Art or life. I say art.
Party on 23 Nov. Improv musical. Totoro, and to live in wonder. An investing ESG glimpse, agriculture.
“What is worth more, art or life?” Or, is art ever worth more than life?
I touch on that thought this week as well as other arts, ESG, Totoro and improv. Living in wonder!
Party | Meet-up on 23 November, you are welcome to come. 6pm, Theatre Deli, Leadenhall. Or maybe it’s only a meet-up, what’s the difference? It’s close to my birthday.
Improv musical, the extraordinary Lee Simpson and friends
Totoro, and to live in wonder
Art or life. I say art.
ThenDoBetter award winner: Bryan Kam
An investing ESG glimpse, agriculture
Links: On econ history, meta science, flu, grants, grief, wasabi, fellowships.
Within investing world and climate this week, I considered the role of agriculture. This comes under the heading of “land use” and is 25% of the climate challenge. A very significant portion of the challenge much higher than transport and after electrification and power arguably the largest challenge.
This food, beverage, snack company uses around 7 million acres of land to supply the ingredients, such as wheat, for its products ($80bn worth) which are made, packaged, and transported to us consumers who then eat the snack and throw out / reuse / recycle the packaging.
The company has correctly (IMHO) calculated its largest impact is in its land use and has committed to
“… a goal to spread regenerative farming practices across 7 million acres, approximately equal to its entire agricultural footprint. The company estimates the effort will eliminate at least 3 million tons of greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) by the end of the decade. Additional 2030 goals within the agenda include improving the livelihoods of more than 250,000 people in its agricultural supply chain and sustainably sourcing 100% of its key ingredients…”
(In the idea of active of active ownership) As investors and owners we need to hold such companies to account to their goals as well as assess, nudge, debate if their goals, strategy and execution are correct.
That’s my ESG glimpse for you this week. On to art….
This week it was asked1:
“What is worth more, art or life?”
On one level, as argued most stringently by utilitarians and the likes of Peter Singer, it is always life. To the consequentialist, it is the consequence that matters.
And on one level these utilitarians must be right. There can not be another answer. Without life there is no art.
Why support art or enjoy theatre when there are so many innocents currently dying of hunger or malaria?
…and yet… to my mind, as it seems I am some form of pluralist in this - this answer can not be the only answer. I am very influenced by my conversation with philosopher Larry Temkin.
We each have only one life. There is more to human existence and what makes living worthwhile than mere survival. (To paraphrase Temkin)
I paraphrase Bernard Williams, an arch critic of utilitarians.
If all we have is life and there is no art.
Then all that made life worth living
The dance, the poetry, the handprints on the wall
All is gone. We have life not worth living.
We have life we wish not to live.
With art there is no life.
You can argue this is the privilege of the wealthy, of those who have enough to live on, those higher up the hierarchy of needs.
Still, you need to explain the cave art. The people hve gone. The art remains. Why do people in the depths of poverty still dance? Why do our long lived stories live in the lives of our First Nation and Idigenous peoples such as in Australia now. Stories passed down 10,000s of years2 ?
We can ask these paradoxical questions.
Kill five people today or five people in the future ?
Five people today or six people in the future ?
One person or one Van Gogh painting ?
One person or all art ?
All people or all arts ?
Is this like… whether light is wave or a particle ?
Or bringing it back to a question.
If not that which makes us human, what are we fighting for ?
So on another level. I say arts. Or perhaps more correctly.
Both arts and life. Life and arts.
Turning to arts…
We saw My Neighbo(u)r Totoro recently. The show has garnered several 5 star reviews. You can consider the show a family show, and like a family book or childrens’ book that really means that everyone can enjoy the performance not only those who have the lost the wonder that children more naturally have.
This sense of wonder pervades the show. The wondrous movement, the fantastical puppets, the music, the joy. The performance is knowing, the puppeteers are knowingly displayed and thus the pretense is a shared pretense. The audience and performers and musicians are all in play, making belief together.
Some of the gigantic puppets are moved by 8 performers. The sense of awe and wonder emanating from the audience is palpable. Our gasps, our laughs, our claps. Our wonder. At the Barbican, London.
Art is life.
Improbable musical. This wonder continues in another show we saw. An improvised musical and show. The players, musicians, puppeteers, performers, stage and light people start by asking the audience three questions. The answers coming back on our night: herb garden, lackadaisical and “the murder was horrible, yet the wind was whispering” from this was conjured a splintering love story, a wondrous paper woman resurrecting by the wind, plenty of jokes about herbs, a shy and expressive duck made from a tea pot and cups.
The language of improvisation is the language of life, as we never truly know where life’s journey takes us.
Review from everything-theatre, Mary Pollard:
The evening begins with improv legend Josie Lawrence explaining what to expect. Nothing has been pre‑planned. With the help of the audience three topics are selected, which will form the basis of the performances. Tonight, the team are assigned a herb garden, the word ‘lackadaisical’, and the sentence “the murder was horrible, yet the wind was whispering”. OK – a bit of a challenge there?
