FLOOD 10 — SIDE A — Animal Collective Version

the sustainability issue

T H E N AT U R A L WO N D E R O F

ANIMAL COLLECTIVE

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LETTER FROM THE EDITOR

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SMALL TALK: FLOODFEST, OCEAN52, PLANET ROO, WATSON

the sustainability issue

12 BREAKING: WILLIAM JACKSON HARPER, KARI FAUX, CHARLY BLISS 20 SHE KEEPS BEES’ JESSICA LARRABEE SINGS FOR TREES 24 GARY CLARK JR.: HOME OF THE BRAVE 30 A REGENERATION OF THE SOUL: LIFE ON THE FARM 36 JON ROSE: GUERILLA HUMANITARIAN 44 ANIMAL COLLECTIVE’S AURAL MORPHOLOGY 56 JEFF BRIDGES: REDISCOVERING FIRE WITH THE DUDE

PUBLISHER ALAN SARTIRANA PUBLISHER/EDITORIAL DIRECTOR RANDY BOOKASTA EXECUTIVE EDITOR SCOTT T. STERLING MANAGING EDITOR ANYA JAREMKO-GREENWOLD ASSOCIATE EDITOR MIKE LESUER ART DIRECTOR MELISSA SIMONIAN WRITERS A.D. AMOROSI, SOREN BAKER, LARRY FITZMAURICE, MAX FREEDMAN, NICK FULTON, SARAH GOODING, DEAN KUIPERS, LEAH MANDEL, TESS McGEER, ERIN OSMON, ADRIAN SPINELLI, ERIC STOLZE, LAURA STUDARUS IMAGES DANIEL CAVAZOS, SAMUEL CROSSLEY, SUSAN KUCERA, MICHAEL LAVINE, MICHAEL MULLER, TOD SEELIE, KATHERINE LEVIN SHEEHAN, SWOON, ERIK VOAKE ANTHEMIC AGENCY MICHAEL BAUER, JOAN CORRAGIO, ANA DOS ANJOS, AMBER HOWELL, NOLAN FOSTER, MICA JENKINS, TAYLOR NUÑEZ, KYLE ROGERS ANIMAL COLLECTIVE COVER ART BY ATIBA JEFFERSON AND CORAL MORPHOLOGIC / JEFF BRIDGES COVER PHOTO AND TABLE OF CONTENTS PHOTO BY SUSAN KUCERA

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LETTER FROM THE EDITOR

Guess what? Things aren’t looking good. For the planet, I mean—and for all of us who live on it.

According to a recently released assessment from the United Nations, human beings are transforming the earth’s landscapes so drastically that one million plant and animal species are now at risk of extinction. That sucks. But human beings aren’t going to go extinct, right? We’ll be okay?

Well—these slaughterings of species pose a direct threat to the ecosystems we all depend upon for survival. The UN report, compiled by scores of international experts and based on thousands of scientific studies, explains that the abundance of native plant and animal life has fallen by at least 20 percent over the last hundred years, and with the expanse of our human population and destructive activities like logging, poaching, and fishing, the natural world is being changed at unprecedented rates. Global warming, too, has assisted in rapid wildlife decline; many animals, insects, and plants are no longer able to survive in their much-altered or shrunken local climates.

FLOOD is an arts and culture publication, yes—but we’re a part of this world too, and we wanted to contribute in whatever small way we could. So with our tenth print issue, we sought out stories that delved into sustainable living, climate change, renewable energy, water conservation, ocean exploration, and the reduction of carbon footprints.

From musicians who outlaw the use of plastic water bottles on tour, to athletes who donate funds to bringing third-world communities electricity and clean water, to actors who produce documentaries about our earth’s resource depletion, we’ve compiled a selection of artists and activists who are talented and productive in equal measure. Not every story in this magazine has dire news or somber warnings—in fact, most of these people have high hopes that we can turn this thing around.

Here’s hoping.

—Anya Jaremko-Greenwold, Managing Editor

n coffee roast w o t p m ers u t s Through the support and guidance of the B Corp framework, we challenge ourselves to conduct business, locally and globally, in a way that betters the planet, the communities, and the people we work with.

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SMALL TALK

Dungeon Family Live at FLOODfest SXSW 2019

DANIEL CAVAZOS

In regard to Atlanta hip-hop, there are few—if any—crews more legendary than the Dungeon Family. For the first time in decades, six members of the first-generation Family (including OutKast’s Big Boi, Goodie Mob, and Organized Noize’s Sleepy Brown) hit the stage together, taking the party on a tour of the “Dirty South.”

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SMALL TALK

TIM McKENNA

The mission behind emerging beverage company Ocean52 is right there in the name. “We founded Ocean52 with the idea to connect two passions: healthy food and our love for the ocean,” explains Santi Mier, CEO and founder of the unique healthy drink. “Then we discovered that the ocean needed much more. It needed a total reshaping of the way we live and treat our planet. We believe good business is only good if it is good for all, including the ocean. This is why we decided to be the only drinks company to devote 52 percent of our earnings to ocean protection.”

Launched in 2018, Ocean52’s primary goal is to give more than they take. As such, the company is crafting a line of drinks without using PET (or polyethylene terephthalate, the lightweight plastic commonly used to bottle water) in any of the packaging.

“In the case of our products, it’s about taking life-nurturing deep ocean minerals to give our range of healthful drinks a unique and revitalizing edge,” the company has stated. Currently available in France and Spain with an eye on expanding to North America in the near future, Ocean52 already boasts champion snowboarder Mathieu Creépel, open water swimmer Miquel Sunyer, pro surfer and musician Lee-Ann Currenas (pictured on left), and photographer Tim McKenna as brand ambassadors.

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ANDREW JORGENSEN

Making bottled beverages responsibly

SMALL TALK

The Tennessee music and arts fest where sustainability is always a headliner With a range of headliners including Childish Gambino, Phish, Odesza, and The Lumineers, Bonnaroo 2019 combines the event’s jam-band past with its growing reputation among America’s elite multi-day music fests.

What never varies, however, is Bonnaroo’s steadfast dedication to sustainability, a practice that extends beyond the fest’s annual long summer weekend.

“Our approach has evolved over the years to move beyond our commitment to recycling and reducing our consumption to include health and wellness, access to food, and social justice,” explains Laura Sohn, Bonnaroo’s Director of Sustainability. “We strive to create a healthy and model community on site, so guests can take what they learn home with them and have an impact on their communities.”

With sustainability initiatives becoming a very visible component of most music festivals, Bonnaroo makes the most of their central Tennessee location to have an impact outside of the sprawling rural venue.

“One thing we’ve been able to do is maximize our operations since we were able to purchase the festival grounds. Now, we can close the compost loop by having our compost stay on site,” Sohn shares. “Another thing we do is work with the environmental nonprofit We Are Neutral in order to do weatherization of low-income housing throughout the region. We are helping to reduce their carbon footprint and utility bills. While we have not verified these as carbon offsets for the festival, that is the inspiration for doing the work.”

When it comes to artists who’ve made an impression on the people of Planet Roo, Sohn is quick to shout out one of music’s most active long-time environmental pioneers.

“I have long been inspired by Jack Johnson,” she raves. “I remember over ten years ago getting his first green rider. It was revolutionary at the time, and inspired the industry to start taking some major steps in how tours and festivals are produced. I’m also inspired by what other festivals do. Each change one of us makes can affect the industry.”

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SMALL TALK

Too hardcore for Greenpeace What happens when you’re one of the founding members of Greenpeace, but get unceremoniously voted out by the board of directors?

For Paul Watson, such a predicament was motivation to launch what would become the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society in 1977. In forty years, the directaction environmentalist group has grown from a single boat into an international organization with a fleet of thirteen ships. Today, they proudly proclaim themselves to be the largest private navy on the planet.

This compelling tale is the source material for Watson, a new documentary tracing Watson’s journey from an abusive home to a life dedicated to preserving the natural world. Directed by Lesley Chilcott (producer of An Inconvenient Truth and It Might Get Loud), the movie debuted as an official selection in the Documentary Competition at the 2019 Tribeca Film Festival.

“This is not an environmental film,” Chilcott insists.

“This is the action-adventure story of the life of a remarkable human being. I wanted to concentrate on him, not necessarily the story of Sea Shepherd. He’s been an activist since he was eleven years old. I wanted to know why he does the things he does.”

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CAPTAIN PAUL WATSON UNDERWATER DIVING; PHOTO BY MATT CALISSI

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BREAKING

WILLIAM JACKSON HARPER WHILE IT’S TRUE THAT MOST OF US HAVE NEVER HAD OUR GRASP ON THE MEANING OF LIFE shaken by staring into the space-

to let out some of the things I was too nervous to talk to anyone about. I’d much rather just have a freak-out onstage and be like, ‘Oh yeah, I was totally time continuum in an interdimensional conference room…well, damn it, just acting. That’s all that was.’” we’ve all felt that way.

Flash forward to New York, where his years of harnessing theater to As Chidi, the philosophy professor whose deep-seated apprehensions confront anxiety went on to include acting opposite Bryan Cranston in All literally define his soul on The Good Place, the Way on Broadway, and led to his 2018 William Jackson Harper has crafted a unique, debut as a playwright with the ’60s-era civil carefully observed comedic persona that rights drama Travisville. Harper describes serves as a deeply resonant (and relatable) being behind the words as “way more nervetotem of modern uneasiness. For Harper, it wracking. But it’s cool to be a generating didn’t take much imagination to manifest this artist as opposed to strictly interpretive. character; you might say he’s been preparing Being heard and understood...it was for it his whole life. exhilarating.”

