Posts (page 2)
Two articles caught my attention today in the NY Times. One was in the business section, by Peter Goodman, "Uncomfortable Answers to Questions on the Environment." The other was an op-ed editorial, by Bob Herbert, "Yes We Can." The way I interpret the relationship between those articles is that the land & petroleum based economic system is in free fall and our path to survival, in any way at all, will be tied to envisioning and acting on a different set of strategies. The first said we may be facing decades of economic downturns, costing trillions of dollars. The second said we must pay attention to Al Gore's challenge but have become defeatist. Is it a contradiction to consider how to invest vast sums to turn around entire global economies just as they are collapsing into free fall? I don't think so. Nor do I think we have a choice.
Recently, I've struggled far more than usual to keep my head and my health above water. I set myself the task of writing on this blog about the relationship between global warming, ecological art and living with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. The problem is that the latter limits my stamina. So I struggle to work, think, make ends meet and write here and often fail to find an acceptable balance. That is the same paradigm of dealing with the relationship between our economy and our environment.
Contradictory pressures to care for my financial well-being and guard my physical limits has been far harder than ever before. Yet I continue to believe, more than ever, that my struggle to live within the means imposed on me by my health and find solutions to life with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome in the age of climate change-global warming, is the conceptual key to the door out of what can feel like a prison.
My first task is honestly confronting how dire the present is for many more people than myself and start making radical changes in all aspects of my life. The two articles tell me I have to see things differently and consider how to integrate that Vision into my practice. Like accepting we cannot own the earth (real estate) or rely on depleting limited natural resources vs wind & solar. Imagining the right to stamp our imprint on the earth with land ownership may be spiritually untenable. Presuming that one source of supply (petroleum) will meet all our demands may be childish.
The second task is being willing to accept our limits and then find sources of hope. There is some evidence, as people drive less, that this is beginning to happen. Perhaps we never were supposed to own & trade land, the way we have been and ground our wealth in that presumption. It goes against the wisdom of the Commons. Perhaps a petroleum based economy never was supposed to be our salvation. Perhaps, as Bob Costanza has advocated, it is truly going to be from a basis of an economy grounded in different values, that we will find our answers (hope). It may be counter-intuitive to concentrate our spiritual & psychological analysis on how we got here. Or maybe it's exactly correct. And maybe, since part of the question is too many people, we can't have children for a decade, another limit we have to accept but don't seem eager to.
Of course there's a large segment of the global society that isn't paying attention. Formerly third world countries are coming on board with American-modeled consumption goals that will out strip the West in no time flat. This country and others, are experiencing a baby boom and spends thousands of dollars on fertility treatments to birth twins. That's insane. The drug cartels, child prostitute enslavers and terrorist organizations seem to have created an unholy alliance for themselves and us. Global enforcement policies seem to be ineffective and these sectors seem better financed than official governments. Cynically, what I see, is that along with storms from global warming, these people are taking care of the problem we have created and refuse to deal with, by brutally eliminating large sections of the population. The painful part is that along with species loss, these "solutions" have no connections to justice. Wealthy, powerful perpetrators rarely pay the costs of their behavior. This country can't even impeach President Bush, not only for treason in the conventional sense of lies that have endangered national security but for his economic, birth control, educational and environmental policies that have run large sections of the world's population into the ground, destroying global security.
So as an ecological artist and a person with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS), where do I model my strategies to move forward and address the systemic issues as well as the creative opportunities? Is it too simple to say I start by accepting how unmangeable this all is? I can concentrate on faith that where I put my creative energy is the right focus and then leave it open to constant reconsideration. I can keep sorting thru the data and my options with faith that working with others, I can find solutions. Is that enuf? If enuf of us do that, it may be. CFS forces me to a model of interdependency and limitation. What I've learned from my illness is that creative work and collaborative outreach give me hope and stamina. What also I'm seeing is that my increasingly limited income also requires me to rethink my practice, for example, my 2006 decision to phase out flying to work sites, that led to the Virtual Residency and Virtual Concerts. It is bringing me back to building carefully on what I already have instead of constantly seeking new projects.
But any period of commited action must be balanced by long periods of fallow inactivity for me to conserve my resources. During those times I survive on patience & faith. But at those times, I can also think, plan and design solutions based on consolidating and cross-referencing data and skill sets. Is that a soltuion for everyone? Perhaps partially: the fallow as a source of stamina to follow the mandate Gore presents us with.
In other fields, we are learning about emptiness and the value of the fallow. This is true about limiting consumption, getting enuf sleep, reducing stress, buying and living local, conserving historical, cultural and agricultural resources. Perhaps a clue there to think about.
