Kathy Kelly-George
@kkellygeorge on the bench outside her front door.
-Music-
I got Kathy’s name through a friend. I didn’t know anyone in the choral scene really. And I had been hearing about the different kinds of speaking/performing/singing being “super spreaders”. If you are talking to a single person, you are pretty safe at 6 feet apart. We all know that now. However, as you project your voice or if you have a group of people projecting their voices, the distance someone has to stand to be safe gets much farther. So I really wanted to chat with someone who was missing this art form.
Our conversation was truly heartbreaking and inspiring.
Interviewed 5.19.20
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Casey: Ok. I'm going to put that right there so I can hear you real good. So first and foremost, how are you doing? How are you feeling?
Kathy: You think you have a grasp on how you feel, but you don't really. It changes from moment to moment. Talking to you makes me happier; that interaction. Having someone to look forward to talking to and make you get out of your pajamas. But most days I'm pretty blue. I have the blues and I don't think there's any way to get out of it. It's like there's been a death. Somebody said, "We're going to close on Friday and do professional training so we can see about online teaching and working. And then on Monday we're going to do mock-teaching on working online and then we'll see how that goes." But Friday, when we worked together, was our last day together. And nobody said everybody was dying then. Nobody said that. And then we'll never see you again. Because that's how it feels. It's like when you move away, even when you go to college; for a week or two you feel alright, and then you get homesick. There's a moment where you just can't and you have to cry to your mom or whoever. It's like that. We were ready for a day or two, for a week or two, extended a couple weeks. Now there's no end.
Casey: Yeah. You just don't know.
Kathy: It's hard to have hope. My hope lasts only so long. But I'm. I'm. I'm alright. Every day: wake up, breathe. We're just getting by.
Casey: My heart's breaking. What have you been doing in quarantine?
Kathy: Not a lot.
Casey: Sure.
Kathy: I play an online PVP game that I'm pretty addicted to. I do that for hours at a time. I watch Netflix series to their completion. I play with dogs. My daughter and I rescued a dog from the advertisements on the television regarding, "If you can take in a dog..." We contemplated it and we discuss it as a family. How would that impact our life? And then we did a little search, and after week we saw a dog. His owner was a 72 year-old who got sick and was unable to care for him, and returned him to the adoption area she'd originally gotten him from. So he was rescued, fostered, adopted, back to the rescue agency, fostered, and adopted by us. I think he's good now. He's a lovely dog. So having a puppy -- he's almost five months old now -- it's just another fun time running around after him. But baking, eating, sleeping somewhat; terrible sleep patterns. Contemplating life.
Casey: Yeah. Yeah. I feel that.
Kathy: I think I fall into a fairly high-risk category even though I'm very well. My brother got Covid a few weeks ago. He's my younger brother and he's the baby. He's very fit, bikes or runs 5-10 miles a day, jovial, very slender, 6'1", all muscle, lots of joie de vivre, hilarious guy. He was going to work every day. He works for the state of New York as an architect. They needed the architects for the state to design and retrofit buildings to be used as hospitals and figure out what they needed to do differently for ventilation systems and things. So he was fielding a lot of projects, hosting all the Zoom meetings, publishing the blueprints in the office, and he does the AutoCAD, predominantly, in his office. So he was doing that. We weren't worried about him. And then he came down with Covid and it almost killed him. And he's the healthiest among us. So I worried about him. And I've had a couple of friends get it; worried about them. One of Jasmine's teachers died from it. It's just an awful lot of worries; worry about others and worry about self. It makes you want to go into a cocoon and protect yourself and not get out. It really does. So I think that overall I'm fine, but I'm not myself.
Casey: That's a lot on your shoulders to think about.