The fabulous band of musicians strike up a tune and instantly an extraordinary series of comic improvisations begins. Lawrence is joined by Lee Simpson, Ruth Bratt and Niall Ashdown – all total improv masters and immensely talented. Together they invent hilarious scenarios, whilst singing beautifully and turning out perfectly formed musical numbers without batting an eyelid! Their fabulous performance skills are enhanced still further by the cohesive, supportive relationships they have. It’s as if they are psychically connected, each invisibly cueing the other; developing the story organically and convincingly. Yes, there are moments where they hesitate or giggle, but it’s thrilling to sense that this is as risky as live theatre gets. The team exude a confidence that reassures you great stuff will come: and it does.On this night there were some fabulously funny scenes, with Bratt and Ashdown hilariously giving Lawrence a run for her money. My particular favourite was a running story about lovers who come together over a coriander bush, although the dust cake scene was almost as impressive. The secret ingredient, however, proves to be unexpectedly beautiful puppetry from Aya Nakamura and Clarke Joseph-Edwards, which integrates delightfully into the programme and elevates it way beyond straightforward improv. Using subtle manipulation, a dead body, formed only of crumpled sheets of paper, is made to rise from dormancy and take to the air in fluid, convincing strides. Later, Nakamura and Joseph-Edwards explore some cups, saucers and a teapot in synchronicity, with only atmospheric background music to support them. They carefully draw out movements from the objects, testing their properties, until suddenly the pieces connect invisibly and are alive. Helped by Simpson, there is now a duck in their hands, which inspires a song about how a scared bird plucks up courage to jump into the water. It’s magical, and utterly captivating.
For more on this listen to Lee Simpson on my podcast and catch the show at the Hackey Empire, London, this week only.
Art is life.
My last in the trio of art here is the work of Coney. I used to chair Coney and I remain close. The Coney folk created a massive festival of games, stories, fairs, performances and adventures all round the City of London a few days ago.
10,000s of people took part and in its own way was as big a form of climate protest and climate awareness as the City has ever seen.
Again the players and the adventurers made play together. Coney took you on stories and adventures, but you made them yours.
Yes. Because. Again. Art is life. Life is art.
I’ve been dwelling on Katherine Rundell call to “live in wonder”. Her latest book is wondrous and wonderful. Her first sentences chime so well, they made me stop to reflect on them.
A common Swift, in its lifetime, flies about 2 million km; enough to fly to the moon and back twice over, and then once more to the moon. For at least 10 months of the year, it never ceases flying; sky-washed, sleeping on the wing, and has no need to land.
The swift is sky-suited like no other bird. Weighing less than a hen's egg, with wings like a size and a tail like a fork, it eats and sleeps on the wing. They gather nesting material only from what's in the air, which means that there have been accounts of still-flapping butterflies wedged in among the leaves and twigs. They mate in brief mid sky collisions, the only birds to do so, and to wash they hunt down clouds and fly through gentle rain, slowly, wings outstretched.
Lemurs…
It is probably best not to take advice direct and unfiltered from the animal kingdom – but lemurs are, I think, an exception. They live in matriarchal troops, with an alpha female at their head. When ring-tailed lemurs are cold or frightened, or they want to bond, they group together in a furry mass known as a lemur ball, forming a black and white sphere that ranges in size from a football to a bicycle wheel. They intertwine their tails and paws, and press against one another’s walnut-sized swiftly beating hearts. To see it feels like an injunction of sorts: to find a lemur bowl of one's own.
…It was, perhaps, a hermit crab that ate Amelia Earhart.
….John Donne had a theory about bears: a bear cub, he believed, is born a solid lump of flesh, until its mother bites and licks it into shape.
Food is life too. (Food and culture are forms of art, of course). Fresh wasabi root. Fiery. Hint of honey.
Links:
ThenDoBetter award winner: Bryan Kam
Grief is not easily categorised.
More grants:
and a fellowship:
On flu
On meta science
On econ history
I have to admit the dramaturgy of this ask was very mediocre in my view. And to the extent this is well funded there really needs to be more impact measurement around this. Some protests work. Some do not. We should figure out which is which. A study using careful poll questions before and after should shed some decent light on this theory of change (and which performances do best).
Variously the question askers are described as activists or ecoterrorists, performance artists or puppets, in a line of debate that has drawn the lines between freedom fighters and terrorists for a very long time.
Also (from wiki) On April 22, 2022, climate activist Wynn Alan Bruce set himself on fire in the plaza of the United States Supreme Court Building. The fatal self-immolation, which took place on Earth Day, was characterized by Bruce's friends and his father as a protest against the climate crisis. In this case, I’d say live life, not this. But Bruce made one of the ultimate uses of his life.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/ancient-sea-rise-tale-told-accurately-for-10-000-years/