As part of the Letters to the Future project, which coincides with the Paris climate talks, we asked local dignitaries, including The Studio@620's Bob Devin Jones, to offer their perspective on what out future is going to look like, which largely hinges on the climate action that's supposed to result from the upcoming summit in France. Here is Devin Jones' poetic take on the project.
Until the river never grieves
In the very next future
I needs must diet myself
on something other than the overwhelming passivity I have adopted
or perhaps, co-opted
yes that’s it
there is an almost finished silence in nearly every room I enter
the cynicism is deafening
so I have become increasingly selective as to where I choose to travel
… nowhere
the horrific poetry of politics is
that it is almost never about arriving at a consensus or even an understanding
rather the verse is blank and ouroboros … “prolonging revenge through reincarnation”
the inimical biscuit at everyone’s table (especially mine) is you can’t stand the sight of my face
I’m right there with you baby
I fear I can’t stand the sight of yours either
yet we all feast on what we most fear
how do we stand it
as the French would say Voila!
translation: there you are
and there they all were, on that ordinary Friday
where the entire world
yet again, got a snapshot of this bitter earth… what is indeed at table, at this very next future
how do we stomach it…? indeed how do we
so, my requiem today “in spite of the tennis” is to go on a diet
I believe I can travel back there
to sit with that young girl in Amsterdam
and find the necessary goodness in people
what is really nutritious
it is perhaps the only light we have in all this darkness
Bob Devin Jones is founding artistic director of The Studio@620.
This article appears in Nov 19-25, 2015.