A call to Remember
And not forget
It’s hard to believe MassQ Ball 2025 was an entire week ago.
A part of me feels like it was just yesterday. Still another wonders if it was just a fever pitch dream.
I imagine the ambivalence comes from the fact that normal, everyday life feels so far removed from what was experienced that day:
Children painting with adults… Friends, family and even complete strangers entrusting each other with their faces, struggles and joys. Drumming and dancing amongst trees, blessings being handed out freely. Sculptures, traditions and rituals being shared across cultures, religions, ethnicities, and communities without a cloud of controversy, in site.
It almost seems too good to be true, like a fantasy, which can make it all too easy to discount. Or even, I daresay, forget.
What, with all that’s going on, from Bad Bunny halftime shows, to Governmental shut downs, colonial wars to humanitarian crises, let alone the daily “to-do’s”, and to-don’t's crowding our consciousnesses, moving us to move on.
But it’s precisely all of the above that makes remembering last week so important.
That over the course of the day over 3000 people (nearly double the attendance of MassQ Ball 2022) came together to celebrate our diversity and humanity without incident.
That, in the face of a cruel defunding campaign by the administration, we came together with a crowdfunding campaign of our own to keep the Ball moving forward as planned.
That the joy, wonder and peace we all felt last Saturday wasn’t a fantasy or fever pitch dream.
That it was real, and that it still is.
In our over-mediated lives, where every second, scroll, swipe and re-fresh brings a new wave of clickbait, hot takes and distractions to our headspace, let’s not forget the communal space we all helped create.
If for nothing else, to remind ourselves that it exists, that we made it so, and that together, we can make it again.
Till then, be art!
-Daniel
The MassQ Ball is a intergenerational, cross-cultural celebration of the art and culture of people of color. MassQ Ball 2025 was a co-production between artist Daniel Callahan, Black arts organization Castle of Our Skins and the Arnold Arboretum and is supported, in part, by the City of Boston Mayor’s Office of Arts and Culture, the Celebrity Series of Boston, Eastern Bank, Bethel AME Church and Blick Art Materials, with additional media and other support from WCVB Channel 5, The Bay State Banner, Audio & Lighting Unlimited, TCGT Entertainment and The Wellness Collaborative.
For those who attended we are still accepting written reflections, images and video from the day. To share yours with us click HERE.
I wish I could have been there with those 3000 heartbeats and faces bright as planets!!! Thanks the beautiful reminescence!
So eloquent a reflection on so sublime an event. Thanks so much for Massq Ball 25 — and for your beautiful words about it.