“I was a nervous, nervous, kid,” Harper After successfully being sent to hell recalls. “Some of it was just personality, but and tackling new freak-outs onstage growing up religious, it was a lot of fire and and backstage, Harper is appearing in brimstone, and a lot of fear wrapped up in Midsommar, Ari Aster’s intense follow-up what I was supposed to do. For a lot of people, to one of last summer’s most hyped horror religion is something that brings you comfort, flicks, Hereditary. The character he plays and for me, it just freaked me out. Like, “is very interested in European midsommar ‘Anything I’m doing will send me to hell.’” (Or traditions, and is looking to do his thesis on The Bad Place, if you prefer.) it. I’m just obsessed with these ideas of death Harper credits his mother with pushing and rebirth and how that ties into a larger him to face his fears—or, at least, to act like context,” he reveals. it. “My mom’s responsible for making me Those who saw Toni Collette’s stunning do theater,” he laughs. “I was a wreck! This supernatural meltdown in Hereditary know nervous, shy kid who had trouble connecting Aster is just as interested in actors as he is BACKSTORY: From bashful youngster to Broadway actor, Harper finds the rewards of his creative risks always upstage with people. So my mom made me take in apparitions. “He’s very into pushing you his uncertainties theater classes in middle school. I didn’t want to go to uncomfortable places,” Harper says.

FROM: Born and raised in Texas; now tending to New York to, initially; but then I got involved in doing “It’s cool to know that you have someone with neuroses improv…it became, honestly, the only thing I good taste at the helm. If you swing too big, YOU MIGHT KNOW HIM FROM: NBC’s brilliant The Good Place, playing the equally brilliant Professor Chidi Anagonye, the was actually kind of good at.” he’ll definitely pull you back, but you can still Afterlife’s preferred punching bag As he grew into a man and an artist, the go to the place where you feel free and open NOW: Making his horror debut as yet another academic in tools Harper learned provided catharsis with up. He has such a good eye—you know he’s over his head in A24’s Midsommar this July the creative. “It’s a great way to hide in plain not gonna let you make a fool of yourself.” sight, y’know? For me, it’s a lot of fun to explore all these aspects of my One less thing to worry about, then, even for a lifelong worrier; and for personality that I don’t feel comfortable exposing in real life. I needed a way Harper, one of many more things to look forward to.

BY ERIC STOLZE

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1 M IL LI ON SP EC IE S FA CE EX TI NC TI ON M O R E PL AS TI C O CE A N TH A N FI S HIN TH E BY 20 50 EX CE ED W OR LD ON TR AC K TO TU RE RA 2° CE LS IU S TE M PE

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AT LE AS T 25 0, 00 0 A R E CA U S ED BY CLD EATH S A YE A R IM AT E CH A N G E

CO2 LEVELS ARE AT THE HIGHEST THEY HAVE BEEN IN 3 MILLION YEARS

❝ Though the challenges we face

may seem daunting, the key to any great social movement is young people making change.

To solve our global environmental problems, we need a transformative approach.

We must all invest in a new generation of changemakers. ❞ A U, SR .

C O U ST E P H IL IP P EU E S C O U ST E A U & JAC Q

−Philippe Cousteau, Jr. CO-FOUNDER & PRESIDENT, EARTHECHO INTERNATIONAL

14 YEARS. 2+ MILLION PEOPLE. 146 COUNTRIES.

WWW.EARTHECHO.ORG

EarthEcho International I S T H E leading environmental education organization engaging A N D empowering T H E new generation O F environmental leaders.

BREAKING

KARI FAUX THE ARKANSAS-BORN, LOS ANGELES–BASED RAPPER KARI FAUX WASN’T ENJOYING MAKING MUSIC. She felt her

terrible people,” she admits, lamenting the reality, but softening it with a slight chuckle. “I know that sounds crazy, but I just have an affinity for helping people output was empty, lacking soul.

I think need help or have this rough “I was making songs just to be edge about them. I can see the good making songs,” Faux says. “So I was in people, and I tend to overlook things like, ‘You know what? This year I’m and just be like, ‘Oh, they need a friend. not going to make music. I’m going If they had a good friend, they’d be to find something else that makes me a good person.’ And then that’s not happy.’ Then I started DJing.” the case.”

Faux soon landed DJ gigs at Faux’s eventual awakening in parties, concerts, and festivals. She these situations leads to spending also got back in the right frame of a lot of time by herself. On “Leave mind to make her own music. This Me Alone,” she details her desire for positive energy shines through on solitude. “I get a lot of peace when her recently released Cry 4 Help EP, I’m by myself,” Faux says. “I enjoy an efficient five-song collection myself. I make myself laugh. I’m so clocking in at seventeen minutes entertaining. I don’t need a bunch of and ending with the powerful people around me to make me feel “Latch Key.” There, she addresses anything. When you start adding all BACKSTORY: A versatile emcee whose raps range from party anthems to having a miscarriage and wishing that other energy of other people, it introspective confessions her childhood would have included can just get confusing and messy. I’m FROM: Little Rock, Arkansas; currently vibing in Los Angeles more quality time with her parents— like, ‘Okay, I’m going back to the crib, YOU MIGHT KNOW HER FROM: Her collaborations with Childish Gambino and who provided a home, but one that my little recluse hole.’ It makes more Pivot Gang, or her own music used heavily in Issa Rae’s HBO series Insecure was often empty while they were sense. When I’m alone, I know who NOW: Touring in support of her Cry 4 Help EP away working.

I am. I know what I like.”

Writing and rapping about her experiences proved beneficial. “At some As Kari Faux’s career continues climbing, she’s embracing work as point in your life you’re going to have to address the shit that’s traumatic, a model, in addition to being a musician with a healthy tour schedule and whether you like it or not,” Faux says matter-of-factly. “Some people do several songs—including “Top Down” and “No Small Talk”—featured on the whatever they have to do not to address that type of shit. But for me, I just hit HBO show Insecure. She’s also riding a welcome wave of personal and want to be a better human being. I know that to be a better human, I have to creative growth. address the shit that makes me uncomfortable. And I did.”

“Cry 4 Help has opened me up in a way where I’m like, ‘I have a lot more Elsewhere on Cry 4 Help, she acknowledges a personal shortcoming processing to do,’” she says of her EP. “I feel like I’m only going to get more with “Medicated”: she’s good at picking bad friends. “I’m just attracted to introspective as the music goes. It’s a really good starting point for me.”

BY SOREN BAKER 14

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PHOTO BY DANIEL CAVAZOS

BREAKING

CHARLY BLISS

BY LEAH MANDEL

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PHOTOS BY MICHAEL LAVINE

“IT’S LIKE YOU’RE ONE OF THOSE LITTLE FOAM DINOSAURS THAT YOU PUT IN WATER, AND THEY GET REALLY BIG,” says Eva Hendricks, the spark-plug lead singer and lyricist of burgeoning power-pop outfit Charly Bliss. It’s a sunny spring day and we’re with the rest of the band—her older brother Sam, the drummer, and their childhood friends, bassist Dan Shure and guitarist Spencer Fox—in a North Williamsburg café, chatting about their sophomore record.

It’s been just over two years since we last spoke, right before their cheeky debut Guppy came out in 2017, when the band were newly twentysomethings. A lot has changed since then. That’s why Eva, bright blonde and vivacious as ever, wearing her signature glitter eyeshadow, is describing herself as a Magic Grow capsule. “There’s this fact of being a certain age, from your teens to your early twenties, where you’re just like, ‘I did that a year ago? No way! I’m so different now!’ It’s like, expedited growth.”

Eva, now twenty-five, is talking specifically about the title track of the forthcoming Young Enough. Lyrically, she says, the track reflects on the anger she expressed on Guppy. “We’re young enough / to believe it should hurt this much,” she sings, her tireless voice mellower than usual; “I had to outgrow it to know or destroy you.” She calls this potent slow-burn the album’s centerpiece, because it’s about “what it means to come out the other end of a really terrible situation” as a softer person, about looking back at yourself with kindness and acceptance, about recognizing you’ve evolved. “You gotta go through it,” she says, addressing her younger self, “but it’s not who you are forever.”

The members of Charly Bliss have been close friends for about ten years, so they’ve witnessed the growing up Eva is discussing firsthand. As siblings, Sam and Eva have known each other since birth; Sam met Dan at summer camp when they were in grade school—they used to play covers of Green Day, Red Hot Chili Peppers, and Radiohead together—and Eva and Dan were sweethearts; then the three of them met Spencer, a fellow Connecticut kid, at a Tokyo Police Club gig in New York City as teens. Not long after, Eva’s high school musical theater–hewn vocal chops and brash lyrics merged with her brother’s sharp hooks, and the four of them began to forge their fiery, stadium-bound pop-punk sound.

MEMBERS: Eva and Sam Hendricks, Dan Shure, and Spencer Fox FOUNDED: 2012 FROM: Connecticut; now living in New York YOU MIGHT KNOW THEM FROM: Their explosive breakthrough debut full-length, Guppy NOW: Releasing a sophomore album, Young Enough, that proves they’re a true force to be reckoned with

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After eight years as a band, Charly Bliss’ unfuckwithable chemistry has only gotten stronger. “It just gets better,” says Sam, who’s lanky, earnest, and excitable, and has recently been sporting a platinum coif, when I ask them about their relationship. “Sometimes I’m nervous that we’re too insular. Someone from another band will come and talk to us and we’ll start speaking in this code that’s all inside jokes.” Spencer cuts in with his wry sense of humor: “This person thinks we are insane!”

