Mortality onstage:
Matters of life and death have become the focus of odd but popular events organized by Ned Buskirk, above.
Death, life, mortality become the focus of odd but popular stage events
People meet up in San Francisco to discuss almost anything — zoning policies, sapio-sexuality, nano-brews, vegan co-ops, MSG addiction. But death, the most universal and unavoidable fact of life? It rarely makes the cut. There is something in the underpinnings of traditional Western culture that renders casual conversation about death, something that happens to everyone, unwelcome — while the least probable events, such as a winning the Powerball, are embraced with open arms. When death is talked about, it’s sepulchered away to private rooms, or discussed in whispers.
Seven years ago, San Francisco organizer Ned Buskirk decided it was time to call death by its name. He created a series of open mikes called “You’re Going to Die” where people could speak candidly about death, grief and mortality. Much to his surprise, the demand for these conversations was far greater than anticipated; the shows routinely sell out.
Which could be in part because these shows are the first of their kind in San Francisco. “YG2D” shows are like the three-parent love child of AA, grief therapy and “The Moth.” While many attendees do share their experiences of dealing with the physical end of life, the open mikes are equally concerned with the broader concepts of end-
ings, some of which are more opaque, like death anxiety, or the death of an idea, or even of a marriage. At a recent open mike, a middleaged woman recounted the indelible moment she realized her husband of 20 years was gay. She said it was the first time she had shared her experience out loud.
While one might think stories of grief are best discussed among the closest family or friends, the bulk of “YG2D’s” attendees come alone, and seem to prefer it that way. Many of the people who perform talk about their difficulties sharing their innermost sense of despair with the people who are supposed to understand them best. And although they’re doing so in a room full of strangers, it seems that “YG2D” is one of the few places in San Francisco where they truly feel at home.
The open mikes were born partly out of Buskirk’s love of performance, and his own coping with a “dysfunctional” household in which loss was everpresent. His father left their family when Buskirk was young, and by the time he turned 13, his mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. It was an unsparing battle she preferred to keep private, and after 13 years, she died.
“I think I gained a certain sensitivity to those parts of humanity ... paying attention to how people hurt and having a heart for heartbreak in others,” Buskirk says. “And also, the inclination to make people laugh and alleviate that heartbreak.”
Buskirk hosted the first version of “You’re Going to Die” in 2009, at the Duboce Triangle apartment he shared with his wife. At that point, the event wasn’t tuned toward mortality — it was simply an opportunity for friends to gather and create community.
It was only after the death of his mother-inlaw a few years later that “You’re Going to Die” was given a name, and was declared to be a place that made space for the sorrows of anyone who felt compelled to share, or simply to listen.
He understood that he was just “a regular guy, not a nurse or a chaplain” but that he wasn’t the only person in the world who needed to seek out mortal refuge. Soon afterward, he began a residency at Viracocha, an underground performance space in the Mission District.
“The space needed to have magic built in it,” Buskirk says about Viracocha. “You walked into this space that was mostly dimly lit, cavernous, a coffin-like venue. You were 6 feet under and you couldn’t hear the city anymore. When you walked in there, the stage was already asking you to look at it.”
After Viracocha closed, Buskirk moved the shows and its devotees to a venue of similar allure: the Lost Church, also in the Mission. Singer-songwriter Chelsea Coleman, who is a prominent presence in the collective, often joins him onstage to sing about her experience with grief. “YG2D” is the only space where she feels comfortable speaking about her sister, who has been missing for two years.
“I’ve had the unique opportunity to explore the biggest grief I’ve ever experienced without physical closure,” Coleman says. “If I grieve the loss of my sister, then that’s somehow betraying the hope that she’s OK. In my mind, I don’t know what’s going on, and I might never know what’s going on. But the cells of my body are grieving.”
Our society has created a number of templates and rituals for physical death, Coleman says. But few exist for the kind of grief she faces every day, a kind that feels suspended in time and space, and with no real end or closure in sight. For her, “YG2D” is that missing ritual.
The open mikes are fairly loose in structure, and people perform all kinds of things: prose, limericks, comedy, music or the perfectly mundane, like a recovered voice mail from someone who’s no longer with them. Past shares have included Buskirk’s own, of the inimitable relief that came after his close call with cancer.
For others, “YG2D” is a space to revel in the glory and absurdity of being alive — and the great fear around the fact that it will end someday. At the same open mike, a girl performed a eulogy for a friend who was very much still alive (and sitting in the audience).
Expressions of hope and connectedness like these are what continue to draw Oakland performer Angela Hennessy to the shows. As an academic who studies death and textile theory, Hennessy has had mortality play a central role in her life, and even more so recently. In the fall of 2015, she was shot on the front steps of her home in West Oakland. Every day she’s lived since has felt like a bonus. Most important, she said, for her, death has lost its link to age. It could happen at any moment.
“I think talking about death allows people to get at the heart of what they want to say,” Hennessy says. “When people talk about death, the facades of life drop away.”
Unlike organized religion or other formal memberships, the shows aim not to impose any one reality or way of life on its community, said singer-songwriter Scott Ferreter, who has grown increasingly involved in “YG2D” since stumbling upon one of the shows. Not long after he lost his father to stomach cancer, Ferreter found himself at one of “YG2D’s” open mikes. It was exactly the kind of reverence and clarity he’d been searching for.
“It’s as if a film had been pulled off of my experience,” he said. “I think that the particular group of people who need this is anybody who’s alive in 2017, whose culture hasn’t offered them a complete and holistic way of dealing with the impending reality of death.”
Ferreter performed earlier this month at the Great American Music Hall for “YG2D’s” most extravagant show to date. Some 500 people gathered to mark “YG2D’s” new status as a nonprofit organization. The show was entirely curated and featured local bands, plus Hennessy’s performance of a “death manifesto” she had written. And this time, the show was called something slightly different from its usual title: It was called a “You’re Alive: A Mortal Celebration.”
In October, “YG2D” will begin a new residency of a curated show every few months at the Swedish American Hall. The open mikes at the Lost Church will go on as usual. Its expansion poses a question about the ability of the event to retain the intimacy it’s fostered by staying small. But Ferreter isn’t worried that branching out is any threat to the atmosphere of closeness “YG2D” has offered to those who need it most.
“There’s no time to tiptoe,” Ferreter said. “There’s no time to be afraid of losing what this thing is, because the very nature of the event is recognizing that we’re going to lose it all.”