The past weeks I've been gardening. My vegetable garden overlooks a medium sized quarry. Every summer I watch the level of water in the quarry to see an indicator of how my small watershed is faring. When the rocks in the middle appear, I begin to worry. The surface water is an imperfect gauge but I do see a decline. My other barometer of the aquifer is how quickly my plants begin to yellow in the sun. This tells me how hard the roots have to work to get water to survive. The rocks aren't yet prominent in the quarry but the soil in my garden is dust and the leaves that are suffering are curling at the edge of yellow with some brown. My plants required some deliberate watering. Meanwhile, the air has been off and on, uncharacteristically heavy with moisture that never comes to earth. The horizon is overcast, slightly yellowed and fogged in. The fog is fine. The yellow isn't. The horizontal yellow means ozone. The dry dusty soil is bad and the humidity is so oppressive that it's hard for me to work at anything. My Chronic Fatigue Syndrome gets aggravated and I struggle with vertigo.
As the economy worsens and conflict zones expand with dwindling resources, I wonder how we will all adapt: animal or vegetable. If I and others are going to return to truck farming to sustain ourselves but the air and soil stays dry, our sole source aquifer may not be sufficient to support this ecological corner, let along others. That is if climate change continues at the rate it is going and we continue to exhaust our global resources as we have been.
My money advisor tells me this is just cyclic. The economy will rise again because the nature of all markets is to find solutions that increase revenue. The trouble with that is that the economy, resources, the air, water and soil, and biological adaptability to climate change are all connected. I am not sure that the innovators of market revenue are tapped into that web of interdependence. if they were, it would be what some economists call a (potential) culture of abundance. Before lunch I am pessimistic. After lunch I am open-minded.
We have been fogged in. It's like being blanketed by quiet and softness. It is chilly despite record high temps on the mainland. So rather than go down to my studio on the shore to work, I'm working in my home office.
This morning, despite some ambivalence, I recorded the last Virtual Concert, at least, for sure until September. I'm burnt out and need to have some time to concentrate on other kinds of work. One of those work projects is finishing a book I've toiled over for almost twenty years, making my ideas accessible. Another is work on the visual level, where I do my best thinking, from the garden here to the "things," "artifacts" that emerge from that thinking. I also need to give some hard thought to earning some shekels.
I am watching the storms in the midwest and wondering how many such events it may take for people to pay attention to the threats of climate disruption from global warming. I am trying to rest, to pay attention to my own disruptions as I live with chronic fatigue syndrome. This is going to be a time for me to be a bit fallow and observe, even if I continue to work.
Doing the Virtual Concerts has flooded me with thoughts about the very issues we dicussed for two years in over 100 podcasts: the potential relationship between and policy potential of the intersection between art, science and climate change. It is time for me to let that digest.
I returned to Maine and was immediately overcome by the rich fragrances, flourishing azaleas & rhodeodendrons. It is alarming to see how dry the soil is however. But today has been a perfect spring day of cerulean blue sky line against the ultramarine ocean. In the garden my orange and magenta wild tulips from Iran are still blooming alongside the blue muscari but a rabbit got every last crocus. In my kitchen, there are ants. That used to be a sure sign in California that rain was coming but I rarely see ants here at all. In August, the level of the aquifer will tell the tale of the rainfall tally for the year.
This is the best thing I’ve heard in years: polar bears declared a threatened species in the US. This at least opens the door to closing the door on some of the worst exploitation ever projected for the Arctic and consequently, the whole world.
Tuesday will be the occasion of my 100th podcast of the Virtual Concerts. It is fitting that my guest at this milestone, will be Dr. Michele Dionne, wetlands expert from the Wells NERR in Wells, Maine. We will discuss the accelerated pace of erosion and storm damage from loss of wetlands as global warming accelerates. We have collaborated formally & informally since 1993. The goal of this episode will be to explore how such relationships can contribute towards and be models for solving problems in coastal regions.
Last night I had dinner with my best friend, still thinking about the symposium on "Unlearning Intolerance" I had attended at the United Nations Thursday, got to bed late and woke at least five times in the night. This morning, I didn't ask myself how tired I was. I responded to several emails, did my singing practice, attended an on-line meeting, had a nourishing breakfast and set off for a ballet class. People think if you have Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, you are too tired to function. Altho that's often true, other times it's possible to act as if you feel like a normal person. Then the fatigue sets in afterwards, lingering for days.
Sort of like using energy & resources we don't have in the larger human community relying on fossil fuels.
At 12:30, on my way home, I did some food shopping, lingering over possibilities of lavendar aromatherapy spray and settiling for Calm tea and salad dressing made with artichokes and had it all delivered, for which I paid $4. I was determined to have a normal day, like a normally healthy person, regardless of how much I might collapse afterwards.
After a sumptuous & leisurely lunch, over a half hour, of salad with the artichoke dressing I had bought, salmon and turkey slices, crackers and completed with a 1 oz square of dark chocolate, I went to a Chinese medicinal massagist who worked hard on me for one hour. I did not think about the fossil fuels to deliver any of the ingedients of my lunch. On the massage table, I thought about how I might solve some work problems I was considering since the United Nations events and tried to relax, even after having seen the chart with the prices on it. He charged me $120. He told me that I am weak and have a chronic condition. Apparently, the only remedy he had was for me to come as many days as possible a week, perhaps for the rest of life, for $120. each time. At that rate, I had better have a short life. Sort of like human culture, as Jim Hanson says, in the face of global warming?