This is an outwardly goofy, charming foursome, but it’s clear they take themselves seriously and work hard. While Guppy took years to complete—they recorded it twice, and some of those songs were almost five years old by the time they came out—Young Enough is the product of complete concentration. After Guppy, each member of the band quit their steady barista and bartender jobs in order to become completely engrossed in the songwriting process. They’re a little bit more broke now, but, “Because of that,” Eva explains, “we were able to figure out what would come if we pushed ourselves beyond our first instincts.”

Not always trusting their initial impulses is something the band can all agree on, as evidenced by the re-recording of Guppy, and their penchant for what they call the “Frankensong.” Guppy’s standout, the firecracker breakup track “Glitter,” was one of those; it went through rounds of editing and rearranging until all that remained of the demo was the pre-chorus. The VIPs this time are “Capacity” and “Chatroom,” also Frankensongs. “Capacity”—a sparkling, characteristically feisty, anthem-sized song whose tempo, Sam says, was designed specifically for strutting down the street—was tabled before the band “reopened the case” many months later, during pre-production with producer Joe Chiccarelli (The Shins, The White Stripes).

“I WAS TRYING TO BE COMPLETELY HONEST, AND NOT ALWAYS GO WITH MY FIRST INSTINCT, WHICH WOULD MAYBE BE TO BE SARCASTIC OR TO DEFLECT.” — EVA

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HENDRICKS

With “Chatroom,” a scrappy, gambolling track that’s so personal Eva says it kept her up nights before its release, almost the whole song struck her at once—except the chorus. The song sat for a long time, and then, out of nowhere, when Eva was watching Vanderpump Rules, that springy, “I’m not gonna take you home / I’m not gonna save you” finally came to her. “Really great ideas come when you’ve gone past the point of, ‘This is what I was struck with, I’m just gonna go with it!,’” she says.

Spencer adds: “We wanted the songs—before any layers of production or overdubs or anything—to be standalone products, and things we were proud of.”

On Guppy, Eva poked fun at herself lyrically, but on Young Enough she resists the urge to swerve sincerity. “I was trying to be completely honest, and not always go with my first instinct, which would maybe be to be sarcastic or to deflect,” she admits. Eva’s still singing about cute things like bathing suits and kissing boys, but now there’s more sex and nakedness (“I’m fucking joy and I hemorrhage light,” she belts on “Bleach”), more confessions of fear and pain.

Inspired in turn by Lorde’s Melodrama, Superorganism, and recent tours with Bleachers, Wolf Parade, and Death Cab For Cutie, the foursome is especially pleased with the way Young Enough sounds dynamic, forthright, and full of feeling. “It’s still explosive,” still has that frenetic Guppy spirit, Spencer notes, “but it’s more emotional.” They strove for diversity of sound, allowing the songs to have “more space,” to not always be “in-your-face” and “at 110 percent,” an approach that led to roomier, more languid tracks like “Young Enough” and “Hurt Me.” Part of that dynamism came, quite literally, from the iPad Eva’s mom got her as a birthday present. The synths you hear on Young Enough are still the samples and presets from when Eva was messing around with GarageBand. “There’s this charm to the Logic Pro stuff,” Sam enthuses, laughing. “Totally stock. Not manipulated. I think it’s cool that we preserved some of that original energy.”

“None of us are synth wizards yet,” Eva confesses. “But there’s something really wonderful about trying your hand at something you don’t know much about. You don’t know what’s cool and what’s not cool to do. Feeling total freedom of experimentation.” They’re a little jittery about figuring out how to play these songs live, but Eva was jittery before “Chatroom” dropped too, and that experience was ultimately cathartic.

“I’m always nervous,” Eva concludes. “But it feels good to have songs that are still changing every time you play them, because you’re reviewing what’s working and what’s not working. And to be really nervous—it feels really good.”

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She Keeps Bees’ Jessica Larrabee Sings for Trees 20

F LO O D

One half of the husband-and-wife folk-rock duo details the band’s new album, Kinship, and music’s role in the age of climate activism.

by Nick Fulton photos by Anna Groth-Shive

IF YOU WERE IN NEW YORK A DECADE AGO, you might have seen the folk-rock duo She Keeps Bees performing alongside Sharon Van Etten, Julianna Barwick, or Cat Martino in a venue like The Cake Shop or Glasslands Gallery. Both venues are now long gone, but She Keeps Bees have stuck around.

Andy LaPlant was working as a recording engineer when he met Jessica Larrabee, who was already writing and performing solo as She Keeps Bees, in 2005. Both had relocated from their respective homes in New Orleans and Philadelphia to become a part of Brooklyn’s thriving indie music ecosystem. “We became friends because I found out that he was an engineer,” remembers Larrabee. “We became fast friends and then we fell in love.”

The duo released their first album, Minisink Hotel, in 2006, and recorded three more, Nests, Dig On, and Eight Houses, before relocating upstate in 2015. They now live on sixteen acres of land near Poughkeepsie, bordering a section of New York’s Hudson Valley that has been labelled “The Camptons”—a portmanteau of “Catskills” and “Hamptons”—due to an influx of bougie New Yorkers buying property there.

It wasn’t cheaper property taxes that attracted LaPlant and Larrabee, but rather the luxury of being able to make noise without complaints from the neighbors. At the beginning of 2018, they took advantage of the situation and recorded their fifth album, Kinship, in a home studio they’d set up inside a former caretaker’s cottage. “The people who own the whole property only come up on the weekends, so we could be loud and not have to worry about annoying anybody,” says Larrabee. It also allowed them to take their time and let their instincts shape the work. “If something struck us late in the night, we could do it,” she adds.

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Larrabee was particularly interested in testing her mettle on the

To restore the balance, Larrabee turned to nature, gaining

piano—which, when juxtaposed with her rough-edged guitar playing,

inspiration from the late folk singer and water activist Katie Lee. Lee

added a special kind of duality to the framework of Kinship. They also

fought for years to prevent the damming of the Colorado River, and was

employed the skills of bassist Kevin Sullivan and multi-instrumentalist

active both on the ground and in her music, where she expressed her

Eric Maltz—who contributed strings and keys—to add different

love for the river and the canyons it ran through.

textures. “We were always this two-headed monster creating within

“Unfortunately, when I learned about her it was through her

ourselves,” Larrabee jokes of the band’s previous releases, in which they

obituary,” explains Larrabee. “But I wanted to learn more, so I watched

enlisted no outside help. “But it’s fun to collaborate.”

these mini-documentaries and read about her and I just fell in love with

The band has never been shy about raising their fists. In 2017, they

her energy. Then I noticed that we shared the same birthday. The more

released a two-song EP and donated all proceeds to Planned Parenthood

I heard about how passionate she was about rivers, and then seeing the

and Earthjustice. Both tracks are full of rage; Larrabee’s guitar and voice

old footage of them, I realized I felt the same way about trees. She sings

have seething tones that attach to the urgent matters she’s describing. “It’s

for rivers and I sing for trees.”

not a joke, he aims to knock us over,” she sings at the beginning of the

A course Larrabee took in astrology was also instrumental in

second track, “Head of Steak,” challenging Donald Trump’s decision to

shaping her understanding of the natural world. She says it was a

leave the Paris Agreement. “[You] poison our water for a fucking dollar,”

pragmatic course that used myths and legends to help discern what’s

she snarls later, before likening the president to an emperor with no

happening in the night sky. “It gave me a good foundation, because it’s

clothes on, walking bare-assed in a crown.

very creative in its optimism,” she says. Larrabee used this optimism to

“I was reacting to the new administration and I was aggressive, I

draw a line between nature, humanity, astrology, and music.

wanted to yell and scream and have distorted guitars,” Larrabee says of

“If we take our time to daydream with nature, maybe our answers

the EP. “This album was more of a response than a reaction. I wanted

will come if we allow them to,” she adds. “There were a couple books I

it to be as beautiful as possible because of all the toxic aggression,

was reading, one [The voice of the infinite in the small by Joanne Elizabeth

dominance, tyranny, and greed [that’s out there now].”

Lauck] where this biologist was saying we didn’t take over the world

There’s a line toward the end of the Kinship track “Dominance”

by combat, but by continual cooperation, strong interactions, and a

that also doubles as a mantra. After singing “dominance is a dead end,”

mutual dependence on each other. These economies, they work for

Larrabee repeats the line “restore the balance.” It’s a response to “seeing

everybody because it’s a symbiotic experience. I wanted it to come back

and feeling how things are out of whack,” she tells me.

to something that was communal.”

“It seems like tyranny is winning,” she continues. “The way that I

By connecting these themes and considering the weight they all

was trying to respond to this toxic masculinity was to use the natural

carry, Kinship is unusually optimistic. Larrabee says their objective was

world as a metaphor for changing the polarity. It’s not allowing any

“to dance and to bring beauty in a way that [helps us] come together.”

conversation, because it’s just aggression against aggression. We’re taking the humanity out of each other. I can see it in my own family

“Music has saved my life so many times,” she concludes. “If I could do that for anybody, then that’s all I could want from what I do.”

members. They’re like, ‘Whose side are you on?’”

