Post 107.

Today, I only offer a short post: a poem that I wrote this morning as a hummingbird floated in and out of my front-yard garden. How can we who teach music become and live eco-literacy if indeed, as I think, being ecologically literate is a way of life. Eco-literacy is more than merely a trendy (or more accurately untrendy) approach to teaching in schools. Echoing my thoughts, in a recent study, Dylan Adams and Gary Beauchamp champion children playing outside, which offers students "states of being and knowings that are not as accessible in schools." How does being ecologically literate every day--conscious of soil/of locality in its full ecological reality, and understanding how that soil connects to global issues--guide the ways we live life? How do we become life-sustaining educators and musicians? The peoples of earth we are born to be. It begins with being present in our bioregion, and our local ecosystem. Where else can we be?

Hummingbird, Hummingbird

Hummingbird, hummingbird, where are you going?
I planted this bee balm to welcome you here
If you choose to stay, I’ll sing you a song
I do not eat meat, you need not fear
But hummingbird hovers, and never stays long
Hummingbird, hummingbird, where are you going?

DS

Link to image: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/df/Hummingbird_moth%2C_Massachusetts.jpg/640px-Hummingbird_moth%2C_Massachusetts.jpg

Post 106.

Listening: NatGeo Earth Day 202, The Seed, Aurora

“Only when the last tree has died, and the last river has been poisoned, and the last fish has been caught will we realize that we cannot eat money.” ~Quotation regularly attributed to Chief Seattle

Chief Seattle, Si’ahl (1780-1866), often called “The Big One” because of his tall stature, was a member of the Duwamish/Suquamish people who is most famous for a speech he gave being ecologically responsible. He was born on the Black River, and was a Roman Catholic who addressed relations between Native Americans and European settlers. Today a club named in his honor provides “sacred space to nurture, affirm, and renew the spirit of urban Native people.”

Aurora Aksnens is a Norwegian singer-songwriter who has been active since 2012. She released the album, “A Different Kind of Human (Step 2)” in 2019, which featured the songs Animal, The River, the title track, and The Seed. Also in 2019, she sang the film Frozen 2’s theme song, Into the Unknown, which brought her international attention. Aurora said, in an interview, about The Seed: “It’s representing my personal fire inside of me because I’m very passionate about saving the planet. It’s about human history, about how we’ve co-existed in the world and how we’ve forgotten how to live with nature and the power we have. It’s a very sad story, a very sad side of the story of humankind. It was a good way to end the album, to fuel the fire in people and to speak louder, about how we have to learn to exist with everything again. That’s why I figured out it’s a good way to end it all. Or this chapter, at least. The next one is already in the making!”

The lyrics to “The Seed” noticeably originate in Chief Seattle’s best-known quotation (above):

Just like the seed
I don't know where to go
Through dirt and shadow I grow
I'm reaching light through the struggle
Just like the seed
I'm chasing the wonder
I unravel myself
All in slow motion
Mmh mmh mmh
You cannot eat money, oh no
You cannot eat money, oh no
When the last tree has fallen
And the rivers are poisoned
You cannot eat money, oh no
You cannot eat money, oh no
You cannot eat money, oh no
When the last tree has fallen
And the rivers are poisoned
You cannot eat money oh, no
Oh no
Suffocate me
So my tears can be rain
I will water the ground where I stand
So the flowers can grow back again
'Cause just like the seed
Everything wants to live
We are burning our fingers
But we learn and forget
Mmh mmh mmh
You cannot eat money, oh no
You cannot eat money, oh no
When the last tree has fallen
And the rivers are poisoned
You cannot eat money, oh no
You cannot eat money, oh no
You cannot eat money, oh no
When the last tree has fallen
And the rivers are poisoned
You cannot eat money, oh no
Oh no
Feed me sunlight, feed me air
Feed me truth and feed me prayer
Feed me sunlight, feed me air
Feed me truth and feed me prayers
Mmh mmh mmh
You cannot eat money, oh no
You cannot eat money, oh no
When the last tree has fallen
And the rivers are poisoned
You cannot eat money, oh no
You cannot eat money, oh no
You cannot eat money, oh no
When the last tree has fallen
And the rivers are poisoned
You cannot eat money, oh no
Oh no

Music educators can use popular songs, like The Seed, to ask questions that matter, to cultivate eco-literacy. What is the role of money in our current ecological crises? Historically, making money has required people to chop down trees, to poison rivers, and has led to fish population collapses; and today these continue, but also server farms poison the soil, and even our daily food is shipped across the globe at great ecological cost, and global billionaires have the greatest ecological footprint (according to Oxfam, the top 10% of people produce half of the consumption-based fossil fuel emissions)—is there a way to make money sustainably? Or was Chief Seattle pointing humanity toward a different way of being; a different relationship with Mother Earth, one that considers money-making second, and sustainability first?

