How do we make people sympathise with the planet they’re living on? How do we get people engaged and excited about the environment? How do we make Deep Time popular, so the general public thinks about time in a more expansive way? And how can pop music be a tool in all of this?
I make stuff which is easy, breezy, happy and silly. Sometimes I make stuff which is brooding. But I always try to include a sensation of wonder and magic about what I do. Magic is real. And science is a form of magic. Geology is a form of magic! It’s time travel at our fingertips, it’s totemic, it’s storytelling without words. It’s time in physical form.
What if we took fan culture which we normally see around music and apply it to geologic time periods or events? What if we knew the name of the rock succession we lived on? What if we had t-shirts or made fanzines which were about our favourite things which happened in history before humans were even born? What if we wrote songs about that stuff?
All I can think of is these amazing screen-printed Steely Dan pants which went viral the other week. They’re unofficial merch, and they’re kind of garish, but they’re amazing. Imagine a pair of sweatpants with “PRE-CAMBRIAN EXPLOSION” printed on them, or a deep time event even more obscure. Fans love to know the most obscure thing. It’s that whole, “I was listening to them before they were famous!”. I’m thinking about the connection to underground music and the literal Under Ground.