F LO O D

23

Gary Clark Jr. The Texas guitar hero faces harsh realities about race in America on his new album.

BY SCOTT T. STERLING PHOTOS BY ERIK VOAKE

Home of the Brave F LO O D

25

26

F LO O D

ary Clark Jr. is very funny. It’s a strong facet of his personality that’s gone woefully underreported. Then again, timing is everything. I caught up with the Texas guitar legend a mere forty-eight hours after his electrifying debut as musical guest on Saturday Night Live.

Clark and his team are still buzzing from the afterglow of making such a tremendous impression on the public at large with performances of “Pearl Cadillac” and the title track off his latest album, This Land. In a season thick with rappers and chart-topping acts, Clark’s visceral and all-the-way-live act struck a chord with viewers, who seemed dazzled by his musical dexterity. The response on social media was overwhelmingly positive, many people encountering the veteran guitarist and his music for the first time.

Now, he’s in the Warner Bros. Records’ offices in Burbank, hammering out a day of press commitments before heading back out on the road. The artist’s spirits are high as he recounts the whirlwind week leading up to SNL, admitting to a highly unusual bout of nerves.

“I couldn’t eat. My stomach was all messed up,” he says. “I was just thinking about it too much. I was telling the guys, ‘We gotta rehearse.’ We don’t ever rehearse. But once we got up to the building, it was so cool. We did dress rehearsal, I was fine. Hanging out with Kenan [Thompson] and [guest host] Don Cheadle...it was all love.”

The lightness around Clark and his crew belies the stark realities that inspired This Land. A proud Texas native, Clark and his family purchased a sprawling fifty-acre ranch estate—complete with a fourteen-stall horse barn— outside of Austin in the bustling community of Kyle, Texas. A chance encounter with a neighbor was enough to remind the Grammy winner that all the success in the world still doesn’t begin to transcend race in America. When Clark approached the neighbor to let him know that his donkey had found its way onto Clark’s land, the neighbor’s response was less than cordial. According to Clark, the man was blatantly disrespectful—and in front of his children.

The gist of the neighbor’s rant was that he refused to accept that Clark was, indeed, the owner of the impressive property. “I don’t know what kind of day he was having, or what his situation is. But it was at the end of a long year and a long day, and I was just trying to check my damn mail,” Clark sighs. “Like, really, man? But I wish him all the best.”

F LO O D

27

In 2019, I’m just tired of it. I’ve been not saying anything. But how am I supposed to teach my kid to be strong and confident and somebody that’s worthy of anything if I don’t speak up?

That moment was the flashpoint inspiration for This Land’s title track and much of the rest of the record. Blurring the lines between genres, it’s easily the boldest album of his career. “Coming out with this record, at this time, while I’m considered a ‘blues musician,’ and to have the kind of support that I do means a lot,” he says. “You start to wonder if it’s getting through at all.”

For Clark, This Land is symbolic for countless Americans feeling increasingly disenfranchised in their own homes. “This guy I know hit me up with a long message saying how the song ‘This Land’ was disrespectful, and how I should lead with love, and that the song was filled with hate,” Clark says, shaking his head at the memory. “I started a dialogue with him, which was the whole point of the record. I told him I was frustrated with my people and other people who are made to feel like they are less than anybody else.

“In 2019, I’m just tired of it,” he continues. “I’ve been not saying anything.

But how am I supposed to teach my kid to be strong and confident and somebody that’s worthy of anything if I don’t speak up? This music is for them.

The whole point is to teach these young ones to get rid of the hate and teach ’em how to love. That’s all I’m trying to say.”

Still, life on the ranch has been a mostly positive experience. Despite any neighboring issues, it’s where Clark wants to be. “That’s the whole goal: to make the property self-sustainable, to be able to live off the land. I’m kind of a hippie, in a way. I’m in nature. If I’m gone for two weeks, I’m not lost,” he laughs. “We’re still working on the house, making it more efficient. I’m really trying to see if we can do something for the community. I’ve got plenty, more than I’ve ever asked for. So if I can do anything, I’m trying to give something back and do something for others. It just feels wrong not to. With all of the madness of being a musician, I like to skip to the human part.”

It’s a sustainability that goes beyond just recycling and lessening one’s carbon footprint. Clark and his family are looking for the same inner resolve Nina Simone yearned for when she sang Billy Taylor’s “I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to Be Free.” While we’re frantically fighting to save what’s left of the world around us, who’s going to sustain our souls?

28

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F LO O D

29

A Regeneration of the Soul:

Life on

the Farm

by Tess McGeer

photos by Erik Voake

IN THE NEW, BIG-HEARTED DOCUMENTARY THE BIGGEST LITTLE FARM, A MARRIED COUPLE LEAVE LOS ANGELES BEHIND TO CULTIVATE GREENER PASTURES. Though John and Molly Chester’s current

It’s not as if they’d never thought about farm

residence is just forty miles outside Los

life before the Todd of it all forced the issue.

Angeles, it is worlds away from the lives they

“We had definitely always talked about it, but

led as city dwellers. At first glance, their lifestyle

it felt like this scary, impossible leap to make,”

change—which is detailed thoughtfully in the

says John. “Our commitment to the dog gave

documentary The Biggest Little Farm, directed

us courage.”

by John—smacks of the type of feel-good video

Molly, a chef and culinary writer, had

clip that goes viral online, something pleasant

long fantasized about living on a farm where

and soothing which, by the time it arrives on

she could grow and raise every component

your screen, is detached from context and

of any recipe she tried. The thought was, “Of

merely delivers a kind of vicarious moral salve.

course, if we have a farm, we are gonna grow

Here is someone doing something nice; isn’t

everything,” she says. This dream, pre-Todd,

that almost like I have, in fact, done something

had only manifested so far as a small collection

nice myself?

of plants on their LA patio. Still, the general

Double pathos points if the story includes

shape of it, the desire to build a well-balanced,

a dog, which this one does—namely Todd, a

functional ecosystem of fruits, vegetables,

flat-coated retriever of some indeterminate

animals, and humans all growing together and

mix, with stunning blue eyes and a serious

sharing space, like a farm plucked from the

barking problem. The Chesters rescued Todd

pages of a children’s picture book, remained

from a hoarding situation and the loyalty his

the guiding philosophy as they endeavored to

new family felt for him was immense. When

give Green Acres–ing it a go.

faced with an eviction notice from their Santa

“We actually never use the word

Monica apartment due to Todd’s excessive

sustainable,” says John. Apricot Lane Farms runs

noise, the Chesters made a decision that would

on principles of regenerative farming. Having

unlock a new outlook on life, and a changed

never so much as kept a third grade tomato-

relationship with this earth where we live it.

plant-in-a-cup project alive long enough for it to

Here is where their tale departed from the

bear fruit, the distinction between sustainable

cutesy, feel-good realm, and the work began.

and regenerative farming at first seemed

The 130 acres of land in Moorpark,

opaque to me, but unpacking the practical and

California that the Chesters bought was

philosophical differences swiftly illuminated

deadened, dried up, and overworked. That they

the distinction. “Sustainable” is a buzzword

were able to revamp it into Apricot Lane Farms,

sometimes used liberally to virtue signal that

a functioning, profitable, biodiverse farm

a farm, or a company, or a giant monocrop

with—just for starters—an orchard of seventy-

farm company, has made some efforts, great

five different stone fruit varietals, seems a

or small, to proceed in a way that minimizes

stunning example of the power of human

environmental harm. Regenerative farming

imagination to make manifest the unlikely.

practices call for a far more engaged approach.

32

F LO O D

“We actually never use the word sustainable.

It’s environmentally proactive farming.”

—John Chester

“You have to fall in love with it. You have to be down with the problem-solving side of farming.”

—John Chester 34

F LO O D

Merely trying not to further wound the earth is insufficient—regenerative farming

compassion and affection animals they know will be killed for food.

means working the land in such a way that

“There’s this endless wheel that is

you are actively giving back to it. More to

continuing,” John tells me. “It’s not the circle

the point, says John, “It’s environmentally

of life—it’s really, truly, an 8 [or ∞]. There’s

proactive

of

the above ground, and the below ground.”

pursuits plainly noble and worthy, creating,

From life to death, from death back into the

protecting, and nurturing a complex network

environment, to the earth, the ecosystem, the

of interconnected living beings demands not

process of living and dying is communal and

just critical thinking and elbow grease, but an

constant. This is true even if the extent of your

ability to rebound from failures with your high

interaction with nature is opening canned food

hopes intact. Whenever the Chesters’ lovingly

for a house cat. This is true on the city bus. In a

constructed ecosystem fell out of whack—too

single tablespoon of soil, there are nine billion

much duck feces in the pond created a toxic

microorganisms built for the task of devouring

algae bloom that killed their catfish; birds

what is dead to create life. That applies even

wiped out the bulk of a year’s fruit yield; snails

if your soil is from Home Depot and used in a

lined the trunks of trees in numbers recalling

cracked plastic pot that holds anxious-looking

those of a biblical plague—they found creative

hydrangeas on the front porch.

farming.”