Kathy: We're going to be tested tomorrow for antibodies. I wondered if I was a carrier, to be honest. I felt unwell for a few days in early mid-February. One morning, I got up and I felt so unwell, I decided to take a sick day. And I usually save my sick days for days that I feel well. It's like" I'm going to stay home today! Enjoy the sunshine." One of my colleagues in the Atlanta Symphony Chorus had met me during the break. We were rehearsing, and during the break we were planning to go to Carnegie so he and I need to discuss something about the hotel rooms. And we talked during the break for a bit and he kissed me hello. We always kiss hello. It's like *kiss sound* "Hey, how are you, sweetheart?" You know? And after we talked, he went to kiss me goodbye, but I felt unwell that day so I turned my cheek. And I wondered, "Did I offend him?" But I didn't want to get him sick because he's the social butterfly; if he got sick, everyone would get sick. I was like, "I'm not going to get him sick." But he got Covid and I did not. And the day I heard about it was 15 days after I kissed him. He has appeared on the local news and in newsprint because he's well known choral conductor, and he said he got it from someone who was asymptomatic and not presenting. Jasmine went to Quebec on a field trip with her class a week or so later. Ten days later, she called me and said, "Mom, I have a fever." I said, "Take some Motrin," and I tried not to panic. The next day the teachers were monitoring her and she said, "Oh, it seems all right. Just a one day thing. Maybe it's because I'm here in the snow," It was like in the 20s. But she came back and she seemed all right. And then George got sick and he never goes out and never goes down. I think he's taken one sick day in ten years. He just propped himself up on the couch and didn't move and said, "I don't feel good." We gave him soup and ginger ale. So I was like, "Maybe we had it." And if I find out I have antibodies, then I need to call my friend and say, "I might have been the person who gave that to you."
Casey: So you haven't talked to your friend since you...?
Kathy: No, I haven't informed him of that possibility. I was worried at first that he would have given it to me 15 days later. I'm like "Oh my god, I kissed him, and now he's in the hospital!" But that's really concerning to me; that the person can be asymptomatic. Because my brother's wife also tested positive. Since he tested, she tested. She lost her sense of smell, but she'd never spiked a fever, never had any issues. She clearly would be a person who was like, "I don't know if I have it. I lost my sense of smell. Maybe it's allergies."
Casey: Yeah sure.
Kathy: But anyways. short question. Long answer. I'm all right. I have the blues. We're making it through.
Casey: Are you anxious about the test at all tomorrow?
Kathy: I think it's just a little blood test. I'm not anxious. If it says you have antibodies, good. That means I was exposed to it and I didn't die. If it says you don't have antibodies, then I have to maintain my path of staying inside because I'm a fairly high-risk.
Casey: Sure, yeah. Wow, that's a lot. Because we talked a little bit about how you're a choral singer and an educator, and how choral singing is not something that will immediately come back because you're in such close proximity; it's a high-risk situation to transfer these things. How do you feel about that? And what do you feel like maybe the future?
Kathy: Well, it's depressing. In the course of my life, a lot of times a student or a friend will say, "Oh Kathy, why don't you do solo work? Why aren't you singing here, there and everywhere?" And I said, "I like to do that. I mean, I'm a singer. I like to sing. And I'm a good singer. But I love to be in the harmony." I live for harmony; two, three notes together, sometimes clashing and holding and then releasing into some beautiful harmony. I'm like, "Give me the crunchy note! Yes!" I live for that! And that's just some nerdy thing I have. There's five kids in my family, I'm one of five, and we sang in the car. We sang two-part harmony all the time as children. I think it was a method to make us shut up, but we sang all the time. So I like to be with people, coming from a big family, and I like to sing harmonies. Back in 2003, the symphony chorus was invited to perform with the Berlin Philharmonic. We were preparing the Brahms Requiem, and there's 200 of us in the symphony chorus when we're at full complement. And I was tired. I was vocally fatigued; the flying fatigued me, the piece is fatiguing. And there's a part where we have to be like triple, quadruple pianissimo, pianississimo, and everything to niente, to nothing. It ends profoundly quietly. It has some major bombastic moments that shake the roof, but it was spinning so well and it was so hushed and almost like a shimmering, quiet sound of 200 voices. And then we stopped. Just went to nothing. And I held still. At that point, you're almost an hour and a half standing up, holding a folder, your feet hurt, your back hurts, your arms hurt. And I didn't move. Nobody moved. And my brain went, "That was an awesome ending. Killed it." And then nobody moved. And the audience didn't move. And the orchestra didn't move. And the conductor...when you go to a classical concert, if the conductor's hands remain up, then the audience doesn't usually clap. There are always some jumpers. "That was great!" But there was nothing. I began to count, because I think I'm a little OCD with counting, and I think I counted to 55. So roughly one minute of utter silence between the chorus orchestra and audience before clapping began. Those moments where only you can be there, with only these other people to create that...the communion of that, the spirituality of that is so profound. And to take that away... Granted that's at a really high level. Kids are doing it in their kindergarten first and second grade concerts; singing together joyfully. If one person makes a mistake, nobody notices