A slightly astonished colleague from the radio called me up saying I was talking on Radiožurnál about American floods in paradise. I was confused for a second. I, of course, wasn't talking about a flooded paradise in New York, but about the town of Rye (which sounds exactly like “ráj“ — the Czech word for “paradise”). It was here where floods had swept away the homes and livelihoods of thousands of people, including the Kotyza family in just a matter of hours from Wednesday to Thursday. It was no paradise. It was real hell. The entire neighborhood by the brook was completely flooded in murky waters. Never before had so much rain fallen from the sky in one storm.
As you probably know already, we were preparing a fundraising concert for our joint, multimedia requiem project dedicated to the victims of 9/11 twenty years ago. Even before this terrible burst of clouds of historical proportions, we brought the violinist Ivan Ženatý to the Kotyzas from the airport just as the storm began to pick up, with pianist David Kalhous also landing in Newark safely just before the airport closed.
In the morning shock after the flood from Wednesday to Thursday, which was accompanied by the sounds of house alarms in the middle of the night, we of course had to cancel Ivan and David’s concert because the flood had reached a level of three meters on the ground level, completely engulfing cars and bringing with it a fine toxic sludge that only added to the devastation. The concert was meant to be attended by Rye’s elite, VIP guests from New York, diplomats, and our friends who helped to fund such a costly video-mapping set to Juraj Filas’s music. It was unthinkable that the concert would take place, let alone that anyone would come to it during a declared state of emergency.
During the late morning, a broken Kotyza nearly cried to me on the phone as he took photos of the damage for his insurance company. The house survived because they had had it raised after a previous flood a while back, but everything downstairs that was set up for the home concert and garden afterparty was gone.
Help was sent to the Kotyza family, and a clear-out of debris began. In the meantime, something happened that characterized the will and steadfastness of this Czech-Slovak expatriate family. When Marta Kotyzová canceled the supply of chairs from the local golf club for our concert, she suddenly found out that the manager of the club was a Slovak woman just like herself. One thing led to another and just like that, right there on the phone in the living room, just a few feet above the devastated street and ground floor, a plan was being formed for the concert to take place just five minutes away in an exclusive club on a hill that remained far and wide the only islet of normalcy unaffected by the flood.
As soon as a new venue for the concert was established, a team of volunteers began to form the next day for making open sandwiches (CZ: chlebíčky). Standa Kotyza now began to prepare food from meat spared from the flood: slow-cooked venison in red wine. It was as if nothing had happened, as if they had not just experienced a horrific night just a few hours ago.
Are you also having trouble picturing this? A family who had just lost all their private and company cars and a large part of their personal belongings began looking for a giant pot to make venison goulash for the guests of the concert.
When I brought David Kalhous from New York to Rye on Friday afternoon, Ivan Ženatý was already diligently practicing Bach, which he wanted to surprise people with at the concert that evening. I went to see the club and my jaw dropped. Just a block away from where destroyed cars were lying about and where weary people were dragging soaked things in front of their houses, there was a beautiful building right by the golf course with equipment set-up inside, like a beautiful chateau, and there they were already setting up tables and a piano for the evening concert.
We brought food and drinks from the Kotyzas in the early evening as the first garbage trucks took the first pile of junk from the house, which was the equipment for the concert yesterday.
They all then went to change, and from the upper floor came David and Ivan in full-on suits, Mr. Ženatý holding a violin in its case, and the Kotyza daughters in their evening gowns. Just an ordinary sight of a family getting ready to go out, am I right? But when we opened the door to the house to get into our car, we once again saw the havoc from the flood and everyone literally had to jump over remnants of sludge and piles of garbage.
However, in the end, the concert took place not only in Rye, but for us in a true paradise. Less than 48 hours after the tragedy, which fortunately claimed no lives, Anička Kotyzová appeared in front of an audience of about 70 guests in the large hall of the Apawami Club to present a performance that had earned several new meanings in the last two days. Mainly in that it united us and gave us strength. It was a grandiose and powerful experience.
We’d like to thank everyone who helped us make it happen. When I took Ivan Ženatý back to the airport from the Kotyzas yesterday, I could see the family was extremely tired, yet happy that the concert they promised, which serves as the harbinger for our memorial requiem program next week, was able to take place after all and was a raving success. Thank you to the musicians for not giving up! And thank you to those who helped fund the event!
Do the photos look a bit blurry?! Don't be so surprised. My hands were moving a million miles per hour that night...
