Last summer, while trying to finish a translation, I came across cultural journalist Alexandra Furnea’s blog, gen.underground. Sleep-deprived by the heatwave of this global warming era, I was reading her lengthy posts grouped like episodes of a diary being written live, meaning that the suffering was being recorded at the very moment it was tormenting such a tried and tested body. The writing was gripping, though obviously not for the reasons a diary-like prose would be gripping, but for Alexandra Furnea’s writing talent and the chilling and suspenseful rendering of the October 30, 2015 event. The book Diary of 66: The Night I Burned comprises the texts from her blog and is expanded with further annotations as the author’s recovery period grows and treatment continues.
A graduate of the Faculty of Letters at the ”Petru Maior”’ University of Târgu Mureș, an editor at a magazine with a heavy metal profile and passionate about underground music in Romania (i.e. genres such as black metal, the kind of music where women are not objectified and toxic attitudes are not promoted, so it’s not played on the radio), Alexandra Furnea looked set to have an interesting and successful career (as far as that would be possible in a country where millions of people don’t buy books) in the medium of heavy metal music reception. Here I have to admit that I don’t really frequent profile sites like Metalhead (let alone magazines like Rock Magazine), my knowledge of metal is limited to YouTube and some gigs that I find out about more or less randomly, but Alexandra Furnea manages to step out of the metal scene and discusses the social context in which this music is made and played here. Noting the marginalization into which profit-oriented radio has pushed heavy metal music, the author writes: “Usually, they are forced to play in unhealthy venues without being paid.” Lacking mainstream promotion and forced to play in venues that do not respect safety rules, Romanian bands and heavy metal fans face the same dilemma of leaving the country as many Romanians outside the metal scene. The author herself writes that she had emailed the University of Helsinki about a master’s degree programme. Just as the post-1990 generation, our millennials, are facing job insecurity, a reality that seems to exist in the local metalworking niche.
The narrative also records moments inexplicable to her journey in the days leading up to the fateful concert, but which Alexandra Furnea makes sense of as her diary progresses and she must process all the borderline experiences she has gone through. Walking out of her apartment on a rainy evening, the author sees a woman standing alone in the rain, lost and modestly dressed, she wants to get her an umbrella, but when she goes back downstairs to that area she sees the woman nowhere else alone, nor will she meet her again in the days to come. At the end of the diary, this story will make sense when Alexandra Furnea imagines how things would have turned out if the Romanians, the people around them in fact, were more considerate of each other and cared about each other. One can read quite transparently that the theme of this diary is finding meaning when in the midst of unimaginable tragedy.
A fast-moving diary, which mirrors the speed with which the tragedy unfolded, from the euphoria of the concert to the horrific moments of the fire, described at a cinematic script pace, a writing that gives the impression that it’s all happening now, as you read the book, not a flashback, but a film through which we too become acquainted with the tragedy of that day and what followed. As is well known, on the night of 30 October 2015, Goodbye to Gravity were releasing their album Mantras of War, and a spark from the pyrotechnics ignited the antiphonal foam lining a support pole, sparking a fire that killed 65 people. Alexandra Furnea’s description captures how quickly it all happened, the first spark, the flame reaching the ceiling and glowing pieces, the mixture of polyurethane foam used for fireproofing and wood, the unbreathable smoke. Desperate running towards the only open door, the arrival of the first ambulances and the retort of a nurse that she had nothing to give to the wounded, not being prepared for such an event. The chapter on the fire is relatively short, the most substantial portions of the book are devoted to the treatment received by the author and the other wounded at the Burns Hospital, where the conditions and treatment received seemed like something out of a horror movie, such as treatment without anesthesia and lack of medication, to bacterial infections covered up by the doctors. The volume also contains photos of broken beds and mattresses propped up by medicine boxes, a lack of ‘special medical devices’, and photos of Alexandra Furnea’s scars aggravated by hospital infections. Reading this diary, we enter an inferno of neglect that continues after discharge, when Alexandra is sent home with unhealed wounds. Doctors’ carelessness also takes the form of the non-involvement of some doctors in the treatment of the injured at the Collective. Arriving for treatment in Germany, Alexandra Furnea learns that she will need medical procedures for the rest of her life and will suffer from various forms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
As a prelude to what will follow in the pandemic, the Colectiv fire brought to the surface how conspiratorial it is in a society as unequal as ours. Before the conspiracy theories with the anti-covid vaccine, after the Colectiv fire we learned how many of our fellow citizens believe that rock music is Satanist music, or that the fire in the club was set by someone. Triggering huge anti-corruption protests (and the resignation of the Ponta government), the Colectiv disaster destroyed our social innocence, in the sense that it showed us that we are not safe in public places, in clubs, and if a disaster like a fire happens, we can’t really count on the authorities, just as we can’t count on them to respect the rules. Speaking of rules, the last sub-chapter of Alexandra Furnea’s diary imagines a kind of what if, what if those in charge of us all followed safety rules, and we were all more empathetic towards each other. Alexandra Furnea believes that if there was more care for others in our society, a fire like the one at Colectiv would not have happened.
A therapeutic text and one of the best books of 2022, Alexandra Furnea’s diary is in the tradition of literature about illness and tragedy, alongside Max Blecher’s novels (Suffering from Pott’s Disease, novels like Scarred Hearts or Occurrences in the Immediate Unreal show the effects of bone tuberculosis on the body and how lucidity takes on a new dimension) and should be studied in academia (The Diary of 66: The Night I Burned may open up directions of study on the intersection of gender and the body), being, as well as a call for compassion, a social document on the last decade.
Alexandra Furnea, Diary of 66: The Night I Burned, Bucharest: Humanitas, 2022.
Foto: Cover of Alexandra Furnea’s DoR article about her diary (source: DoR, screenshot)
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