I am considering how 350.org, composed entirely of young people fighting to get emissions standards to 350 parts, could work with more jaded & experienced people, as myself.
At home, I did a deep conditioning on my hair, ignored the drawn and pale woman in the mirror, put on a face mask, studied some work that is due next week for a book out of Germany: how can I condense all I know, think and have done onto one page that reads clearly (?) and tried not to think about what it might cost me out of my spending plan to feel normal after a normal day for more than one day. Then I washed my clothes and cleaned the bathtub.
It is 4:45 PM. Perhaps $124. and bed rest to follow, is not a bad price for a vacation. Tomorrow is another day.
Recently, an arts adminsitrative colleague posed the question of why it's so hard to engage artists in the conceptual process, early in the team prrocess of public art. She knows the reason isn't the interest of artists but the attachment of others to commodified objects from artists.
As an artist very committed to the conceptual & intellectual process I find her efforts important.
As an artist with CFS, I find it tiresome and discouraging that so far down the line of the kinds of ideas that she's referencing, the battle is still up such a steep slope.
The reasons it's hard to get across new ideas about public, ecological art are simple. The attachment of the powers to be, funders, officials to the enshrined but undemanding object is sentimental. It keeps artists in cages, where we can't do damage to the status quo.
Rosylynn Deutsche said it best, a while back: the culture will support what supports the status quo.
The past few days, I've been in touch with some young people who've started a new site, 350.org, to address global warming internationally. I offered my help and advice as an ecological artist. I have been very moved by the freshness and enthusiasm of their vision. Bill McKibben is guiding them and he is in touch with Jim Hansen. McKibben writes of the mission of this site:
"350 is the red line for human beings, the most important number on the planet. The most recent science tells us that unless we can reduce the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to 350 parts per million, we will cause huge and irreversible damage to the earth."
It is now at 383 parts. Their immediate target is coal. They expect to virtually mobilize young people globally to engage in activism and want input from artists: a good thing. Previously, the same group initiated "step it up 2007" which mobilized 1500 actions nationally.
This past week, my stamina has steadily dwindled as I've struggled to show up for professional & personal obligations. Tonight, a busy neighbor called and offered to help me do my laundry tomorrow morning. I am very grateful for her kind generosity.
The connection between 350.org, these personal events, my CFS and global warming, is that we might just make it, with a little help from our friends.
Earlier today, I did a Virtual Concert with Steffin Keulig, Sacha Kagan and Lena, about the film work they recently completed about life in Karamoja, Africa, near Uganda. The conversation highlighted how fragile, complex and delicate the neccessary interfaces are that we must make between third and first world cultures in these times of population pressure, resource dwindling and climate change.
Living with CFS, isn't the same as struggling to feed starving children on the streets of Kampala, while bleeding from a gang rape, which is not an unusual expereince in Africa, these days, but it does hold some symbolic parallels between how we, as a species are coping with personal limitation and tragedy these days and how we are collectively dealing with the exigencies of global warming.
I returned Sunday from three days at a symposium in Ithaca, that was otherwise exciting, in terms of talking to energized young people and sharing reflections with colleagues, spent the day immoilized in bed yesterday and then rallied to attend Grant Kester's lecture at Cooper Union on art in the intersticial fringes between activism and artifact and then shared sopme felafel with Lillian Ball, en route to work on the Seville Bienalle, about yearning for someone equally thoughtful to write about the kinds of work being done by dynamically oreinted eoclogical artists.
I am still functioning today. After all I did the podcast, responded to about ten professional emails about work, moved my car and did some research reading & thinking and it's now 1:PM. What I didn't do was exercize, my singing practice or eating sensibly. When I stand I am dizzy. Walking is an effort of will to move my body despite weakened muscles. Thinking is at the cost of a splitting headache. My shoulder msucles are in spasm. Shortly, I will have to lie down, probably for most of the rest of the day. But somehow I need to complete and send a written proposal with visuals for an event at MIT due tomorrow. It is necessary to push myself to function because I cannot earn a living if I'm invisible nor can I afford to park my car in a garage or alternately, not move it from one side of the street to the other to avoid several hindred dollars in parking tickets.
One of the articles I read while sitting in my car, was in Vanity Fair's green issue, on the eroding life of polar bears and how they may now be competing with grizzlies for food resources. The rape survivor in Africa is the bycatch collateral victim of increased cinflicts over resources. The bears are dislocated by melting ice and changing weather patterns that effect their food supply. Chornic Fatigue Syndrome is just another in a long list of new and poorly understood illness that limit personal resoiurces. In each case, there is a limitation on resources and a struggle to survive despite pain, despite limitation. Amongst humans, the competition for resources is exacerbated by population increases and increased demands on resources from developed countries. collateral damage for all species is increased as a consequence.
So whether you're a raped woman in Africa, a person with an immune system disability or a polar bear in the Arctic, many of us are learning to compete for resources and survive despite limitation. And many of us will not survive. And it won't be fair. It will exact a high price of grief for anyone who is sane.