As

is

common

ways to adjust, rebuild. The grand experiment

Farm work brought death into the

Chesters,

Chesters’ lives, into their hands, in a tangible

something like a puzzle: a game through

manner that was first uncomfortable, then

which they’ve learned how to work with, not

instructive. Be it shooting a coyote menacing

against, their land to find solutions to whatever

their chicken coops or performing the chore

chaos may arise. “You have to fall in love with

of collecting those dozens of chicken corpses

it,” John explains. “You have to be down with

after a violent raid, to run a farm means to

the problem-solving side of farming. But the

confront death constantly. Science—and most

cool thing is that if you’re down with that, it’s

of the blood-soaked Western canon, really—

incredibly rewarding and inspiring.”

dictates there is no other way but through that

of

farming

became,

for

the

After several happy years on this farm

death to create so much life.

where he was free to run, play, and bark to his

“In the city, there’s a general buzz,” says

heart’s content, Todd—the dog who provided

Molly. “You’re aligned with a city’s energy when

the Chesters the initial impetus to toy with the

you live there.” Being beyond the reach of such

possibility of daring—passed on. During his

energies, and connected to those of nature, to

time with the family, during the birth of this

the birds, and the butterflies, and the labor to

farm, the Chesters’ relationship to death and

be done each day in their service, as a citizen

dying had evolved into something both simpler

of the earth, allowed her to meaningfully

and more intimate. Such is unavoidable when

recalibrate. “You experience yourself in a new

one has elected the task of raising up with

way,” she concludes.

F LO O D

35

JON

ROSE:

The former pro surfer talks Waves 4 Water, the humanitarian aid organization he founded after an interrupted surfing trip to Indonesia.

A DECADE AGO, JON ROSE WAS TRAVELING THE WORLD AS A PRO SURFER, SPONSORED BY COMPANIES

LIKE

QUIKSILVER

AND

HURLEY.

BUT THE HEDONISTIC HIGH LIFE HE ALWAYS THOUGHT HE WANTED WAS BEGINNING TO FEEL HOLLOW. SEARCHING FOR ANSWERS, HE JOINED A FRIEND ON WHAT HE THOUGHT WOULD BE A SURFING TRIP TO BALI, BRINGING TEN PORTABLE FILTERS TO HAND OUT TO A COMMUNITY IN NEED OF CLEAN DRINKING WATER. BUT ROSE NEVER MADE IT TO BALI.

GUERILLA

BY ADRIAN SPINELLI

ETHAN LOVELL, NICARAGUA

HUMANITARIAN F LO O D 37

While on a boat off the coast of Sumatra, a 7.6 earthquake rattled the coast of Indonesia’s largest island, and Rose soon found himself on the Sumatran shore. He ended up using those water filters to help devastated Sumatran communities access clean water, and something awakened inside him. The son of a humanitarian who had often visited Africa to teach communities to harvest rainwater had finally found his own calling, and Waves for Water (W4W), an organization that has since then provided access to clean water to over three and a half million people worldwide, was born.

“Do what you love and help along the way,” Rose says, repeating what’s become W4W’s guiding mantra. “The reason I chose water is because my dad put it on my radar. But he didn’t want to run an organization.” That day in Sumatra, the former pro surfer decided he did.

Now, Rose leads W4W programs around the world, travelling over three hundred thousand miles a year, often dealing with people and communities when they’re at their worst: following a disaster.

In 2017, Rose was leading disaster relief efforts with W4W in Puerto Rico following Hurricane Irma. While stationed in the area, Hurricane Maria formed and further devastated the islands, and Rose and his colleagues found themselves

JACK ROSE, PHILIPPINES

acting as first responders in the aftermath. “Everything was wiped out,” Rose recalls with a deep exhale.

38

F LO O D

ETHAN LOVELL, ECUADOR

It takes an admirable disposition to continue seeking solutions for people in dire circumstances around the world, and Rose, who now lives in Northern California, is as steady a force as the waves he once rode professionally. From Puerto Rico and Southeast Asia to South America, Africa, and beyond, W4W has active programs in twenty countries with another twenty-three in stasis. Rose oversees efforts like harvesting rainwater, digging wells, repairing dead wells, and, most importantly, teaching communities how to operate these systems themselves. Identifying community leaders in the villages W4W helps is a key to their ability to provide long-term access to water, both for household systems and community-sized tanks. So a thorough assessment and training of those leaders is an essential part of the process.

ARTU NEPOMUCENO, INDIA

“One time in Afghanistan, I was at a school teaching the teachers how to use everything and I asked where the water source was,” Rose shares. “Outside of the walls of the school, there was this ravine. While it was rather urbanized, they got their water from this creek runoff, like a gully in between the streets. But animals were visibly pooping in the water—and even though they were boiling it, it was still wastewater.”

Some of the simplest tools W4W deploys are small filters, each with the ability to provide clean water for one hundred people per day for five years. The filters contain thousands of microfibers that strain out bio-pollutants like cholera, E. coli, salmonella, giardia, and typhoid. W4W calls it the “MVP filter” and it comes in a thirty-five dollar kit that can be attached to a bucket and used anywhere. Dirty water goes into the bucket and comes out of the filtration system clear and drinkable without the use of any machinery—just gravity.

F LO O D

39

“I’LL DO MY BEST TO GO IN THE SHADOWS AND GET THE JOB DONE, SO WHEN SOMEONE SAYS I CAN’T DO SOMETHING,

I

TURN

AND 40

F LO O D

AROUND

IT’S

AND

THRIVING.

SAY, ‘HEY, IT’S IT’S

ACTIONABLE,

ALREADY DONE. SUSTAINABLE.’”

The small filters have addressed big catastrophes. In 2015, a tailings dam failed along a Brazilian mining site and spilled chemical pollutants into the Doce River, where many communities got their water supply, creating one of the worst environmental disasters in the country’s history. With the river supply contaminated, the government paid for water trucks to come in from outside communities—but in an often poorly regulated Brazil, that water wasn’t exactly clean. Fortunately, W4W and Jon were on site to help.

“It’s full survival mode at that point, so the water being trucked to them as ‘safe water’ in the catastrophe time isn’t safe either,” Rose says. “We were able to set up these big community tanks for each neighborhood and make an agreement with the water trucks, so they just filled those up. It became central and micro-regulated, so to speak, and everyone could come and know that it was good water out of those filters.”

Extrapolating the filter solution is at the crux of what has allowed W4W to be successful—and you can’t bring clean water to 3.5 million people without grassroots support and, ultimately, funding. W4W has been subcontracted by the UN, UNICEF, and Save the Children for some efforts, while also partnering with corporations like Nike, BMW, and PayPal on others. “The only way we can operate is if there’s funding,” Rose says. “We’re the implementers and someone steps up to fund it.”

W4W gets creative to fund their implementations, too. The W4W Courier Program is one of the ways people can get involved with the organization: You sign up on the W4W website, set a goal for the number of filters you want to bring along

TOM AIELLO, PERU

MARK CHOINIERE, INDONESIA

on a trip, and W4W will train you to deploy clean water systems anywhere.

F LO O D

41

ARTU NEPOMUCENO, MONGOLIA

“Whether you’re doing five filters for a half-day on your honeymoon, or you’re BMW doing this massive corporate social responsibility campaign, or the U.S. military or a doctor doing disease prevention to work on Ebola,” Rose says, “all of those are examples of people doing what they love and helping along the way.”

Bureaucratic red tape has stood in the way of many organizations attempting to accomplish what Jon Rose has, but he says that an on-the-ground, almost “guerrilla humanitarian” mentality is what’s driven him from the start. “I’ll do my best to go in the shadows and get the job done, so when someone says I can’t do something, I turn around and say, ‘Hey, it’s already done. And it’s thriving. It’s actionable, sustainable.’”

Rose admits that sometimes he feels the weight on his shoulders from the gravity of what he’s worked on, as W4W approach their tenth anniversary in October. But he credits the times he can still get in the water, snowboard, rock climb, or ride his motorcycle for not letting the magnitude of what his organization continues to accomplish overwhelm him.

Interestingly, all of those recreational activities can be enjoyed individually—surprising for a person who leads forty-five employees and countless communities in what could be described as nothing short of a team effort.

“The biggest thing to me is knowing that I can do no wrong with this. But I can do varying degrees of right,” he concludes. “And the water crisis itself? It’s totally solvable. 100 percent. In our lifetime.”

42

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F LO O D 43

AARON FLUNN, BOSNIA

ETHAN LOVELL, NICARAGUA

ATIBA JEFFERSON

Animal Collective’s Aural Morphology

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Charting the Baltimore group’s long, strange journey from psych-folk home recordings to a collaborative audiovisual experiment with avant-garde art-science videographers Coral Morphologic.

BY LARRY FITZMAURICE TANGERINE REEF STILLS COURTESY OF CORAL MORPHOLOGIC

F LO O D

45

46 F LO O D

ATIBA JEFFERSON

“What is this?” That was the exact sensation I had during Animal Collective’s performance last year at the David Lynch–organized Festival of Disruption at New York City’s Brooklyn Steel venue. The experimental pop group have built a two-decade career out of subverting expectations by way of simply following their creative arrow, whether or not their audience is prepared for it; during much of the 2000s, they’d tour behind a recently released record with a set largely comprised of unreleased material—often earmarked for their next album—in unstructured, embryonic form.

