InterCity

You arrive at New York's Penn Station fifteen minutes ahead of the train's scheduled departure, uncharacteristic of you, but your morning meeting in DC is important, and out of nervousness, you left the apartment a little early. While you stand on the platform, you shake your head thinking of the old days in which you would be biting your fingernails in the taxi crawling through traffic to the airport, and suffer the indignities of the security line for a flight, the door to door time being four hours. You never cease to marvel at the sleek white bullet trains as this one pulls into the station, or at the ease of the 2 hours door to door that your journey will take today.

High speed train in Hamburg Station











Though this may seem like a fantasy, it is the reality today in Europe. Germany, especially, has made tremendous investments in its high-speed rail system, and is reaping the rewards. The world marvels at the German miracle, but it is no miracle, it is the result of smart investment. The Deutsche Bahn connects Europe, creates a very efficient place for people to work and live, and, not coincidentally, binds the continent together. Germany is also making major investments in renewable energy, investments that will pay off many times in the future, as have the investments in high-speed trains.

Evening storm clouds over wind mills in Baltic Sea










In America while our politicians debate the reality of climate change, scientists, unless they are under the pay of climate deniers, unanimously stress the urgency for action to reduce carbon release. Investments are never easy when they are made, but they pay off. As the world changes, the conditions will favor new industries, and the old interests will resist that change. It has always been so: carriage makers undoubtedly fought the dominance of the automobile. The world will change, and carbon energy will be obsolete. Those that have invested in alternatives will come out ahead, those economies that have been dominated and directed by obsolete industries will stumble.

Humans are not good at reacting to threats that they cannot see. When there are opposing information sources, one saying to worry, change will happen, the other saying not to worry, one wants to believe the voice of inertia. But the time has come to act, and get that fast train to DC.

CLIMATE DEAL

5 November 2009

"If we don't take urgent and ambitious action, the reality is that some small island developing states will not be around within a couple of decades - certainly not by the end of the century."

So says the UK Climate Secretary Ed Miliband.

I would retort: “Who needs them?”

Chances are we have extracted the resources we want from them, and therefore they are just hanging around, playing the guilt card on us, when really they should be glad we invited them to the party (even if it is just to exploit them). As a matter of fact, I propose we send a few gunboats to ensure that none of the whiners get off before their little rocks are submerged, as they will only come to our shores and stir up trouble. God knows we have enough of it with all of the bleeding hearts wanting universal health care and carbon caps.

When will they learn that might makes right. What’s theirs is ours.

EARTH DAY 2009

April 22, 2009

Another Earth Day comes and goes with what change? One could argue that the principal environmental good in the last five years comes from the decimation of our economy and resulting fall-off in consumption. Bush is the environmental president. But of course, in spite of the grain of truth there, this is the pessimist’s view. In fact the economic issue has forced environmental concerns from present-day consciousness, and that is not good. In my view, the two are inextricably linked, and any attempt to fix one without addressing the other will lead to failure. We are in this mess because of our desire to have it now and pay later, hoping the piper would never actually come to collect. Cheap money stimulated construction of houses that weren’t needed, on land that should have been left wild (structures are the leading producer of global warming gases). And, then there is our insatiable desire for things: ever more, ever cheaper. To have them, we have shipped our jobs and economic well-being offshore and left our children with a very uncertain future. A key component for producing those cheap toys is making them in a location with low wages and lax environmental laws; this is actually an insidious transfer of cost from the consumer to the taxpayer. Because even those carbons and toxics produced by our offshore contractors are our problems as much as if they had been produced here, only worse because we don’t know what and where they are.

So the recession has actually given us a moment to reflect, a break from our pell-mell race to environmental collapse. Ironically, it seems that the only “bootstrap” that will pull us out of the mess is resumed consumer spending. But, I believe there is a different way. If we invested in our own real growth, instead of more toys, we could turn this crisis into opportunity. We are on the cusp of so many things: technologies that can provide the energy we need without the impact of hydro-carbons; creative financing techniques that can put expensive infrastructure into the hands of the average consumer.

The time is now to imbue these nascent opportunities with prospects. If we taxed consumption and pollution and invested that money in sustainable industries and infrastructures to support them, we could lay the groundwork for our children’s future. It’s easy to listen to the experts and be discouraged. The facts are discouraging. As one who speaks from the “inside” of the environmental world, and spends his time looking at the worst that we are doing, I still have hope. Miracles do happen, but they only happen to those who enable them. If we drastically stop our dirty, selfish ways, and work toward a global solution, the answers will arise. It will probably be a variety of answers: technological solutions to specific issues, nature-based solutions to others, maybe even a little help from God.

I leave you with a reminder of why we are fighting this fight to save our planet: image of African cheetah mother and cub. It doesn't get more real or more beautiful than this!

CityDance presents "CARBON!"

2009-03-14

Upon return from Kenya, I received an email from one Christopher Morgan, representing himself as the choreographer for CityDance in Washington, DC. In his note, Christopher said that he had seen my work at Mass MoCA, and asked if would I be interested in a collaboration of sorts with CityDance.

Remember, Dear Reader, that I come from the music world. For a long time I have considered the possibilities and advantages of collaborative projects with other art forms. The premise of Industrial Scars is that beautiful images of the detritus of our consumption will inspire viewers to consider their involvement in this process that is desecrating our home. My idea is that art will move people in ways that words and statements do not. Of course, this pertains primarily to those with an inclination to visual art, and leaves others uninfluenced. So, for a while I have been exploring the idea of interaction with other artists to produce a sort of hybrid that would push the envelope and have the ability to reach different audiences. We are currently in discussion with the Bamberg Symphony about a multi-media piece using Gustav Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde (The Song of the Earth). More later as that develops. Suddenly, unbidden, came a new possibility, to which I, of course, said what any good artist in America might say: do you have a budget? (I would have participated either way, but Industrial Scars is an expensive project to support.) The debut was 10 days hence, so we started to discuss which images would work for them and the technical aspects we would need to consider.

Flash to debut day. I had proposed that we do a pre-performance symposium/discussion with the audience, a suggestion CityDance “jumped at.” Of course, the Amtrak train from NYC to DC was an hour late (amazing that stuff still works at all after 20 years of neglect). Time for a rant: why the f*$%& did we let those gangsters get in to power and rob the country blind? For years we will be paying for what Bush and his cronies stole from us. And, I just love it that Halliburton sucked the host dry and moved to Dubai. We deserve this “downturn,” and more. I digress…

Finally, I arrived in DC, and proceeded straight to the hall, where the crew was frantically finishing the setup. Having been involved in more productions than I can count, the last minute disarray did not worry me in the least. It is a good group- very dedicated and serious about the craft, and it was a pleasure to watch them work. The discussion before was a little casual, starting with the inspiration and conception of the project, Christopher’s “persistence of memory” in the recollection of the images he had seen in the previous year’s costume design, projection design- productions require a lot of input.

Of course, the thing about dance (you’ll see why I’m not a dancer) is how do you translate these complex concepts into expressive movement? I have a confession: I don’t really like poetry either. Feel free to disconnect and write me off. The audience loved it! And as a mission man, it therefore does not matter if I am a dance aficionado, as long as we reach another subset of the population. The important thing is that we all change our behavior, and whatever motivates that alteration is fine with me. It is quite possible that the attention garnered from this weekend’s SOLD OUT, limited run of “CARBON!” will translate into something more down the road. A tour, perhaps?