The Oakland Gay Men’s Chorus is beyond proud to be singing the Brahms Requiem with the Oakland Symphony Chorus in tribute to the victims of the Ghost Ship fire, and to collaborate with other like-minded artistic organizations in our community. It gives us an important opportunity to put music and expression to a pain and a sense of loss that many of us have been feeling, to take a step forward together, and to celebrate the art, lives, and dreams of those that were lost.
It’s been almost two years since the Ghost Ship fire in Oakland. Thirty-six lives were taken from our community that day. Many of us have experienced death and loss before, but to me, this was something different. It was more visceral. It felt more real, more terrifying. It was so close to home, and it was happening at an event I might have attended. I can’t remember ever feeling as helpless as I did then, knowing that people my age and younger were trapped and terrified.
The hours after seemed to unfold at a crawl as we all held our breaths, waiting to hear some good news about the dozens of people missing, but there wasn’t much good news to be had. I myself was waiting, heart in my throat, to hear about my friend Donna who, like so many others, hadn’t been heard from.
I was just walking off the stage after my first concert singing with OGMC, floating on a cloud of camaraderie and accomplishment, when I heard confirmation from a teary-eyed friend that Donna had died in the fire. I just stood there in the audience hugging him for a while, not exactly sure what to do with all of my confusing, conflicting emotions. I know now that with my choral family is the best place to be in the wake of something like that. It’s important not to shut down, to step out and embrace the community rather than shy away from it, and that’s what OGMC does everyday. We try to reach as much of that community as possible, and shine a light on the things that connect us, even when those things are rife with pain.
In a time of grief, Donna’s friends came together and celebrated all that she had given us, just as I am doing as I write this, and just as the Oakland Gay Men’s Chorus will do on November 16th with the Oakland Symphony when they acknowledge what was added to society by these thirty-six souls, as well as what was taken away from it in the fire. As if to comfort her friends in the middle of all that grief, a video of her played at that gathering of friends. It was footage from a documentary about the switch from film projection to digital in theaters across the country, something that she and I and our friends had experienced and lamented together. Her words on the subject still comfort and inspire me to this day, and perhaps they can do the same for someone else.
“I’m constantly teeter-tottering back and forth between sad and happy. It seems like I’m on the tail end of this dragon that’s been soaring through history, art history, societal expression, for ages. And at every turn, I just see the end of the tail. The end of the dragon. Now we’re going digital and film is ending—another part of this repeating cycle in my life that’s been happening since I was young. It’s gone. It’s over. Get used to MTV. Get used to digital. Analogue is a thing of the past, and why would you care about that? And it’s true; you can produce more with digital. That’s what our society is heading towards: we need more choices, more options instead of having quality. It’s all about the quantity of things. It’s all about the number of screens. It’s not just one stage, one performance of your lifetime. It can’t be an exact replica of the past, and so I have to think about the positives, the things it can do. I don’t think theaters will go away, I think people will still want to go out and experience something, whether or not it’s something that looks good on screen, as film purists love the imperfections. It will look perfect and cold and unwavering, but there will be a whole other emotion that’s brought about from that. Like the dragon—we’re all a part of this one long piece of expression. But it’s not over, that tail’s coming back around…and it’s time to eat the tail. Analogue in the USA.”
-Donna Kellogg