F LO O D

47

In the years following the release of 2009’s mega-

Even at their most accessible, Animal Collective have

hyped landmark Merriweather Post Pavilion, AnCo adopted a

long been known as a challenging band, leavening bursts

more traditional live approach of stocking their setlists with

of puckered melody with massive washes of noise, and

material from their most recent release, along with slightly

crashing through choruses with aural dissonance and vocal

reworked catalog cuts depending on their gear setup. It was

freak-outs. But even by those standards, Tangerine Reef still

a bit of a surprise, then, that the Festival of Disruption set

stands as a particularly difficult record in their catalog, with

was comprised almost entirely of unreleased material, with

little in the way of conventional song structure beyond

lovely and murky underwater footage projected behind the

Portner’s uneasy vocals floating in the reflective sonic ether.

band on a giant screen.

Similar to The Flaming Lips’ notorious 1997 quadruple-

Even more surprising was the group’s lineup: every

CD album Zaireeka—which can only be heard properly

member accounted for except Panda Bear (Noah Lennox),

through four stereos playing all four discs simultaneously—

apparently sitting out a major AnCo performance for the

consuming Tangerine Reef the way its creators intended

first time in years. As Avey Tare (Dave Portner), Geologist

presents its own difficulties. Portner states that the album’s

(Brian Weitz), and Deakin (Josh Dibb) crafted amorphous,

impact is most greatly felt as a true audiovisual experience,

watery-sounding tones and drones onstage, the audience

accompanied by the film that Coral Morphologic’s Colin

seemed to exist in between states of confoundedness and

Foord and J.D. McKay put together to match its aqueous

disinterest, chattering loudly to the point where the crowd

vibes. “Musically, it’s some of the most obscure stuff we’ve

noise almost matched the decibel level of what was taking

done in a while,” Portner explains, adding that his lyrics

place onstage. Whether you were a longtime fan or a casual

penned for the record were purely improvisational. “It’s

observer, the whole scene undoubtedly caused you to ask:

a record about the environment, and the visuals lend

What are these guys up to?

themselves to that.”

The answer would come several months later in

Beyond its high-concept construction, Tangerine Reef

the form of Tangerine Reef, an audiovisual collaboration

is also borne out of the band’s personal history, despite

with Miami-based art-science duo Coral Morphologic

representing their latest left-turn in a career explicitly charted

that also counted as Animal Collective’s eleventh studio

with no straight-line traversals in mind. Their passions—

album. The first full-length in the geographically scattered

both in terms of creatively embracing the spontaneous and

group’s existence not to feature Lennox, released just two

exuding a thoughtfulness about the future of our planet—are

years after the earthy proto-punk of 2016’s Painting With,

reflected through the album more than on any other AnCo

the record came as a surprise to fans—who had come to

release from this decade; Tangerine Reef also represents the

expect a lengthy period of time between AnCo albums in

full realization of a group dynamic the quartet have steadily

the 2010s—as well as the band’s label, Domino. “It caught

cultivated since childhood. “The past two and a half years

them off guard,” Dibb recalls. “They didn’t know we were

have been more of a realization of what we set out to do than

in the studio. We were like, ‘We just made this. We’re pretty

anything previous,” Lennox exclaims. “It’s what we wanted to

psyched on it—would you be into putting it out?’”

do when we were a lot younger.”

48

F LO O D

ATIBA JEFFERSON

The four members of Animal Collective aren’t necessarily

The pairs of friends first coalesced midway through

unusual, but their personalities are unusually attuned to

high school while dabbling in music via the joys of home

creating the kind of energy balance required to sustain a

recording, as well as by forming the pre-AnCo outfit

creative partnership. While Dibb and Weitz are moderately

Automine, featuring all the members sans Lennox. They put

gregarious and forthcoming in conversation, the other two

out one release—the Paddington Band 7” in 1995—before

members are what Lennox affectionately terms “shy guys”—

disbanding. College found the quartet splintering off again,

warm personalities essentially cocooned in a way that takes

with Lennox and Dibb attending schools in Boston and the

some shared familiarity to help them open up to new

other two turning to New York City for higher education;

people. “Brian and Josh are always the friends that Noah

around this time, their separate experiments with home

and I look to to handle certain situations and communicate

recording started bearing fruit in the form of Lennox’s 1999

with people,” Portner explains. “I’ve worked very hard to

self-titled debut as Panda Bear and the recording of Spirit

become more outward, and Noah has changed a ton, but

They’ve Gone, Spirit They’ve Vanished, the 2000 LP widely

we’re just people who are quiet.”

considered AnCo’s debut despite its roots as a solo effort

Given such an even personality split, it’s surprising—

from Portner.

but, considering AnCo’s predilection for pairing off in

After the Boston boys and Portner decided to drop out

various permutations throughout their career, oddly

of school, all four came together under the same roof with

fitting—that the way the quartet initially came together

the purpose of focusing on music more than ever before. If

betrayed these direct pairings. Lennox and Dibb became

you’ve paid attention to indie on any level during the last

friends while attending grade school in Baltimore, bonding

twenty years, you’re well aware of what happened next:

over video games and an early interest in music. “Noah’s

Throughout the 2000s, AnCo amassed a growing critical

just somebody who I gravitated toward—he had a certain

and cult fanbase with every release, starting with the psych-

vibe that made sense to me,” Dibb recalls while mentioning

folk bonhomie of 2004’s Sung Tongs and leading up to the

that both providentially played cello in school. “Music was

big, bassy, galactic dance music of Merriweather.

another way that we connected.”

AnCo’s rise within indie’s amorphous confines—a

After Weitz moved from Philadelphia to Baltimore,

steady increase in popularity which extended far beyond

he befriended Portner in high school over a shared affinity

the avant circles of outré-NYC peers like Black Dice and

for the Grateful Dead, Pavement, and mind-expanding

Excepter—to this day remains unmatched in this century

substances like mushrooms and LSD. “At that age, having

of popular music. The idea of a band as weird-sounding

similar interests in music and drugs is really important,”

as them reaching such a level of success feels unreplicable

Weitz says while recalling their points of connection. “If

in today’s musical climate, a singular sensation that

you’re going through your formative years with a like-

Dibb credits to AnCo’s rise in a pre-streaming era where

minded person, it can reflect more basic personality traits.”

physical media still reigned supreme: “We definitely

The friendship came at a crucial time for Portner, who was

caught the tail end of the not-digital age, which isn’t

considering a school transfer after struggling with the social

really the way things work anymore,” he explains. “The

aspect of education: “I felt like I wasn’t fitting in,” he notes. “I

importance of owning a physical copy of something

remember calling up Brian for the first time and asking him

that would change my life...it’s really hard to have that

to go to the mall with me. It took a lot of courage, because I

experience with music anymore.”

wasn’t a very social person.”

50

F LO O D

BRIAN WEITZ DREW WEINER

DEAKIN (JOSH DIBB) IN TURKS AND CAICOS

GEOLOGIST (BRIAN WEITZ) IN ROCA PARTIDA

52

F LO O D

JACOB BOLL, COURTESY OF FESTIVAL OF DISRUPTION

STANDING: AVEY TARE (DAVE PORTNER), JON MCSWAIN (TANGERINE REEF EDITOR), J.D. MCKAY (CORAL MORPHOLOGIC), COLIN FOORD (CORAL MORPHOLOGIC). SEATED: DEAKIN (JOSH DIBB), GEOLOGIST (BRIAN WEITZ)

“We definitely caught the tail end of the not-digital age, which isn’t really the way things work anymore. The importance of owning a physical copy of something that would change my life...it’s really hard to have that experience with music anymore.”

—Deakin (Josh Dibb)

For a group of guys with experimental-leaning tastes

their early-2000s cohabitational days. “There was a certain

whose idea of “making it” was having their music featured

amount of grating on each other’s personal space, and

on the shelves of since-shuttered Manhattan music mecca

everybody has their own ways that they feel comfortable in

Other Music, the critical and commercial interest in AnCo’s

their home life.”

sound (Sung Tongs’ jaunty “Sweet Road” was featured in

“If people aren’t given the room they need, it doesn’t

a Crayola commercial) was a relative shock tempered by

result in anything good,” Weitz continues, while discussing

uncertainties about the future taking place behind the

the staggered informal schedule—AnCo albums and tours

scenes. Lennox himself admits that, from the years 2002 to

are spaced out by years of downtime for the quartet to

2009—a time period that practically encompasses the band’s

pursue solo projects and other personal passions—that the

initial rise—he was unsure of AnCo’s longevity. “The band

band’s adopted over the last decade. “It helped us navigate

kind of fell apart a number of times,” Portner states, recalling

solo careers in a healthy way.”

an emotionally charged letter Lennox wrote to him at “a crucial point in our friendship. I remember a big falling-out in our practice space with Noah throwing drumsticks—that was a point where I was like, ‘Oh, it’s over.’”

Lennox describes AnCo’s current platonic ideal of creation

Further complicating matters, Lennox decided to

as “a lot of projects and various groupings of us doing

move to his current home base in Lisbon in 2004 to be

things,” which is precisely how Tangerine Reef came about.

with his now-wife and mother of his two children, fashion

The project carried deep roots in the band’s history, dating

designer Fernanda Pereira. “I felt a lot of anxiety about

back to Weitz’s studying environmental science and policy

him coming back to make Feels, because he just left and we

at Columbia University, as well as his work at the Biosphere

didn’t speak a lot about what the future of the band would

2 research facility in Arizona. “I got scuba certified the first

be,” Portner admits. But the first step in what would result

chance I could,” he enthuses, and the deep-diving bug bit

in AnCo’s overall geographical scattering—Dibb still lives

Dibb later in his teens. The two have continued to strike

in their native Baltimore and Weitz in nearby Washington,

out on far-flung scuba-diving trips throughout adulthood.

