Plant: a slow album release
I recently had this conversation with my (nine year old) daughter (I think we had just sang along - quite loud, if I recall correctly, with Part of Me by Katy Perry - no comment..). We were discussing how so many popsongs are either about falling in love, being in love, or falling out of love: heartache..
And we were wondering together: why are there not more (popular) song that we listen to right here, right now (I'm sure this is and has been different in other times and places) about nature? About being in awe, admiring off, afraid of, the beauty, the power of nature?
And - as these things go - the next day I read a review on 'Plant' by Nynke Laverman. Over the course of 2021 she created a ‘slow album release'. Laverman: "Plant is not an album about climate as far as I’m concerned, but about people and their choices, and the climate crisis is a result of that.”
There is the song ‘Your Ancestor’, speaking (remorsefully?) to people who live in the future. And there is a song called ‘homo economicus’ debating whether 'they' knew they were destroying the world.. So ok, maybe this album is not so much about nature itself but about change, it is a protest, it observes the impasse we are in.
Tree tree
What do you think of me
Tree tree
What do you see
When you look at me
Do I amuse you
Do I confuse you
Running around and around
Like I’m used to
A fast forward movie
Played at your feet
At repeat at repeat at repeat
[Tree - from Plant Nynke Laverman]
Laverman says: "We are exhausting the world. But we fail to act on our knowledge. You hope it can be adjusted, but the strange thing is that we consciously watch our demise.” And yes, indeed. This is one of the bizarre things of our time, I feel: the stalemate we are in. We know we need to change but we do not (yet, all) act.
And Laverman does was I believe and hope more artists will help us with in the coming times. To give words to, images, expressions of the trouble we are in. And the hope and imagination we need to find our way out.
If ratio, if knowledge, if numbers would have been enough to make us change, it would have happened already. What we need (as well) is art, in these times of transition. To help us see and feel the direction we want to take, help us find the courage to start somewhere and help us find the hope to experiment and create new beginnings.