Early in 2020 I was standing at the intersection of Sydney and Moreland Roads. I sensed a lockdown was inevitable. The Western skyline was raging red with the setting sun, an ominous totem due to the smoke haze from the catastrophic fires that were still burning. My stomach tightened with an unwelcomed feeling of dread; I felt I was watching the world as I knew it disappear.
These last couple of years have been tough and disruptive, creating deep uncertainty about the future. This was not how our lives were meant to be. Perhaps with the vaccination roll out we can see a path back to normal. Yet, many of us are less confident now in the ‘return-to-normal’ story.
The catastrophic bushfires may have died out, but with a hotter world they will return, even larger, if that is imaginable. This heating planet changes everything we expect about the future.
What can we do? It is very tempting to act as if nothing will change. And why not? Covid tested us all but the climate and ecological crises are far more daunting and dangerous, and I for one would much rather not have to think about it.
But think we must, so I offer some reflections from a reluctant observer.
First, a reality check: It is now too late to stop climate change. We are now heading into uncharted territory of unprecedented fire, heat, storms and rising oceans. This means disruption will become normal. Our hotter world is producing longer droughts, more destructive storms, deadlier heat waves and it will change the ways we live. There is no escaping this.
Yet, this does not need to be the end of the world. Not yet anyway. We can still create a future worth living for. We will need to urgently (and I mean urgently) reinvent the way we live, lower the pressure on our ecosystems and create new stories that are fit for this future.
New stories mean new ways of thinking and talking about this future. That is why we created Music for a Warming World, a multimedia live music concert using the immersive experience of art to help us get inside this changing world. Music is powerful, but not in the same way as science or politics. It can’t take carbon out of the atmosphere and it can’t create policy.
Music has a different language; what musicologist Alan Harvey calls the harmony of souls.
In a world of profound and increasing disruption, we need more than ever art that provides safe spaces to connect emotionally with these disruptions, in the safety of a community of common souls where we have the best chance of inventing new ways to live with the predicament of climate change.
Music for a Warming World are launching their new album, Only One Way to Head, at the Brunswick Mechanics Institute, on Sunday 1 st of August, at 4pm. Bookings are essential: https://events.humanitix.com/music-for-a-warming-world-album-launch
By Simon Kerr
(simonkerrnz@gmail.com)
The Coburg Meddler 