because they're all singing together and they're just cute as can be. But to make those memories, to make those moments...At a board retreat for the symphony, we were in small groups and someone went around the table asking, "What do you do? What do you do? What do you do?" And I almost always say, "I'm a Music Teacher." I'm not trying to be anything loftier than I am. I teach music and I'm proud of it. But as I heard what everyone was saying, I thought, "You know, what I really do is I make memories." So it came to me and I said, "I make memories." And I remember one of the board members, who has since passed away, wonderful man, he goes, "I wanna hear more about this." And I said, "Well, you probably don't remember the day you learned to write your letter "A" or your letter "S" in the right direction. Or how to print your name so it didn't run up or down the side of your paper; you learn spacing. You don't remember those moments when two plus two equaled four and you consistently were getting math correct. But you remember when you went with your class to a museum. When you went with your band to march in a parade. When you went with your chorus to sing at Disney. When you had a solo. These moments are stuck and burned into your memory. I make those moments. That's my job." "Remember when we did the Christmas concert? We sang this song?" Kids come to me 10 years later and go, "Yes!" "Remember when we were on the bus and I started to cry? At the beginning of the year, you guys were all the white kids on this side bus and all the black kids on that side of the bus. And at the end of the year, I turned around and you were all friends. And it was only because you're in chorus together. Plus, I made you sit next to each other, but you didn't know that I was trying to make you become friends with each other. And I turned around and I saw that and I wept." And they were like, "Why are you crying?" Because of those moments, those memories. So. I direct chorus at St. Martin's. I sing with the Symphony Chorus and with the Symphony Chamber Chorus, which is a smaller ensemble. And I coordinate the Georgia Independent School State Honor Choir for middle school chorus, I'm the State Coordinator. And I do solo work. I just finished an album of Irish songs arranged classically for me that only I like, nobody else likes it, but it's for me so... But all of the work that I do... It's necessary to have a group of people who want to do that work, too. We're all doing it together. It's like being on a sculling crew. And I'm alone in that boat now. And I can do it. I can get the boat down the river. I have oars. I can paddle. It's just not the same. Where is everybody? Why aren't we pulling together and everything glides and we move together and we breathe together? We did a family Zoom yesterday, and my older sister said, "Well, you're more than your singing Kathy." And I said, "Actually, no. No, no." If you take a pitcher and you break his elbow or you take a basketball player and you hurt his Achilles...then what are they? There are basketball players we no longer hear about; their career is over. We guess they do stuff? We don't even know. Football players that retire. Sports players that retire. We don't know who they are or what they do. Only a tiny, elite few become color-commentators. The rest? We don't know. Golfers? I don't know. Race car drivers? I have no idea what they do. They go off into oblivion. I said "Singers? We need to sing. And when you say "You can't sing," then what am I?" Nobody told us there was going to be the feeling of death and loss. We thought we were just going to quarantine for 14 days or however long. The reports, at the time, were saying, "That's the life of the virus." My brain was like, "If we're all inside for 14 days and everyone is healthy, then we can go back out again. And we've all gotten rid of it." But, of course, you have to eat. You have to go to the grocery store. Someone has to pick up the garbage. There are people in the hospital, God bless them, all the time. People at the funeral homes, firefighters, and normal everyday people just getting sick and having to go to the hospital. I don't know what to do with myself. And I'm annoyed to the nth degree at people making choral videos and orchestral videos and band videos. I do not have time for that, to be honest with you. I have the ability and skills to do that. I don't know if I have the software to do it, but I worked as a studio manager for a recording studio for 10 years. I know how to do this. I don't want to do it. I don't want to sit in a chair and do studio work for 50 hours to produce a mediocre track to make somebody happy that it got done. Now, some tracks are beautifully done; the Juilliard, the Boléro, the Revelle. That is stunning art. Just really stunning art. But I don't want to do that. I want to stand in front of people and give them a starting note, and wave my hands. Also, the inaccuracy of it -- because I'm such a geek -- you know, at the end of a theater piece when you do the button, everyone hits the button. If somebody's hand is the wrong direction, you're like, "Go again. Get that right!" It has to be exactly right. There's no point doing a button if one person is not doing the button. If you can't get there in time, "Move!" You do it over and over until the button becomes the button. And that moment where everyone is together, exactly at the same time rocks the piece. And choral music -- every cut-off, every diminuendo, every attack is together. So when you're trying to line up individual tracks, it's so inaccurate. It's painful to my nerve endings. I hear "s's" and it's like, "Ugh!" Or it's not blended because someone didn't take the time to mix the audio, so it's just so many individual --that's not how sound comes at you. If you're standing in front of it, if you're conducting, you do hear a lot of individual voices. But if you're 15, 20 feet feet back, then you just hear the ensemble. So. *wind chimes sounds* God agrees with me.
