When someone declares that they believe that technology will save us from the consequences of climate breakdown, we are reminded of the Philip K. Dick observation that reality is what is still there when you stop “believing” in it.
We are indebted to a DP correspondent for steering us towards a sobering, factual report written by the distinguished climate scientist Vaclav Smil. The entire report is available here; an excerpt below. Graph appears earlier in the report.
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We are having a bit of a Lydia Millet festival here at DP; her prescient and darkly comic novel, A Children’s Bible, highly recommended as a tonic for all that ails us.
Below, a brief passage from an essay for the increasingly indispensable Orion magazine. Image added by DP, grateful for the covenant of the Scottish Rewilding Alliance.
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Now comes poet Catherine Barnett, with excerpts from a recent interview regarding her recently published collection, Solutions for the Problem of Bodies in Space. Image added by DP.
EDWARD HOPPER, AUTOMAT (1927)
And an excerpt from one of the poems:
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Now comes the voice of writer Lydia Millet, from within the flow of a recent Orion conversation, well worth reading in toto; excerpts below.
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On a bright & sunny day following the solar eclipse, during which the world did not come to an end, we turn to the incomparable Anne Carson with a passage from an essay dating back to 2003, and published in the also incomparable Cabinet magazine. The entire essay is worthy of close reading; a brief excerpt below.
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Relayed from our friends at the Boston Camerata:
“To commemorate this Good Friday, and the many victims of violence who, Christ-like, suffer today, we offer this brief but powerful meditation on the cross by the Languedocian composer Guillaume Bouzignac (c. 1587- c. 1643).”
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Now comes Karinne Keithley Syers, whose plays are marvelously impossible to pin down, with news of a forthcoming production of The Lydian Gale Parr:
Below, an illuminating missive sent to DP from the playwright, who longtime readers may remember as the Sorceress of the Mole Cabal:
DETAIL FROM THE POSTER, CREATED BY WESLEY ALLSBROOK
And finally, a synopsis of this extraordinary journey for which tickets (sure to sell out) are still available:
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Now comes artist Chavis Mármol with a collisionary assemblage that provides welcome insight into our fate as inverted Utopians.
“The Olmec head imposes itself before the technological object, it bursts and crushes it and in the end it is glorified before this object, which no matter how technological or how much it is an object of desire, in the end it is just that, just a product of a capitalist system, when In reality what matters is what we came from, what we are and what we have been generation after generation.”
“What do I feel when I see that? What does Tesla mean to me? What does it mean that it is installing a plant in Monterrey? What does Musk generate among us?”
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Now comes the always-stimulating poet-philosopher Báyò Akómoláfé with a recent manifesto, of sorts, from the fertile fungal carpets of the Emergence Network. The entire text is worthy of consideration; a brief excerpt below.
For an exploration of possible post-activist responses, carry on here.
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Now comes the invigorating voice of philosopher Costica Bradatan, author of In Praise of Failure: Four Lessons in Humility, on order here at DP HQ. A recent interview in the LARB is worth close reading in its entirety; an excerpt below, with an image added by DP.
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Desperado Philosophy 