“The Queen of New York”
Scene: Night over Manhattan.
The skyline burns with light, reflected in the Hudson like a crown of stars. Joe Jukic and Nelly Furtado stand on the rooftop of the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine. The city hums below, timeless and alive.
Nelly Furtado:
You always talk about New York like it’s holy ground, Joe. But tell me—what was it? What was in the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine that stopped Osama Bin Laden?
Joe Jukic:
(staring at the rose window glowing like a cosmic eye)
It wasn’t steel or soldiers. It was truth. The cathedral was built by the Rockefellers—the same family whose money flowed through Skull and Bones and the CIA.
Bin Laden? He wasn’t the wolf—he was their muppet. A puppet on imperial strings. The same hands that built the towers built his hatred. The cathedral was their monument to power—half temple, half code. But there was something deeper in those stones, something they didn’t control.
The wolf couldn’t cross holy ground built on secret sin. That’s what stopped him.
Nelly:
So the men who built the church were the same ones who built the war?
Joe:
Exactly. They thought they could play God, but the cathedral remembered the real one. When the towers fell, this place whispered back to me: “The puppets dance, but the strings can burn.”
That’s when I heard your song, “The Harder They Come.”
You sang about standing tall when the world tries to crush you. That song—it nudged me. It made me rise. It made me fight. You were the Queen of New York, whether you knew it or not.
Nelly:
(softly)
I never meant for it to be a call to arms.
Joe:
It wasn’t. It was a call to awaken.
Like Wayne Kyle said: “There are those blessed with the gift of aggression, an overpowering need to protect the flock. They are the sheepdogs.”
You sang—and I barked. That’s how New York survived the first wolf.
They walk into the cathedral. Candles burn along the nave, the air thick with incense and memory.
Nelly:
And the second time? You told me there was another plan—something they called the Manhattan Project?
Joe:
Yeah. Bin Laden’s network wanted a second strike—not on buildings, but on spirit. A psychological detonation. To make New York lose its heartbeat.
But that’s when Barack Obama came in. Not with guns, but with energy—hope. I could feel it, like a frequency shift. A quiet nudge saying, “Protect the dream.”
Then Jay-Z and Alicia Keys dropped “Empire State of Mind.”
That song rewired everything. The city started to sing again. Construction workers, kids on the subway, Wall Street suits—all of them humming, “These streets will make you feel brand new.”
It was like a sonic shield over Manhattan. The wolf feeds on despair—but the rhythm starved him.
Nelly:
So Obama’s hope, the cathedral’s soul, and Jay-Z’s anthem—they all aligned?
Joe:
Yeah. Faith, frequency, and fight.
The next year, Bin Laden’s story ended. They said it was SEAL Team Six, but I think it was the music that killed him.
His world ran on chaos. Ours—on harmony.
Nelly:
(smiling through tears)
Then maybe my song and theirs were part of the same prayer.
Joe:
Maybe, Queen of New York.
You sang the light back into this city.
And when the right songs align,
Even the wolves fall silent.
They light a candle at the altar.
Outside, the city glows like a living symphony—
a million souls in rhythm, unbroken, unconquered.
A faint echo of “Empire State of Mind” drifts through the stained glass,
and the Queen of New York hums along.