Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Most people never sing aloud anymore, except meekly in church, and snicker at those who do. Older people, though, can remember people whistling as they swept the streets, everyone singing at the pub, neighbours gathering at each other’s homes in the evenings to sing, or people gathering around a deathbed to caoin.
Blues may be America’s greatest cultural gift to the world; if not, it’s certainly on the short list. Blues embodies human resilience in the face of adversity and suffering.
The goal of this essay is to reignite a conversation with the Post Carbon Institute’s own Richard Heinberg about music and change in planetary systems, a conversation which began in the fall of 2017. I’m captioning this second stage of the conversation “What’s musical about biology and why does that matter?”
The only way an ecocentric (or any) belief system spreads is from person to person, as all missionaries have understood from the days that Buddha’s disciples walked from India to China or sailed to Sri Lanka or Japan.
University of Minnesota undergrad Daniel Crawford illustrates climate change with his cello.