D.C., with Portner decamping to North Carolina after an

While Dibb and Weitz were discovering what

LA stint—had the opposite effect, strengthening the band’s

lies beneath the ocean’s shimmering surface, Coral

collective bond through the necessity of personal space.

Morphologic’s Colin Foord—who had fallen in with “art and

“Because we were so open to just doing whatever, it was

music kids” while studying marine biology at the University

crucial to be like, ‘It’s okay for Noah to go away, because it’s

of Miami—was discovering Animal Collective’s music,

actually better for us all,’” Portner explains. Beyond distance

citing a 2006 drive from Miami to one of their concerts in

making the collaborative heart grow fonder, spreading

Asheville (“The longest drive I’ve ever done to see a band”)

out also meant slowing down—a necessity following the

as a flashpoint for his interest in their work. “I started out

always-be-touring schedule AnCo found themselves in at

as a fan,” Foord recalls, and after a screening of AnCo’s 2010

the height of Merriweather’s promo cycle. “The fact that we

experimental film ODDSAC in Miami, he and J.D. McKay

all live in different places is a benefit,” Dibb explains while

approached Dibb and Weitz with a DVD of their visually

reflecting on the personal growth the band’s achieved since

tactile, reef-exploring work.

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“It’s weird to imagine murky, dead water that you can’t see the reflection of the sky in anymore—to imagine a generation of kids who don’t get to enjoy the ocean.”

GEOLOGIST (BRIAN WEITZ) AND DEAKIN (JOSH DIBB)

DREW WEINER

—Avey Tare (Dave Portner)

A quick friendship was struck between the two

“I’m a very watery person, and reflections are a big

artistic pairs, and soon Weitz and Dibb were heading out

thing for me,” he ruminates while contemplating the future

on dives with Foord and staying with the pair when passing

of our oceans. “It’s weird to imagine murky, dead water

through Miami. In the summer of 2011, they invited Foord

that you can’t see the reflection of the sky in anymore—to

out on a planned excursion at the coral islands Turks and

imagine a generation of kids who don’t get to enjoy the

Caicos, but the trip was quickly dashed by the arrival of

ocean.” Although Lennox sat out Tangerine Reef’s gestation,

the destructive Hurricane Irene, resulting in the would-be

his concern for our dying planet’s ecological future is no

divers holing up in a hotel room with a bottle of rum and

different—but it’s tempered with hope, too. “I’m not just

nowhere to go. Out of this temporary isolation and the

battening down the hatches and thinking everything’s

locale they were stranded in, a creative partnership was

going to end, you know?” he asks into the cosmic void. “I

born: “We didn’t have to have a long conversation about

try to stay optimistic with my kids, but it’s tough. It seems

what the environmental message was,” Weitz explained

like they’re getting screwed by previous generations. But

on the discussion of artistic common ground that led

without hope, what’s the point?”

to Tangerine Reef. “Somebody who doesn’t scuba dive or know anything about these creatures could watch it and have their minds blown.”

Work on Tangerine Reef wouldn’t begin until nearly

If the distant global future seems uncertain, AnCo’s flurry of

six years later, when Coral Morphologic was awarded

current and future activity is full of possibilities. Earlier this

a grant for a large-scale project by the Miami-hosted

year, two solo albums arrived from the camp: Panda Bear’s

Borscht Film Festival in 2017. “They pitched a live video-

spacey, elemental Buoys and the iridescent pop of Avey

music collaboration with us,” Dibb remembers. “They’d

Tare’s Cows on Hourglass Pond. And there’s plenty more

put together footage in their lab, and we’d come down and

to look forward to: along with a U.S. tour in the fall that

write some music.” Portner joined in the writing process,

includes a headlining slot at the far-out Desert Daze festival

while Lennox sat out due to scheduling concerns stemming

in Joshua Tree, AnCo are starting to get into the headspace

from his Lisbon residency; the intention was to record the

of following up Tangerine Reef—slowly, but surely. “It’s

Borscht performance for future release à la AnCo’s 2012 EP

underway,” Lennox claims tentatively, qualifying that he’s

Transverse Temporal Gyrus, effectively a live recording of a

“gotten in trouble” in the past for suggesting that the band

2010 art installation the band erected at NYC’s Guggenheim

was farther along in the studio than publicly perceived. “I’ve

Museum—a plan that was scrapped after crowd noise

probably written more songs in the second half of last year

overpowered the music itself on the final recording.

than I’ve written in my life. I’m hoping we’ll get together

After decamping to a Baltimore studio to record the

this summer, but we’ll see.”

material for posterity over the course of a few days, AnCo

If it sounds like there’s no real rush to get to work,

decided to release Tangerine Reef properly via the album and

that’s because working at their own pace has become crucial

audiovisual formats that it currently exists in. “We initially

to AnCo’s present-day stability, as well as to ensuring their

recorded it just for the memory—to give Colin and J.D. a

future as friends and bandmates. “The more we’ve evolved,

screener version,” Dibb explains. “We didn’t know it was

the more we’ve gotten to have our own space and be our

something we even wanted to release until we were done.”

own people,” Dibb enthuses. “We’re very different in many

Beyond the environmental implications of the release itself,

ways. It’s important to have that separation so that when

Tangerine Reef carries a personal connection for Portner, the

we do come together, we’re just really psyched to see

only non-diver of the group’s iteration that participated in

each other. Going in the studio or on tour is like a…” He

the recording.

pauses, and laughs. “Damn, I don’t want to use this word— brocation. Shit. But that’s what it is.”

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Jeff Bridges

Rediscovering Fire with The Dude

In their thoughtful climate change documentary, Jeff Bridges and director Susan Kucera ask a question that concerns us all: If our evolutionary traits are killing us, how do we change?

by Dean Kuipers images by Susan Kucera

In the opening scene of Living in the Future’s Past, Jeff Bridges stands on a grassy California ridgetop.

As the ocean breeze blows his big mane of salt-and-pepper hair, he seems to be contemplating the best of the natural world—but then he asks, “Have we reached the limits of our human nature?

Is this the end of the line for us?”

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He is right to wonder. His home in the coastal town of Montecito sits somewhere below that same ridge, a beautiful house in a beautiful place—but climate change is coming for everyone. It’s not in the documentary, but just a few weeks after this footage was shot, the Thomas Fire burned over that spot in what was then the largest wildfire in California history. And when the rains came shortly thereafter in January of 2018, Bridges and his wife Susan Geston were in their home when mudflows swept boulders the size of refrigerators right through the house. In a desperate rescue, they had to be plucked from the front yard by ropes suspended from a helicopter. The house was destroyed.

All over the world, climate disasters are forcing us to talk about sustainability. But this movie proposes a more essential question: What, exactly, are we trying to sustain? Is there something in our evolutionary selves that needs to change?

We’re all a little bit like The Dude, Bridges’ iconic character from the Coen brothers’ 1998 film The Big Lebowski: we abide. As a strategy for living, we accept the rapid pace of change because we recognize we can’t affect it much.

When the bad guy is putting The Dude’s head in the toilet and screaming “Where’s the money?!,” Bridges’ character gasps, “It’s down there somewhere, let me take another look.” The Dude is radicalized by this basically Buddhist approach to living; his sense of

slobby stasis is a heroic pose. He’s resilient. He thinks of himself in the gallant third person: “The Dude abides.”

So when we imagine a “sustainable” future, in our Dudeness, it’s likely that even the activists among us are dooming the world to staying mostly like it is right now. And that makes perfect sense: faced with climate catastrophe that promises extreme heat, sea rise, farm-killing drought, vicious storms, species loss, and mass migrations of hundreds of millions of people and the wars and reactionary policies that mess could inspire, today looks like paradise. But you only have to glance at today’s news to know that right now, we are already in crisis.

The reason that Bridges and director Susan Kucera made Living in the Future’s Past is that today is already broken, and we’re not looking at the real reasons why. Their movie argues that climate change is happening not just because some of us live wrongly, or because of greedy oil companies, but because of who we are as Homo sapiens: hungry, technological, energy-devouring, and largely indistinguishable from one another in our needs. Changing that means changing the entire species. We’re all getting roughed up while we try not to spill our White Russians, protesting, “Careful, man, there’s a beverage here!” We want to keep our lives pretty much the same. I don’t think the human species has really dealt with climate adaptation at all.

The first person I’ve ever FaceTimed in my life is Jeff Bridges. He finds that amusing, and gives me a tip to tilt my glasses down so he can see my eyes.

He laughs easily and is as affable as you’d imagine.

“You ever see 2001: A Space Odyssey?” Bridges says about FaceTime. “It reminds me of when he’s talking to his daughter from outer space, except the resolution is better.”

Future’s Past is not another well-meaning film telling us we’re screwed. We know that already.

Powerful documentaries from An Inconvenient Truth to Gasland to Chasing Ice have been telling us for decades that global warming is real and that humans are accelerating it enormously, and some of these films have suggested fixes: stop burning fossil fuels, eat vegetarian, plant trees. But this film doesn’t do that. Instead, it has a more ambitious intention: it’s looking for an answer inside of our DNA. “I didn’t want to make another film pointing fingers at the bad guys and scaring people with the dire straits—I thought there was enough of that out there already,” says Bridges. “I got together with Susan, and both of us asked: Why are we behaving this way? When all of our scientists and all the experts are telling us certain information and we’re ignoring them, why are we doing that?

