Braving the Storm
Braving the Storm; or, Surviving Climate Change.
It’s raining lightly as I write here in Manhattan. Forty miles west of Montauk, off the far edge of Long Island, hurricane Henri has just been downsized to a tropical storm. It’s headed north, over Providence, RI, where a good friend and his husband live. I hope they will be ok.
I hope we will all be ok as we brave the other storm coming: climate change. But I’m not optimistic. Why? Human beings don’t seem to respond to crisis in a timely manner.
Did you read that it rained in Greenland, where it never rains? Where most of the ice on the planet resides? Did you also read about Sicily? How it was 124 degrees there for the first time ever?
Anybody who thinks these two events aren’t connected and is an aberration is not paying attention.
But here’s the thing.
What do you think is going to happen when the shit really hits the fan? When Bangladesh and other countries are underwater and tens of millions of people are homeless, hungry, and on the move? When it’s too hot to live in most of the mideast and Venice is the new Atlantis?
You know what’s going to happen. You’ve seen it this past year and a half. The first thing that will go is the arts.
In my sardonic moods, I say to myself: “Well, I won’t see it. I’ll be dead by then.” But this is no comfort.
What we teach our students today will determine what happens tomorrow. What we do is just as important.
I’m writing a book on bel canto. The foremost thing in my mind is the survival of an art form. But I’ve no illusions since all the great libraries of the world could end in fire.
The fear of what may come keeps my hand moving.
Contact me for voice lessons in New York City and online lessons in the art of bel canto.
