Now comes poet Robert Bringhurst, through an essay written for the esteemed Dark Mountain Project, and excerpted below. The images are from a Robert Montgomery series of watercolour texts.
Tag Archives: dark mountain project
The Humbling
Now come our friends at the Dark Mountain Project with a new issue that resonates strongly with one of our main themes here at DP: that humans are not the zenith of biological evolution, and that we are surely not the “inviolable sovereign” of this earth, let alone the universe. We excerpt the excellent editorial introduction below as an invitation to explore the vibrant and deeply human offerings assembled within the volume.
The images are from the hand of Rebecca Clark, whose exquisite drawings are featured in the issue, and whose work we have long admired.
WORLDS WITHOUT END, 2015
OCTOPUS, 2015
Let us search for that thread, and let us weave a future away from the hideous tapestry of unfettered grandiosity, narcissism and delusion.
Those Two Abysses
Today, while reading various researches into negative feedback loops that would appear to imply an acceleration of the Sixth Extinction, we offer the following passages from the thoughts of Blaise Pascal, excerpted from the section on the misery of man without God. The images are various Rothko black-on-maroons.
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Reading the Ashes
We are pleased to spread the word about a new music compilation release from the Dark Mountain Project, guided by the finely-tuned and freely-roaming ears of Marmaduke Dando. The entire release is well worth download and careful listening; as we write this, we are humming along with Telling the Bees:
The title for the release descends from Carl Sandburg, through a “panel” in his remarkable 1920 collection, Smoke and Steel. The first panel reads:
In position six, we find ashes laughing at ashes:
In the penultimate position 13, we find the scorched Fire Pages that caught the attention of the estimable Mr. Dando:
Still cleansing our souls from the toxic brew of leveraged singularity, we are stopped cold by what follows:
We look out at the snow on the meadows burning off into the storm drains, fire running as far as the sea, and shout all over God’s heaven; more Carl Sandburg next week.
Uncivilisation
A correspondent has alerted us to the recent republication of a manifesto for possibly the most significant body of writing, creating and thinking to emerge from the financial chaos of 2008: Uncivilisation. Worth a close reading in its entirely, the manifesto concludes with a statement of principles that resonate strongly here at DP:
Robinson Jeffers serves as something of a muse for the Dark Mountain Project, as he does here at DP, and we note the citation from his poem, Carmel Point:
Yes, as we enter into yet another chapter of the ongoing and deeper financial crisis that will shake our shallow notions of civilization to the core, we must uncenter our minds from ourselves.
We salute our friends on their voyage into uncivilisation, for they are trying to “think like a mountain”, and so are we. They have created, and absorbed, a good deal of heat via their manifesto, yet we commend them for having bravely faced the appalling facts of the deepening ecocide, and for having drawn their own autonomous conclusions.
As they write in their introduction to the 2015 edition:
Creative engagement and dialogue with the core ideas of Uncivilization will be an ongoing process for DP, as we venture ahead into a gravely uncertain future. We may stumble, yet we do so confidently, confident as the rock and ocean that we were made from.
For now, we close with a poem from another of our favorite poets, Jon Swan:
INTO THE SWIM