We wanted to kind of pop open the hood and look in there and see what makes us tick, what our subconscious motivations are.

“Then we ask the question: What kind of future do you want to see, and what are you willing to do to bring that about?” he adds.

The idea of “popping open the hood” was strategic. Right now, Americans cannot have a public dialogue about climate change because one side says it’s science, and the other has decided science is merely a series of opinions.

But if everyone’s behavior actually comes from a common motivation, then we’re all pretty much the same—and equally to blame. By talking about the “anthropogenic” part of climate change, the film hopes to break down tribal divisions so we can get on with solving the problem.

Instead of talking about Big Oil or farting cows or whether or not you bring a reusable bag to carry groceries, the antagonist and the protagonist of Future’s Past is an entity called the superorganism, which is comprised of all of humanity. Borrowing a concept attributed in the credits to British journalist Gaia Vince and her BBC piece “Homni: The New Superorganism Taking Over Earth,” the film dissolves our tribal identities by making an argument that we are all acting like one gargantuan global organism. Like an ant colony. And whether we like it or not, there’s no life anymore without the colony, no matter how you vote, or what your heritage, or how much you think you’re different or off the grid. If you own one single piece of technology—for instance, a phone or a bicycle—it probably required hundreds of thousands of people to source, design, build, market, and ship. You are inexorably connected to everyone else. Which means that whatever happens is 100 percent your responsibility.

“We didn’t want to do any finger pointing, because we also didn’t think that was very helpful,” says Susan Kucera on the phone from Washington state. “It’s just a rallying cry for certain groups of people. We’re all very tribal in the way our brains work.” Instead, she wanted to make “the kind of film that you can really share with people who might not be thinking quite along the same lines as you.” The film doesn’t suggest that the government has to do something. Instead, it suggests that you have to do something. There’s a big difference.

It has been embraced by schools, in particular, because the movie is full of incredibly engaging folks like the late scientist Dr. Piers Sellers, developmental psychologist Bruce Hood, Onondaga tribal leader Oren Lyons, and evangelical former congressman Bob Inglis. Even retired general Wesley Clark urges us to shuck our battle-hardened identities and recognize that evolution has shaped us all to have pretty much the same desires.

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“I didn’t want to make another film pointing fingers at the bad guys and scaring people

with the dire straits —I thought there was enough of that out there already.”

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“From my point of view, I’m sure Neanderthals would have totally loved Coca-Cola Zero,” says philosopher Timothy Morton in the film. “If it’s true that Neanderthals would have become totally addicted to Angry Birds, then contemporary society is saying something true about ancient people.”

We didn’t just recently learn to crave sugar and fat, or to be fascinated by bright, shiny distractions. Those impulses were what caused us to survive and reproduce.

We all chase comfort. We all want status so we can breed.

The surplus food and energy produced by chemical agriculture and the modern petrochemical industry is allowing the superorganism to create experiences that are sweeter, shinier, even more distracting. Even if it eventually kills us by creating an unlivable climate and habitat, culture is only doing what we tell it to.

In order to change the trajectory of the superorganism, we need to consciously change what we want, as a species. “The head of sustainability for all the Costco stores said it was the first film where you really felt this interconnectedness,” says Kucera. “I don’t mean like in a woo-woo way; the idea of the superorganism works regardless of political party, regardless of country.”

I’ll admit that this construction set off warning bells for me. I thought it was a conservative argument to do nothing. When I first watched the film, I was yelling at the screen, “But what do you want us to do?!” As an example, the film focuses a lot on the idea that we are all dependent on energy flows from the sun (Dr. Ugo Bardi, an Italian professor of physical chemistry, calls fossil fuels “fossil sunlight”); the film presents a case that, instead of dividing ourselves into two warring camps— one wanting to leave all the fossil fuels in the ground and one wanting to burn them up—we should use them wisely to power a transition to a new energy source that we can actually use to survive. I heard myself arguing that we have to leave it in the ground or this transition will never happen. Those old tribal divisions are hard to shake off.

But Kucera and Bridges are adamant that “doing” is the point of the movie. If everyone bobs along like The Dude and simply waits it out, we will all be victims of the “emergent behavior”—or culture—that is produced by

the superorganism. That culture is emergent because no one can predict what it will be, nor can they steer it. One invention, like a wheel or a religion or an Endangered Species Act, changes the entire course of planetary history. Kucera and Bridges aren’t telling people their actions are futile; rather, they are saying that our individual actions are essential. Individual actions are what steer the superorganism.

“Are you familiar with Bucky Fuller?” Bridges asks me. “Buckminster Fuller made an observation about ocean-going tankers and the large rudder that was needed to turn these big ships. Turning the rudder took too much energy, so the engineers came up with a brilliant idea of putting a little tiny rudder on the big rudder.” That’s called a trim tab.

“So, the little rudder turns the big rudder and the big rudder turns the ship, and Bucky said that’s a wonderful metaphor for how the individual is connected with society and culture. We are all trim tabs, we all matter and we make a difference. The only thing on Bucky’s gravestone is ‘Call me trim tab.’ So that’s how I like to think of myself, as a trim tab. We can all work in different ways. I’m in the movies, I have a certain amount of celebrity, so I do things like I’m doing with you right now.”

Environmental action is in Jeff Bridges’ blood. In the late 1950s, he and his brother Beau both appeared on the TV show Sea Hunt, which starred their father, the late Lloyd Bridges. Lloyd had served in the Coast Guard and was a scuba diver who did his own stunts on the show, and he and his wife campaigned to bring awareness to the problem of marine pollution worldwide, even lobbying for a world government that could better mandate a clean-up. Lloyd was later involved with Heal the Bay and Ted Danson’s American Oceans Campaign.

Jeff and Beau followed in his footsteps by serving in the Coast Guard and Coast Guard Reserve, and continuing on with the family campaign for ocean health. “I often think of myself as an extension of my folks, just carrying on their work,” Jeff Bridges tells me.

“Personally, being Buddhistly bent, I don’t know about sustainability.

I mean, everything changes, man. I don’t think you can really sustain any one thing.”

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Bridges is a longtime student of Buddhism—which explains a few things about The Dude—and says that this practice informed the making of Living in the Future’s Past. All of the voices in the film are not meant to inflame one tribe against another, but rather to lead us to collective action. He trusts that this action will be the right one because he has a deep faith in the basic goodness of humanity.

“One of my dear friends and teachers recently passed away, a fellow by the name of Bernie Glassman, who was the head of an organization called Zen Peacemakers,” Bridges says. Glassman would take students on Bearing Witness Retreats, where they would live homeless on the streets, or visit Auschwitz, or go to South Dakota to be with Native Americans protesting oil pipelines. Glassman’s Zen practice had three tenets: “The first one is: Not Knowing,” says Bridges.

“We all have opinions, but just to realize that they’re opinions, man, to say, ‘I don’t know. This is what I’m feeling, but I don’t know.’

“And then to bear witness, to engage, just to put yourself in the spot. Usually it’s an uncomfortable spot, but that’s where the work needs to be done. Just feeling it, informing yourself, and getting all different points of view.

“Out of those two things, out of not knowing and bearing witness, out of that will come an action,” he adds, describing the third tenet. “I guess you can call it love; a loving action will come out of that, because we are an inherently compassionate species.”

Kucera feels the loving changes coming, but she recognizes that everyone and every place is compromised. She lives in Hawaii, a state that has moved heavily into solar power. She edited the entire film there using solar electricity. Still, 80 percent of the islands’ food has to be shipped in, almost all of it using dirty fossil fuels. Hawaiians think of themselves as progressive people, and she wants to invite everyone to reconsider their role in solving climate change, rather than cast blame.

“Imagine somebody saying it’s all your fault or somebody’s trying to shame you: you don’t feel good, you have your defenses up,” she says. “This film is more like an invitation than a hammer.”

Maybe the idea of sustainability itself is something we have to give up, because it assumes things will stay the same.

“Personally, being Buddhistly bent, I don’t know about sustainability,” says Bridges. “I mean, everything changes, man. I don’t think you can really sustain any one thing.”

He feels the right goal would probably be resilience.

“How do we become resilient, and how do we learn to serve what’s cooking?”

Developing resiliency doesn’t mean getting back to “normal” as fast as possible. It probably means accepting that there is no normal. Bridges acknowledges that this is not easy to do. Even after acting out loads of different lives, making eighty-some films and a bushel of TV shows, he craves comfort and returning to habit. He says he would have rebuilt the house that was taken out by the mudslide. His wife, however, wouldn’t go back.

She also quit smoking after something like fifty years.

He recognizes that we are capable of change.

“This change that we’re resisting can actually be a wonderful thing,” he notes.

Hard times are ahead of us as we dig in, collectively, and change our culture. Superorganism or not, there will be winners and losers. But something extraordinary is also possible in the future that we’re creating. It’s not too late for us to rescue our fellow species from the brink of extinction, to create a livable world, to establish equality and real contact with the living earth, and to change the values that have driven us. In the last scene of the film, Bridges quotes the Jesuit philosopher Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, indicating that the best may still be ahead: “After mastering the winds, the waves, the tides, and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love, and then, for a second time, man will have discovered fire.”

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