Fiery Car Catastrophe

“Let the Cars Burn”
• Mike Davis in “The Case for Letting Malibu Burn,” “Ecology of Fear“

L.A. fires — pick your year — serve as a vivid illustration of extreme weather’s impact on humans with a dramatic increase in wildfires almost everywhere globally over the past decade. There’s a basic disconnect, a lack of will on our part, we’re almost willfully stuck, unreflective and perplexed by the dominant forces of global capital to entertain any constructive alternatives to our current bad habits. This despite so much information available at our fingertips.

Our current reality is probably best illustrated by the snake eating its own tail, an Ouroboros, ancient symbol of the cycle of life, death, rebirth, with an emphasis on the eating part. And we somehow manage to appreciate the irony of cars set ablaze by wildfires, fueled by our fossil fuel preferences — cars, cars, cars. Cars as central existential environmental dilemma, cars as symbols for almost anything — wealth, independence and individualism — but seldom as the root cause of our own demise, as manmade industry catalysts of manmade disasters.

The Native American dictum “When the last tree is cut down, the last fish eaten and the last stream poisoned, you will realize that you cannot eat money,” credited to Alanis Obomsawin, filmmaker and member of the Abenaki Nation, best describes our current dilemma.

For more details: Earth System Science Data (ESSD)

“Fire is mad / Fire is madder than mad / All over the World
• Lee “Scratch” Perry

DIG•SCAPE is an audio alternative-phenomenological-impressionistic, multicultural soundscape mashup of loud issues, intuition+research and multisampled insights investigating our current wackadoodle malaise from an askew, engaged and anomalous vantage point.

Playlist

“Fire Music” • Lou Reed
“The Simorgh Sleeps on Velvet Tongues“ • Robert Rich
“Fiery Car U.K.” • Dig•Scape
“Pollution“ • Tom Lehrer
“Beep Beep (The Little Nash Rambler)“ • The Playmates
“Fire“ • Lee “Scratch“ Perry
“The Awakening“ • Earth Leakage Trip
“Urban Evacuation“ • Up Bustle & Out
“Fireworks“ • Shackleton
“The People’s Forest“ • Mount Maxwell
“The Sign, Part IV“ • David Axelrod
“Hard Day on the Planet“ • Loudon Wainwright
“Music for the Quiet Hour (Part One)“ • Shackleton
“The Elements: Fire (Mrs. O’Leary’s Cow)“ • Beach Boys
“Firefighter Song“ • The Learning Station
“Beneath the Forest Floor“ • Hildegard Westerkamp
“In a Country Once Forested“ • Wendell Berry
“I Speak for the Trees“ • Danny DeVito/“The Lorax“
“Tree of Fire“ • Echospace
“Paradise Valley“ • Mr. Soon
“We Didn’t Start the Fire BEEP BEEP“ • The Playmates & Billy Joel (Wreck Wremix)
“Autobahn“ (Alternative version) • Kraftwerk
“Sunday Afternoon“ • Blossom Dearie
“Timber“ • Coldcut & Hexstatic
“What the World Needs Now Is Love“ • Bill Frisell
“Destroying Anything“ • Negativland
“Happy Car Crashing“ • Eboman
“Know Your Car“ • Delia Derbyshire
“Fire Every Day“ • Dub FX (Gaudi, Woodnote & Andy Talkbox)
“In the Forest” • Takatoshi Naitoh