Casey: Yeah. That's a signal for sure. Love those. No, I get that.
Kathy: It's my fairy garden, you see.
Casey: It's beautiful. I'm so saddened for you that this has completely taken away your art form. I'm very lucky that I can still go out and technically do what I do. But choral singing is definitely something that's impossible to do alone. And I hate that for you. And I think this story is gonna be really moving for a lot of people and make them consider things that they don't necessarily think about.
Kathy: I don't even know what I'm supposed to do if school starts back. I don't know how to do it.
Casey: In the fall? Like, if like social distancing is still a thing, how would you continue to...
Kathy: Yeah. There was a symposium that was sponsored by NATS, which is the National Association of Teachers of Singing. It was NATS, the ACDA, the American Choral Directors Association, the Barbershop Harmony Association, and...somebody else. They had two or three scientists and physicians who were specialists in how viruses are transmitted, and they see no performances happening through 2021. And that was specifically to talk to singers and choristers. Then there was a video link that was attached, I think it was a Japanese study, where they had two people talking to each other. They used some kind of fluorescent camera, electron camera, and it showed how microscopic droplets travel straight across; just linger in the air. You have that five, six feet distance and then gravity, but some are as small as a piece of pollen; so light, but they will continue to travel up to 23 and 27 feet. And some are so light that they stay aloft in the air for hours. Covid-19 molecules can be so light. A tiny, minuscule droplet has thousands of Covid on it, and it's just floating around. So there's no way for someone in a room that's speaking loudly, let alone singing, to walk through. You should not walk in my room if I have been singing because my voice, as a classical singer, is trained to take up the space of the room. One of the training techniques I would do with my voice teacher in college would be to stand in the room where we were preparing to sing, point diagonally to the corners of the room, breathe the air from the room, and then sing out into the room. You learn that you're taking that breath -- it's not here. It's here. And so, I can sing the street. I can sing the street. If I want to sing down to that house, they will hear me. If I want to. Because that's the training. Now sound, of course, is going to travel farther than molecules, but if I've been singing in my room, I guarantee you, 23 or 27 feet, I'll been making it. I'll be making it.
Casey: Yeah.
Kathy: Anyone who's belting, they'll be making it.
Casey: So it's impossible, essentially. I'm getting close to your chapel, so I just have one more question, but thank you so much for this. This has really been incredible.
Kathy: It's like therapy for me.
Casey: Good! I'm happy that I can do that for you. I know we've talked about the very important things that you miss. But on a lighter note, it's a two-parter, is there anything that you've found that you really enjoy about quarantine? And is there any silly thing out in the world that you miss, that you will be excited to go back to when we're allowed to go back out again? Or one of the side-effects of being inside that you really loved?
