Donna Summer, Disco and the Dream

Another super star dies in mid life. With Donna Summer I have mixed thoughts. She came on the stage when I was still living with my mom and as I moved to my first solo apartment in Manhattan.  She kept going hit after hit. She contributed to what already had started, a movement, a way of life, a way to get away from life called  ‘Disco.’

Everybody was talking about the Disco floors with beautiful lights that will make the allusion that you were standing still when you were not. The sound was not created by a single human but by the combination of what many called disco machine or in reality by a mixer combining different sounds of instruments, many of them not musical instruments but machine made sounds. Combined, they were the backdrop to what had to be good singers, with great rhythms.

Donna Summer had the looks of the times, which was sexy, getting out of bed or while in bed making love. She had the looks, sounds, clothes and moves. Her songs inspired movement, happiness, dementia about the times; wether it was lack of work or the Iran Hostage crisis.  You got on the floor to dance to her and if the dj decided to play one of her songs or remix her mixed songs all together and it lasted a non stop 45-60 minutes, well, that was very cool. You would get out of the floor with your partner before you passed out, to hit the bar and replenished all those lost fluids with more alcohol and juice, or may be a joint, may be poppers which some people were doing together with other stuff to enhance an experience that really needed no enhancement.  All it called for was for a mind to go under and imagine anything dealing with that sound and movement. You felt no pain. You would dance until the music change or your body would just give out. Depending on their physical condition, you could see guys dancing non stop for the longest time.  That was disco, that was Donna Summer.

Everything changes and as a new generation grows they want change. And so everybody said what they had said about rock and roll:  Disco is dead. Some with sadness and others, the ones that never got into the disco movement will say it with relish in their mouths.

Donna Summer found herself lost. No more the Queen of the times, except she was still wildly popular she was having marital problems and problems with her private life. As many, she turned to her roots. To her it was family and church.  That is were she came from. Someone convinced that what she needed was religion in her life and some savior to help her with being a human being, with problems that we all human beings have and have had for ages, wether rich or poor. As she became religious she became judgmental, as much religious people do. "I am not better than you" they say, but "I am standing on a higher plane because my god is on a higher plane than you and me" they say.  It means the same stuff.  I am better than you or why I would go to heaven and you to hell. Want to be on my level, do as I do.

Be as it may at the time there was an epidemic starting. Like most human epidemics go, they start small and with a single type of individual.  This one was no different. Gay men, black and white, hispanic, europeans. They were all getting it and dying within months.  These guys had one thing in common, ‘gay.’  As a religious, oh yes..born again Donna made a terrible judgement. She said it was because they were gay and "they had strayed from Jesus christ."  I know what she said because I heard it. You can’t deny what’s been recorded.

 Adam Shot in leg Coming Out of Disco

It happens that it was the gay people the main pushers of the disco movement. They were the ones waiting in line to go in and listen, see, hear Donna Summer. They brought their friends and even cousins, brothers, sisters and so on.  The disco movement grew then to involve straights. But it started with gays.  They made Donna what she was, but now that disco’s were emptying because the gays were dying and disco was starting to level-down, way down.   Donna was not as popular, but popular and rich enough not to be bitter, but grateful and do what many on Broadway were already doing and that was trying to help without judgement. No help from her, but stern words, just like the way she grew up.  Stern words and religious attachments. She had run away from it, made millions and now she was having human problems so she went back to.. jesus.

Eventually she got the memo and the insensibility and stupidity of her religious statement against a class of people. She tried to back track. But we keep forgetting.  One thing I have learn as I reached middle age and that is that words matter and are for ever. Our actions and our words don’t go away.  They only go away in our memories, but not in the damage or destruction they create. The good thing about that is that the good words and the help we give others stays for ever building and helping, making this a better world, yes with lots of human problems.

The solution to our problems is not a little water over our heads or a near drowning on a dirty river. The  solution, still lies where is always been. No book or religion has it, because the solution is always with us. This does not means that it is easy to find the solution or even know the name of it.  But it’s there, where it’s always been with us. Why? It starts with us, it can only be finished by us.  You either walk or your own or use some sort vice to help you, but it’s you and me who has to do the walking.

I am very sorry that she left us so soon. I am sorry that she was fighting a cancer, just like many faced a gay and then a gay-straight cancer. She did not face cancer because she was a sinner or away from Jesus.  She faced a cancer because sickness is part of the human condition. It always has. It depends sometimes on our ancestors and sometimes on us on what we touch and eat.  That is how and why there was the gay cancer which is now AIDS. Is not that you left anybody god or religion, it’s a sickness, a mutated virus which attack humans in their immune system, just like cancers can attack anything in our bodies including the brain (particularly the brain).

But wether we reach 63 or some of us left us at 33. We dream.  We dream that we can get a better life.  We dream for someone to share our love. We dream that if we reach 63 or 83 that we could have said that we saw happiness in our lives.  We could dream that we are going to do better. Because life is as real as a dream and all realities begin with a dream.

Donna, I hope you found your dream. Hope you dream well.
Adam Gonzalez for adamfoxie*


ps: Bob(wherever you are, keep you on my mind) sitting with Adam in picture.
 Bob was dating Adam at this time.