Is There An Upper Limit To Coincidence?

Whilst drafting this post about coincidence, wouldn't you know it, a couple of coincidences occurred!

The other day I wrote about the mash-up trailer for The Shining. The next time I went to visit my favorite capping site, which movie do you think was currently playing on the schedule? You guessed it. The Shining. The fact that this happened whilst I was drafting a post about coincidences is in itself ANOTHER coincidence!

Life is strange.

Anyway. Onto the post as it was originally intended--


A bit of a darker theme to today's post as it has something to do with the 2001 terror attacks on the World Trade Center. Don't worry, this isn't going to be another flogged-to-death opinion about the mayhem that occurred that day. Instead, I'm going to focus on an eerie coincidence.

When coincidences crop up they can really do a number on you and it can be very easy to read more into what has occurred than was there to begin with. I try not to let myself do that. Either there's a simple explanation I've failed to notice that only makes it seem like a coincidence has occurred, or what we're dealing with might be a genuine, bona-fide, 24 Karat, real McCoy coincidence. That's nothing to be afraid of. Statistically speaking, it would be very strange if there weren't any coincidences in our lives.

The following anecdote on coincidence I've been carrying around for a while now. The context makes it pretty hard to forget. Here's how it goes:

On the morning of September 11, 2001 you could walk into a music store in the U.S. and pick up the latest CD from prog-metal supergroup Dream Theater. Of all the factors that go into deciding the release date of a product, this one's just happened to align with that exact date.

There were probably a great many other products slated for release to consumers on 9/11. So, no great coincidence here, really. At least, not yet.

A year before, Dream Theater had played a live date in New York City. The set included a track by track performance of their previous studio album - a concept album titled Scenes From A Memory. They had recorded the event and set about preparing it for release as a live album. It seemed a fitting choice, then, that when the album was released it should feature cover artwork depicting the iconic New York City skyline, with the Twin Towers prominently featured--

Ablaze.

An unsavory coincidence; sure. And more than enough to warrant pulling the album from circulation for a makeover. But, the thing is -- we're still not done.

Because the album was a live presentation of Scenes From A Memory it made good sense to give it a title that implied as much. Unfortunately, the chosen title would mimick a phrase the world would hear again and again as they surveyed the mortally wounded Twin Towers on their TV sets that fateful September morning:

"These are Live Scenes From New York."


I decided not to publish the artwork in this post, mainly because you'd likely cheat and skim the picture, rendering my prose inert. You can find the original art on the Wikipedia entry.