When the Stars Threw Down Their Spears

 

My Dad Wrote the Orchestral Arrangement for "To Be Young, Gifted and Black"

 I know it sounds incredible doesn't it. But in the Sixties my father made a living in part by writing orchestral arrangements, and Nina Simone's classic was one of them. I can hear my Dad's fondness for suspended chords, a significant overlap with African American music, where Vaughan Williams hangs out in the disco. 

The Silence of the Lawns (new book)

This has been a year of accidents. Some of them tiny like bumping my head or feeling weirdly dizzy. Some of them weird

and sometimes dispiriting like the furnace not working, twice, the gas not being switched back on, three times, weird breakages. Of my toe in the bath for instance.

And some downright intense or even malicious seeming. Like every day there’s been a weird accident since my surgery.

They’re not bad per se. They’re not something one needs to despair about. But they could be.

The latest is, I just got bourgeois-evicted from my home (they’re selling it), because of my opposition to gasoline powered gardening equipment. I’ll never be able to prove it, of course, they have left no trace I can take action against, like the invisible footprints of Sabrina in Milton’s poem, only Sabrina was revolution and this is the modern bondage of carbon.

It’s been a seven-year struggle against the Menil Collection and I lost.

Except I’m writing a book about it. A really good one.

Maybe they forgot I can write. Maybe they didn’t quite think through the fact that there’s a lolol world class environmental philosopher living in one of their houses.

I kept telling them it would be fantastic PR, go wild like Rice, model good behavior, be part of how the art museum and the garden are becoming the same thing, worldwide.

It’s great actually. I am free from complicity in the American lawn, a slavery artifact that is deadly to flowers and Black people.

The American lawn, that gives workers cancer and uses 40% (?) of America’s water and deploys a nephew of Agent Orange.

The lawn fueled my earliest forays into big picture environmentalist thought. Now I’m ready to write the book that was always coming.

It’s called The Silence of the Lawns.

It Really Is Terribly Simple

 1. Vote for the KKK candidate. 

2. Vote to stop the KKK candidate. 

3. Vote to enable the KKK candidate by diluting votes. 

Want to get scared? Watch this tiny clip. If you are an ally to anyone in this nation who is vulnerable you have to register & vote for the current @POTUS no matter how much you dislike him bc the option is a fascist state which will go after everyone. You will not be exempted.… https://t.co/i32isUtxoc

— Jorie Graham (@jorie_graham) December 17, 2023

Neurodiversity Saves Earth: Wall.E in The Ecological Thought and Their Dependence on Mo

 If it hadn't been for the OCD of Mo, the depressive Wall.E, preserver of life for no reason, would've been sucked out into space. OCD and depression save Earth. 

You Fucking Idiots

 Don't give people a stick to beat us with. They've been wanting to beat us real bad for years, and you just handed them the perfect stick. 

Now forever they'll be able to say "But your best people claim that violence is contextual. This isn't transphobia, This isn't racism. This isn't misogyny." 

Your interlocutor was an idiot, highly trained at made-for-meme moments. And you let her do way, WAY more damage in thirty seconds than I have ever witnessed. In my lifetime. 

So just from a strictly tactical, non-moral, non-ethical point of view: you fucked it up. 

As if I needed more things to be terrified of. "We're coming for the Marxists and the other vermin"? You just held the fucking door open for them. 

Hell Promo Hits 600 Views

 It's not a lot compared with the thousands that some videos have accumulated since I uploaded them ten years ago, but it seems fast, and 612 feels like a significant enough number to mention it. You can pre-order the book now! I hope you like these little ads I'm making. Feel free to share them. 

I've sent about 100 stickers out. The QR code links to this video. If anyone wants to stick some up somewhere, let me know and I'll send them to you. 

I'm really, really trying to reach America with this book. I think it's really important. 

In general, thanks for being the lovely supporters of this blog. I am grateful to you all. 

Stickers and Memes and Video, Oh My

 If you'd like some stickers email me at tbm@rice.edu. You know, stickers: 

I've got 1000 of them to send you 

Stick em up, people! 

Meanwhile: 

Online Class (register)

 

The Divine Image or, The Remix of Heaven and Hell: A Playlist for My New Book

 

I'll be adding to this as time goes by...

Joy and Pain or, Last Night (x 13,000-ish) a DJ Saved My Life

If you've been following me for a while you'll know how important dancing and dance music is to me. I have some really good news on that front. I have made the most wonderful connection to the DJ who saved my life, many many nights ago, David M/A/R/R/S Dorrell. Turns out he was reading my stuff anyway! I had found out how to contact him for permission to reproduce his incredible LOVE flyer, for the club he created in 1988. 

This is all in the Hell book, but I wanted to share some of it here. David is wonderful and is constantly sending me music, which I will start to share here. 

Here's the latest. The strangest strangest synchronistic connections happen around me and David. Let's just say that this song has been playing in the back of my head since I went to his club in 1988, but for a totally different and very strangely poignant reason. It's too much to write here at present and I want just to share this incredible Pentecostal (David's very accurate term) call and response of it as soon as I can. 

PS here is the magnificent M/A/R/R/S: 

The Ecological Thought Is Now on the Dutch High School Curriculum (instructional video I made last week)

 

This turned out to be one of the loveliest occasions ever and I think I gave a great presentation, although I say it myself. 

AI Is One of the Topics in Hell (Columbia UP)

 

The Ecological Thought Is Now on the Dutch High School Curriculum

 ....and today is when I train the teachers about how to teach it. I'm so incredibly proud of that. And glad that someone is taking ecology that seriously. 

Unless you've been in high school in the 2010s, you wouldn't believe the number of high school students who like my stuff and are glad that I'm around. I'm putting it that way because it's actually true. In Cumbria in 2019, at Wordsworth's house, a mum and her daughter told me they had flown fro Ireland to say thanks to me for doing what I do. I get emails from high school students all the time. 

In 2014, at the library of Northwestern University, I had done a dialogue and was about to do my lecture. About one hundred graduate students piled in. There was nowhere for them to sit so most of them sat on the floor. Afterwards, about twenty of them surrounded me and told me how much they loved my stuff. 

I get emails from high school students all the time. Claire Colebrook once said something really nice. She said that the reason for this is, I'm giving them things they can actually think about. 

If you put my books through Lexile software, they come out as legible by kids from eleven years old and up.