A Looming disaster & Call to Action!

One must not put a loaded rifle on the stage if no one is thinking of firing it. Thus a rule in drama came to be known as the "Chekhov's gun", ie. all elements shown must be necessary for the story.

                                                         Chekhov's snow. When shall it fall?

Occasionally snow gathers due to a combination of weather effects on the edges of the roofs. Looming, the anticipation builds, risking falling on the well-intentioned unaware pedestrian or well-parked car. That is an unacceptable risk in the urban environment. Thus one can occasionally hear the warning whistles by the watch person, warning the snow remover on the roof.

Snow removers drop the snow from the roofs controllably: usually any cars parked on the street below have been asked to be moved, if not, they are covered with plywood, pedestrians warned with red-and-yellow warning cones.

The whistle signals the snow remover on the roof: halt action, by-passers walking beneath!

Snow, weather, has given us warnings for long. During the Expanded dramaturges-course our working group was presented with a text proclaiming that the greatest responsibility of artists is to treat climate change and reflecting upon why, in the authors opinion, we are failing to do so. This matched simultaneously with me finishing my earlier blog post on snow, A Sky Full of Feathers. After a thought-evoking lesson at the weather station of the Kumpula campus, the wind, or focus of my mind was switching from weather to the climate. How could I talk about climate change in any way to do its effects justice? 

The last time an opening appeared, I had to close my laptop and feel, not write.

It's easy to become paralyzed when confronted with things so beyond your comprehension and direct control. 

The text challenges literature and arts which according to it haven't processed climate change events with proper gravitas and scale though the form could allow it. 

We talk about it in groups. What about the apocalypse genre? Vague memories of The Day after Tomorrow. Hurricane films, storm chasers, the new ice age, the surviving people uniting against the nature portrayed as an enemy. When and how can we frame ourselves as the truthful villains, in large parts responsible for the worsening of the extreme weather phenomenas and yet still find empathy in each other to unite, together with nature to search for alternatives of mitigation?

Cli-fi, climate fiction. I leave the reader of my snow blog post on a cliffhanger with a Rothko painting since I don't know how to go on. Myself, I go on to ruminate whether moving towards fiction would at all be the best way to go, or whether I should stay "real" and honest, in a way that I've been publishing unfiltered streams of thought so far?

I have been putting off this blog post for a long time. I've been walking with a pit in my stomach. I've ordered a double hamburger to fill a hunger, only to moments later realize that I would have gotten a cheaper deal economically and morally with a vegetarian version. Continuing to bite chunks off it with a mouth watering and stomach yearning but moral repulsion on top of it. I can't escape my imperfections. 

The deadline for us is collectively getting closer even if we have different best-by dates. 

Perhaps a self, an ego is too interwoven in me to make absolute compromises and to give up what I've become accustomed to, so a search of balance between halfway compromises in diet and alternative ways of living, for lucrative, creative paths with the ultimate goal of self-attainment, a goal which also encompasses somewhat utilitarian byproducts is my way to act?

That I has to frame myself within a time and space.

For the psychological, economical and societal self, the deadline of my Master's thesis is creeping in. The knowledge production system we exist in force that I within a time and space. Can I somehow digest and distill this Expanded Dramaturgy, Ecosomapoetics courses, and all that has existed before that into an action, dramaturgy, work in action that could support or mitigate the effects of climate change on places and it's people? Now that doesn't feel as imposing as the task of writing or performing an apocalyptical climate fiction representing humans and the effects of climate change. 

One late evening of watching Hypernormalization by the British documentary director Adam Curtis has left its imprint on my thinking. The work of Curtis frequently posits that no one really knows what we can do anymore, so those in power only know how to exist in a make believe world as if we did know, where we end up performing roles as if we did. Who knows what to do? And can we manage to say none of us know everything and still find trust in a shared research which is destined to perhaps not fail, but lead us to even more questions? 

The cyclic nature of spring is melting the snow. Roots are grasping firmer the soil wherein lies knowledge and intuition. I find a reason for my search for sceneries. Deep-ecology. Can I infect people with the interest and care for places? Can I alleviate and expand our sensitivity for places, ecology and what's there and changes in environment through sharing my acting practice?

A practice which I associate with: Attunement of senses, nervous system exercises, making sounds, playing with echoes, accenting details with light, honing the capacity to imagine, finding ways to communicate about these abstract or very somatic experiences, problem-solving (creative and social), sensing atmospheres, a play between psychology and geography, self-regulation, taking space, holding, sharing, changing space, touching, being touched, letting us be affected, breaking stigmas, know thyself, semiurgy, magick, imagination, travels through time and space, evoking emotions, facilitating attachments, allowance, boundaries, porosity, using sensitive approach as a starting point for brave exploration and taking risks under trust.

  Chekhov's snow, why'd you say that it shall fall?

What would a human inspired by that moment in place and time be like? What would be the sun of that person, that which warms it up, gliding slowly over the edge, unnoticeably creeping up to be a risk to those innocent bypassers who happen to walk below? Who would its unintentional victims be? And who would be sued?...

Another memory I have is from the film Into the Wild, which I watched freshly graduated from high school, pondering upon what a perfect timing it would be to disappear. "Only shared joy is real" the main character, the ill fated and foolhardy Christopher McCandless writes in his deathbed of a bus. I have to get out and share, reach a hand between the characters I'm writing, so as to not become paralyzed, so as to not become bits of trees, bits of the computers, stored away in archives to gather dust. 

That is why I ask you, dear reader, to send a message or leave a comment with some way of contacting, and if you're willing, or have people willing to, we could plan an adventure or you can join a workshop around these ideas, as an experiment part of my Master's thesis. 

My deadline is 30th of March, 2026, but with these words I'm hopefully anchoring myself to go on with the research even beyond and get reminded to stick with it ever so often afterwards, because deadlines are neverending.

Now I will force myself to write and fit what's written here into the academic standards of a Master's thesis. So long, blog. I will be back, just like the spring always for now.