The title of the upcoming Poliça and s t a r g a z e collaboration “Music for the Long Emergency” was inspired by James Howard Kunstler’s 2005 book The Long Emergency: Surviving the End of Oil, Climate Change, and Other Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century. In the book, Kunstler predicts significant changes in the coming decades due to an end of the “cheap fossil fuel era.” While this blog post will not evaluate the claims of the book, we hope it will provide some background and context to better understand one of the inspirations for the Liquid Music project.
The potential for challenges are apparent in several areas: climate change, ongoing wars and terrorism, economic and political instability. Kunstler traces these challenges associated to an over-reliance on cheap fossil fuels. Growth in the 20th century was spurred on by cheap oil. As oil supply has decreased though, this reliance on oil has left us vulnerable to economic and political forces. We must pay higher prices and make political sacrifices to continue meeting our demand for oil. Most significantly, though, we will be realizing the environmental costs of our use of oil. Indeed, government policy has pivoted to not only focusing on efforts to prevent climate change, but also to mitigate the impacts of it. The State of Minnesota and communities in the Twin Cities area have created plans to reduce the negative impacts of climate change.
Narratives about global crises typically end with the salvation of humanity through last-minute human innovation. Conversely, some narratives end with quick extinction of humans through divine or ecological justice. Kunstler, however, paints a picture of a different future. He believes we will neither be saved by our ingenuity, nor will we completely perish. His idea is that we will enter into a period of a “long emergency” where our crisis is not a short-term event but rather a “new normal:" one that will look significantly different than the our current way of life.
The first steps of the long emergency are marked by constraint: initially reductions in income and quality of life, followed by reductions in life expectancy. The availability of food will decrease and we will no longer be able to afford transporting food across long distances. As a result, societies will become more agrarian: much of our time currently spent on professional and leisure activities will be spent on farming as our food will need to be grown more locally. For those of us in Minnesota, given our existing farmland and proximity to abundant freshwater, we are more fortunate than those in the United States on the coasts. As this change occurs, we will become less reliant on national government and our societies will become smaller and more geographically compact.
Given the bleakness of Kunstler’s predictions, it may be tempting to read irony in the title “Music for the Long Emergency” either as a piece of bitter black comedy (as in the finale of Dr. Strangelove) or as a comment on the triviality of art in a world in crisis. Maybe the author would agree with that, but early in the book, he speaks of “cultivating a new religion of hope” so that we have a “deep and comprehensive belief that humanity is worth carrying on.” Maybe that’s the purpose of music in the long emergency: a necessary connection to our past, a new way to envision our future, and a new path to maintaining hope.
See the world premiere of Music for the Long Emergency:
Copresented with The Current
Friday, November 18, 2016, 8pm (Purchase Tickets)
Fitzgerald Theater, Saint Paul, MN
Keep up with Music for the Long Emergency on the Liquid Music Blog:
First Look
Tables Turned: André de Ridder interviews Channy Leaneagh
Catching up with s t a r g a z e: Weekender Festival, Berlin 2015
Virtual Residency Mini Doc Part I
Meet s t a r g a z e
From Virtual to Reality: s t a r g a z e + Poliça's First Musical Meet-up
Music for the Long Emergency: Naming the Virtual Residency with Poliça and s t a r g a z e
Podcast interview with Channy Leaneagh on Liquid Music Playlist
Follow s t a r g a z e:
Website: we-are-stargaze.com
Twitter: @wearestargaze (twitter.com/wearestargaze)
Instagram: @we_are_stargaze (instagram.com/we_are_stargaze)
Facebook: www.facebook.com/wearestargaze/
Vimeo: vimeo.com/wearestargaze
Follow Poliça:
Website: thisispolica.com
Twitter: @thisispolica (twitter.com/thisispolica)
Instagram: @thisispolica (instagram.com/thisispolica)
Facebook: facebook.com/thisispolica
Youtube: youtube.com/user/polica
FOLLOW LIQUID MUSIC FOR UPDATES AND ANNOUNCEMENTS:
Twitter: @LiquidMusicSPCO (twitter.com/LiquidMusicSPCO)
Instagram: @LiquidMusicSeries (instagram.com/liquidmusicseries)
Facebook: facebook.com/SPCOLiquidMusic
Podcast: Liquid Music Playlist