleaning up debris. I shake hands with the cameramen, and crew, wish everyone a happy new year. There are genuine smiles, and jokes. We pause for pictures, arms around one another—quick snapshots I’ll never see. A few minutes later I walk home alone. I have a flight to Sri Lanka that takes off in the morning. I still have to pack. There’s no point in sleeping.
When I first started reporting, in the early 1990s, I used to experience anxiety attacks before heading overseas. Packing bags, sitting on a