But we too often feel we cannot do much about global billionaires. In fact, though they are the bulk of the problem, we often see the biggest global polluters, like Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, and Richard Branson, getting awards and accolades online and on television for the tiny bit (percentage wise) they do in the form of environmental philanthropy. But, as Aurora’s song can remind us, we the peoples of earth can become a seed. “Through dirt and shadow I grow\ I'm reaching light through the struggle\ Just like the seed\ I'm chasing the wonder.” And here is where musicking flourishes. Not in large-scale philanthropy-as-profit, but in small-scale, grassroots, diverse local actions. Music teachers and students-as-community-members can use their diverse ways of musicking, their teaching and learning, in transformative ways to resist ecological destruction, resist narratives that place us outside-of-nature, and to show humanity diverse and sustainable ways forward. Because none of us are outside-of-nature. We are nature. After all, as Chief Seattle taught us so long ago, we cannot eat money.

DS

Post 105.
 
This month I have worked with students at the University of Freiburg, as they enact eco-literate music pedagogy. I have always called for this to be a pedagogy on soil, following Ivan Illich’s call for a philosophy on soil. By “on soil,” I mean radically place-based. Place-conscious. Place-responsive. Emplaced. As such, many of the most pertinent ecological challenges faced in Freiburg, Germany may differ from those here in Central PA, U.S. The musics, which are central to ecological action, that emerge in the grassroots of Central Europe are likely different than those that emerge in the grassroots of Central PA. Nonetheless, we share global crises too, such as e-waste, climate change, and species collapse, that we face together. A pedagogy on soil is local, fully local, in order to be responsive and transformative to the global. There is no way to enact global change without enacting local change. We live, ONLY, in the local. 

More than 100 people have died in Germany and Belgium from flooding this week. Meanwhile in the U.S., wildfires rage across Oregon, creating fire clouds reaching up to six miles into the atmosphere. And while it rains nearly every day here in the northern part of the Appalachian Mountains, and my garden is celebrating (see photos from my gardens), Minnesota is facing severe droughts. The Earth Organization for Sustainability draws our attention to the ecosphere, atmosphere, hydrosphere, and lithosphere to better understand the global ecological crises. I wonder too if these will help us draw our attention to local challenges to ecosystems, air, water, and soil. To do so, modifications need to be made. 

Mother Earth strives to find a balance within her global ecosystem. When disturbances occur, such as a volcanic eruption (atmosphere), increased chemicals added to the topsoil from farming (lithosphere), or plastic waste dumped into the oceans (hydrosphere), she gradually approaches a state called “dynamic equilibrium.” She restores balance, especially in response to minor disturbances. However, when these disturbances are too large in a single place, ecosystems collapse; which includes the possibility for a global collapse in response to multiple global-level anthropogenic disturbances. In the face of such horror, what are we, music teachers, then to do?
 
Are we required to fully understand the challenges we face? No. Nobody knows everything. A bit a humility is always a good thing. However, don't mistake willful ignorance for humility. Ecological conscientization is a responsibility for all people. This conscientization will look different for children than adults. Adults can bear on their shoulders the full weight of the mess we’ve made. Children should be introduced to the challenges and their responsibilities gradually. The resistance to sustainable futures enacted by billionaires and global corporations must be addressed. We, the peoples of earth, ultimately must ask ourselves, what sort of economy do we need to enact to thrive on Mother Earth for centuries to come? I believe the solutions to big damage are small structures. If we return our economy to the community-sized, strengthening farmers markets and local businesses, that is the start (but likely not the end) of the change we need. Big solutions may also pan out, though most posed by billionaires have been, for them, profitable lies. Rather, it is most likely the solutions will arise in diverse places, using diverse musics, in the grassroots in diverse communities around the globe. Folk here in the northern Appalachian Mountains are finding distinctive ways of sustaining this place, and folk in other places modify those solutions to their own places; and come up with their own in the deserts of Utah, the lakes of Minnesota, and the once-forested areas of Germany and Belgium.
 
Listen to: Wisdom Cries, Aurora

DS