Today I have my first meeting with Jim Ife.
He said we’re likely doomed - that all signs are pointing towards an end. Whether this will be a slow or fast ending is yet to be known. We can not continue to live the way we are living, if we want to survive.
Jim is the author of Community Development in an Uncertain World, a book I have turned to many times in my social work study, and in my work as a community arts worker. I have approached him to mentor me as I return to independent practice during the covid era.
When Jim replied to my first email to him, his e-mail signature read:
We human beings ought to stand before one another as reverently, as reflectively, as lovingly, as we would before the entrance to hell [Kafka]
And:
The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear [Gramsci]
These reminded me of a previous mentor of mine, the late Roger Rynd, who also placed quotes in his email signatures, including:
All of us are working together for the same end; some of us knowingly and purposefully, others unconsciously. Even in our sleep we are at work. Aurelius
Something that is revealing itself to me, is my interest in work that accepts an end is approaching. A few years back I decided to spend some time with Darren O’Donnell at Mammalian Diving Reflex, whose tagline is ideal entertainment for the end of the world.
Darren’s book, Social Acupuncture, opens with the line “The world is a collapsing shit factory.” Jim’s book’s introduction says “the world is characterised by increasing instability - whether ecological, economic, political, social or cultural - and existing institutions seem only able to provide solutions which in the long term, and even in the short term, only make things worse.”
It seems those thinking about the end, are considering work that’s social. It makes me think about the purpose of our work. Is it that we want to delay the end, and make the ending more fair?
Jim positioned creativity and the work of artists as central to our imagining of a better future, not something that should exist on the margins. The Cultural Development network list “positive future inspired” as a potential outcome of arts and cultural activity, describing it as “the feeling that you have what you need from your community to be hopeful and confident about your future.” A future where that is true for everyone is worth working towards.
Jim let me know about the Dark Mountain Project. I have, bit by bit, been reading the manifesto this week, and it is really something. This year I have been thinking about moving back to the mountain where I grew up, and nothing affirms that plan more than that manifesto.
I wrote this a couple of weeks in to isolation… and added the final line tonight:
After this
I'll put all my secrets out on the lawn
kiss the strangers
and run around in a cape.
After this
I'll smear the stamen of a lily on my face
eat the juiciest peaches
and jump in the dam
ride down the hills with my hands off the handlebars,
howling, sticky, cold
After this it'll be less about later and more about now
less about me and more about us
we'll walk across that log over the creek
sit behind the waterfall
fearlessly holding hands
knowing after this is the ending