Kathy: Jasmine is 17. And she tends to do a lot of interacting with her friends; either on the computer, social media, Instagram-ing, Discord, and things like that, or she's with her girlfriend or something. So I've really enjoyed having her home. I think it's an absolute blessing that she doesn't fully grasp. Although, she came and sat next to me the other night and said, "Mom, I want to say something to you." I have chronic insomnia. It's who I am so I live with it. It's not a complaint. It's just I have chronic insomnia. I've had it since I was six years old. So it was like 3:30 in the morning when she came down and she was like, "Mom, I want to tell you something." And I was like, "Uh Oh. what?" And she sits down and looks at me and goes, "I just want to thank you for being so supportive of my art. I see what other kids go through, and you've never questioned why I want something or what I need. You just always support me and I love you very much." And I was like *loud crying noises*. And she's always very sweet, but that moment may not have occurred, otherwise. I don't know what occurred for her to get into a conversation about it, but she felt the need. Maybe somebody said to her, "Your mom sounds great. You should thank her." But she baked me a cake for my birthday. I've had my Covid birthday. She made sweet rolls the other night, there's still a couple left, and she added chocolate chips to them. She had to whisk the yeast into warm water, let it sit, come together, then the bread, then she kneaded it, let it rise, kneaded it again, let it rise, folded in the chocolate chips, made the rolls, and then baked them. It was an hours long process, and she did that. Watching her enjoy baking and enjoy cooking is amazing. George and I get some quiet time every evening together. And we normally wouldn't see each other for lunch. Or we normally wouldn't see each other until I get home around 5:30, 6:00. And so it's just nice. I can go upstairs and ask him a question; the back bedroom is his office. He's working there and I could just go up and say, "Hi" to him. Most of the time I'm just sleeping, but those moments I would not have without being home a lot. Something I'm looking forward to... I love to travel. We had planned to go to Paris for Spring Break. I've only ever had a layover in the airport, like on the way to Berlin. All my life, I wanted to see Paris. We had booked an Airbnb in a lovely section in an older area of Paris, and we were all practicing our French with our Drops App, even though someone would certainly tell us to stop doing that. We were really looking forward to it. But as this became something, I began questioning, "Should we go?" Then they closed the Paris Opera, and I was planning to go to see an opera while I was there. And I was like, "There's no point in us going. And we can't go up the Eiffel Tower because they're going to close it." They had closed the Louvre. Remember back at the beginning of this? That was right when we were gonna go. And as I was like, "I don't want to go to Paris and not be able to go to a coffee shop, and be able to see the Eiffel Tower, but not go into it. Or go walk in front of the Louvre, but not go into it." And so, the airline refunded our tickets, and the Airbnb refunded the deposit. Everything was fine, but I miss traveling. My older sister lives in Ireland. My nieces and nephews -- my second grand-nephew was born in Dublin just a few weeks ago. Normally, I would go. I would go. If somebody said "It's fine. You can fly to Ireland tomorrow," I would go tomorrow. I would just buy a ticket and go. I want to go somewhere. I think I'm part gypsy. And I always go to live events. I'm at a live concert or a show every week. Or an arts festival; like the Yellow Daisy Festival, which normally comes up the end of the summer. What's the one of Piedmont Park? The big something Blossom Festival?
Casey: Is it the Cherry Blossom Festival?
Kathy: I don't think it's Cherry Blossom. I don't know, some kind of southern plant.
Casey: Yeah.
Kathy: Normally, I would go to arts festivals and museums and photography studios, and we would go out to dinners and luncheons. I'm always somewhere. I'm not usually home. So it doesn't help me. And I also always make Easter dinner for people; I have six or eight people over for Easter dinner who don't have family in Atlanta. I haven't seen them because we didn't do an Easter dinner. George is a real foodie. He'll go to any restaurant he can find. We'll go travel miles to go try out something, you know? I miss going out.
Casey: It will happen.
Kathy: It will happen. It will happen. It's been nice to sit out here and see all of the wildlife behind you. There've been so many birds I didn't know. If you look at that large, unkempt bush, there's a sort of hole in it? Birds have been diving in and out of there. So there's got to be a nest in there.
Casey: There's a nest in there somewhere.
Kathy: Some squirrels have skittered around. And I saw a chipmunk pop his head up.
Casey: I love that. It's nice out here. It's good. It's a nice day.
Kathy: This is my kind of weather because I'm fairly, as an Irish person, very fair.
Casey: Fair. This was great. Thank you.
