It was a year ago today when a text was sent to me by a coworker at little after 7 in the morning.
GA THEATRE ON FIRE
You never know what messages mean when you first get them. You hear someone gets into a car wreck and immediately you think the worst, only to later hear it was no big deal, a simple fender-bender. I try not to be too alarmed nowadays, but I ran out the door nonetheless.
This message was indeed a big deal.
A mile from the Theatre I saw the smoke rise, and as I rode closer the smell of the burning building came into focus. I parked a block from the Theatre and watched in wide-eyed amazement as flames licked the top of the structure. As a haze of smoke filtered through the early-morning light of downtown Athens, people watched silently as an institution slowly started to fall apart.
I texted a friend . . . Georgia Theatre on fire, get down here before it collapses, this is not a joke . . . I sent out missives on Twitter. Standing next to me at the corner of Milledge and Clayton were two guys from Venice is Sinking, who just months before had finished cutting an album inside those Georgia Theatre walls. They didn’t move, they didn’t speak – they just sat there and watched. We all did, in silent agony.
June 19, 2009 was a bad day for a lot of reasons, and for a lot of people. A year later we wait and hope, knowing a future Georgia Theatre is on its way. Just this week Venice is Sinking released Sand & Lines, the album recorded with two mics in the Theatre (here’s a new track), serving as a reminder of what we have loss and what we will gain once again.
