On March 27, I was torn from the confines of my dorm room and taken on a gut-wrenching, shamanic journey that forced me to meditate on the apocalyptic reality our planet faces. The catalyst of this experience? A song – specifically Andrew Bird’s new song, “Manifest.”
That was the first time I listened to Bird’s new album, My Finest Work Yet. When “Manifest” started, I was struck by the haunting lyrics that told the story of a deteriorating planet – one that “whispers death in your ear.” Bird’s track, however, is more than another generic statement of environmental concern. Rather, it is a piece of artistic experimentation that animates the reality of the fossil fuel industry, casting the seemingly scientific process in a spiritual, philosophical light.
According to Rolling Stone, Bird says that the song “…traces our evolution from single celled organisms to modern man – then takes it further, post-mortem, to when a plant or animal becomes a fossil fuel fracked from the ground and released into the atmosphere from combustion engines like ghosts.” The song’s music video is an animation that illustrates this evolution and then depicts the “post-mortem” phase as a series of cars traveling on an anthropocentric journey, sucking up the past creatures of the earth only to emit them in the form of ghosts that haunt our planet and drive its demise. In rendering such a story, Bird takes a scientific reality and turns it into a site of artistic and spiritual experimentation, exponentially increasing the emotional valence of that reality. The ultimate blow is Bird’s final question: “Can we save her?”
"Bird is able to artistically present ecological injustice in a way that unveils a more complex, philosophical connection between that injustice and human existence."
Perhaps my intense emotional and spiritual response was heightened by the events of that specific week in March. Bird’s album was released only four days prior to the United State Senate’s blocking of the Green New Deal – an investment in clean energy jobs that sought to revitalize the economy and push the country towards renewable energy.
As disappointing the decision was, it was no surprise. Why would I be surprised? Day after day, government after government denies our Earth its protection. Trump pledged to withdraw from the Paris Agreement – demonstrating his commitment to exacerbating our climate impact once again. Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro seeks to exploit the Amazon for its resources. These unutterable facts are nearly not worth saying anymore. We alienate ourselves from our own planet while greenhouse gas emissions, temperature, and industrialization are on a steady rise.
"The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change continues to release meticulous scientific reports to policy makers, but these facts and figures fall flat. They do not elicit pain, trauma, grief, anger – the catalysts of democratic change."
Once, perhaps, ignorance could have provided an explanation for this lack of action. Facts and statistics, however, about anthropogenic climate change have been available to the government and public as early as the 1950s. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change continues to release meticulous scientific reports to policy makers, but these facts and figures fall flat. They do not elicit pain, trauma, grief, anger – the catalysts of democratic change.
I stumbled across John Seed, Australian environmentalist and director of the Rainforest Information Centre, while listening to one of my favorite environmental podcasts, For The Wild. In his podcast, Seed argues that through our anthropocentric history of industrialization and commercialization, we have lost touch with our “ecological identity,” a cultural and spiritual link to the planet. To sever this eco-cultural connection impedes our ability to empathize with the earth and its beings. Sure enough, the previously labeled “catalysts of change” are all results of empathy.
Empathy was what inflamed me when I listened to “Manifest.” Bird’s piece spoke to a deeper identification with the planet – ecological identity – and brought out a deeper pain along with a deeper drive to heal that pain. Art, with its spiritual and philosophical complexities, has the ability to transform environmental concern to this type of environmental grief.
Yet we have separated traditional modes of environmental studies from this power of the arts and humanities. It was radical for me to choose to start this article without reference to new policies or invoking striking statistics but instead take a route based in emotion, spirit, and art. It should not have been: Just as we have disconnected ourselves from our ecological identities, we have disconnected sustainable development from the realm of human culture. This divisive status quo has not done the job: facts and statistics do not elicit change the way emotion and spirit does.
Ultimately, to move environmental activism forward, we must revitalize our concept of sustainable development. We must create a model in which the arts and the sciences are in constant interaction and held at equal value; a system in which ecological artistic experimentations like Bird’s are the norm; a system where art is seen as a common form of environmental activism. Only in this system can we rekindle our ecological identities and create a sense of ecological empathy that will propel us towards the change our earth is demanding.