On finding normalcy in times of crisis
by Gabriela Lena Frank
In a stream of furtive texts with a concerned friend this morning, I glibly shared that I felt like I was coming down with multiple personality disorder.
It wasn’t one of my more PC moments, and I don’t think that’s the assurance my friend was after, shocked by the unreal images of an apocalyptic and fiery Saturn that passes for the west coast these days. It’s unbelievable to her that these photos are posted on Facebook by people she actually knows. Towns and forests are burning and I’m afraid I was flippant in responding to her heartfelt, “How are you?”
Jeremy and I are holding steady, I said to her. Sitting tight as we are not out of danger, but in for a slog until we get to the rains of autumn. May they come early. Until then, we grab moments of normalcy where we can. I’ve had to cancel many of my COVID-induced-Zoom meetings lately but for the ones I’ve hung onto, I note the uncertainty and worry on people’s faces as I doggedly log in. I adopt one of my Gabrielas, each with its own unique and sad bedhead (Luckily, Jeremy doesn’t care), and fake for all I’m worth until a kind of autocorrect kicks in. A stuck compass rights itself, and the words coming out of my mouth finally, suddenly, come into focus.
After all, on today’s docket alone: Guesting in a composition masterclass, participating in a panel discussion with a journalism think tank, giving a lesson to a brilliant non-western composer enticed into the western symphonic medium, and meeting with one of my Academy staff to review programs. Miraculously, I’m acquitting myself with alacrity, and the oil of intellectual and creative conversation flows.
Then, after such meetings, I hang up, and the split-me recedes. I’m momentarily confused... WTF day is this? Why do I not feel safe? Where’s Jeremy? Has the 'Rona gotten my parents? Is there puppy mess on the floor? Again?
I’m confused until a familiar dull ache of trauma beats back to life, like a suppressed migraine, just holding steady.
It’s not a great feeling, this holding steady in crisis. In all honesty, Jeremy and I have been holding steady for four hot seasons. In 2017, we were shocked into our first season of fire. No warm-up for us. We were horrified to see the utterly urban Coffey neighborhood in Santa Rosa wiped out as fire jumped a major six-lane freeway, our family members evacuated in Napa, and thick red-tinged smoke visible from our own deck. We donated canned food, towels, board games, and Christmas toys for fire victims crammed into shelters. Most of CA wrote this off as just a particularly horrid once-in-a-century fluke, and very few mentioned a climate crisis, me included.
Then 2018 hit, hard, and the not faraway town of Paradise, almost 30,000 people, was essentially gone in just hours. I was handing out smoke masks to musicians at my Academy while the city died. As we inhaled its demise, I vowed to never bring guests into a dangerous situation again, rescheduling future residencies to avoid fire months. Jeremy and I began pouring money into hardening our property in earnest, and, feeling like a total loser, I admitted I needed extensions on composing projects while pulling out of other guesting stints. This was the year I fully embraced the climate crisis and became an activist.
2019 hit my beloved state with yet greater vengeance. For one of the highest tech regions in the world, the humiliatingly low-tech firefighting solution of Pacific Gas & Electric shutting off power for days on end meant for the first time, I couldn’t personally oversee one of my Academy residencies. My pride was wounded but local businesses suffered more. The Academy residency was salvaged only because my guest performer mentors were so very excellent, as were the musicians of the Oregon Symphony — With them, I had to leave my gig and recording session early to reunite with Jeremy during the Kincade Fire. He was holding down the fort at home alone against the uncertainty of the sprint incinerating south of us. I was cut off from him for several panicked days, marooned at my parents’ house in Berkeley, as evacuation zones hit the coastline, a grim first.
And here we are in 2020 with 2.5 million acres burned before we’ve even gotten to the worst of our fire season. During a pandemic! Leading up to this moment in the last year, many finally got religion and began feverishly hardening their house and property, began paying much more attention to the election. Yet, I fear that Oregon and Washington are not far behind us, with Colorado, Arizona, and Utah in the crossfire next, needing to take things day by day while in the grip of a crisis, but also persisting in a crisis mindset for the long-term. Jeremy and I had hoped that this season would not be bad but have been prepared for the worst.
Four straight seasons of this. In the off-season, we don't relax but chip and burn brush, install tanks of water and break ground for ponds, renovate the home for fire resistant stucco exteriors, and make the hard calls to live ever greener. In the end, while I still hope to not lose our home nor our lives, I have been inspired by my community's resilience. My neighbors are amazing. And what really heartens me is that I see the necessary conversations to address the climate crisis really beginning to move. I see patience with deniers evaporating. Good. Patience will be the death of us. Fire isn’t going away and is becoming an awful way of life, but perhaps outdated mythologies and unhelpful agendas may actually be ignored, shouted down if necessary, as new state legislation is debated and gets passed. Jeremy and I are signed up for a civilian training program to institute more prescribed burns under the guidance of burn bosses. I can scarcely imagine myself in gear and with a drip torch in hand, the same hand that writes symphonies and used to play a mean Bartok. What is this world where climate crisis, in a myriad of awful forms, will scald every corner of it, and soon?
Yet, as part of a two-person team trying to protect our small slice of heaven in God’s country, I couldn’t ask for a better partner. I don’t know how I got so randomly lucky in meeting the perfect man for me, who toils daily in not just protecting our house and land, but who still tells his goofy jokes complete with mimicry, sits by me to watch Cobra Kai on Netflix while stealing my popcorn, takes the newest pittie pup in our pack out for the 3am pee, and gives me the best hugs when my courage and good humor are flagging. Jeremy accepts all of my multiple personality selves, even the new ones that keep coming out of the woodwork, clowns streaming from the Clusterf--k Car, to deal with simply unimaginable challenges while finding moments of normalcy. Between my friends afar checking in with me, my family, and Jeremy, there is a lot of love in my life. To that question of “No, really… How. Are. You… Gabi?!?”, verifiably all of me choruses: We are here. Still here. Here even while yet framed in the unnatural glow of darkened orange skies.
Gabriela Lena Frank is the director of the Gabriela Lena Frank Creative Academy of Music. Included in the Washington Post's list of the 35 most significant women composers in history (August, 2017), Gabriela was born in Berkeley, California. Winner of a Latin Grammy, she has composed for leading orchestras and worked with luminaries like cellist Yo Yo Ma, soprano Dawn Upshaw, the King’s Singers, and the Kronos Quartet. She also is a passionate believer in service, and has brought her love of music into hospitals, schools, and prisons. Learn more on Gabriela's bio page.