Pushing Rocks
Ecocide, Genocide and Blued Trees
August 26, 2023, we will debut a premiere of the Blued Trees opera about ecocide at the Soapbox Gallery in Brooklyn, New York.
The consequences of ecocide have been discussed for decades, particularly in the work of the late Polly Higgins.
Why is this so difficult?
"Hundreds of years ago, pity and piety were synonymous and conflated with obedience."
Consider these three words: pity, compassion, and empathy. Pity has its roots in a religious experience of withness as a communion with divine mercy. Hundreds of years ago, pity and piety were synonymous and conflated with obedience. It is provocative to consider that obedience to the sacred coexisted so intimately with great class disparities, aggressive colonization, and subjugation of the nonwhite world.
Fish Story
I was at the Met, with politics on my mind, to talk with Susan Leibovitz Steinman about "Fish Story" for the "Memphis Social" project May 2013. Walking to the stairs, I was greeted by the Acapela Blues singers playing, "Do you love me?"
I'm pulling together an amazing team of thinkers for "Fish Story," including the 2 scientists I've worked with the most since I began "Gulf to Gulf," in 2008: Gene Turner and Jim White. respectively a couple of the top people in the world working on dead zones in Gulf regions and global warming. The big deal now, is scheduling my first visit to Memphis, meeting folks there to hear their concerns and what they've already been working on. What I hope might come of that visit would be to begin to flesh out a picture of how Memphis is already functioning as a trigger point at a critical geographical nexus.