Fanzines for Geology

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.

DYCP Application Thoughts

I’m planning on applying for Arts Council England’s Developing Your Creative Practice fund. Recommended to me by my mentor, this funding would act as a support for this “Wasted Time” research I’m doing as well as help accelerate it. And it would accelerate me as an artist, as well.

I have struggled to see where I fit in in the world of art. I make pop music. I write poetry. I want to make audio programmes. I love academia and researching. I want to help educate. I want to tackle big ideas. I want to make something rich and mysterious and layered. But I also want to make things which are catchy, easy, joyful. How can I do all of that?

The Tiny Songs Project has helped me re-brand myself as an artist almost. I went from gloomy, self-centred songwriter to happy, weird, music-maker and image creator. It’s also changed the way I dress myself, too. I wear a lot more colour now, or am drawn to it at least (don’t really have the budget for a wardrobe overhaul at the moment). See the above photos for the difference.

The DYCP application requires me to plan out what I would do with the fund, who I would get in touch with, what milestones I would aim to reach and how I would measure my progress. I’m not sure at the moment what any of that would exactly entail, but I have some ideas. Here they are in note form:

MY MAIN QUESTIONS

• How can we make the idea of "lost time" less negative?

• How can our planet help our perspective of time?

• Can pop music & the culture surrounding it be a vehicle for solutions to these questions?

AREAS OF INTEREST

I would like to network with people, organisations and places in these areas

• the arctic

• the ocean

• geology

• astrophysics

• indie pop and punk music

• audio-making (like Transom for example)

• Norse/Celtic myth and folklore

MEDIUMS TO WORK WITH

• music — writing an album or an EP

• podcasting/audio

• written blog

• visual diary/sketchbook

• diagrams or maps

• performance

• workshops/teaching

• animation

ACTIVITIES TO DO

• geological exploration of a place

• stay somewhere remote up North

• collect oral histories around nature and myth of a place

• create a series of deep time event reconstructions

• create a podcast from the information I research or an enriched audio piece by including the songs I write

• pop album pop concert zine for geological events, merch for geological events or areas so we can care about them like we care about our favourite band