ZEELIE BROWN | The Voice of Thunder

Still from multimedia showcase at All Street Gallery by Bodega Katz @bodega.katz

The voice of thunder
Zeelie Brown
performance at all street nyc
February 24, 2024

Introduction

I took the train. I always take the train. It’s easier to haul a cello and I hate driving. When I was a kid I protested driving because I found it unconscionable to organize society around oil. I was an unpopular Texan. The glimmer of New York’s extractive capital lights soothes me after I get out of Moynihan Hall and hail a cab to my little room in Hell’s Kitchen. I’m always awed by the slick, American shine of the city and the fact that I can get more or less anywhere I need on my Metrocard. I’m equally awed that the average Manhattan rent is upwards of $4000 a month. It’s hard to make art in that kind of climate. The infrastructure’s there, but you run off all the people who have to scrape by so the world can fly.

The Earth is losing its patience with us, it seems. The heat abating rains of summer over New Orleans are playing hooky so the swamps catch afire. California flits between blaze and deluge. Hurricanes are more frequent along the Gulf South, and real estate interests build as if the Earth will have nothing to say. Maybe their mothers never told them to go pick a switch. How else could they treat the world so mean?

This show at All Street Gallery was a poetic musical essay, which I will expand into an EP. Music requires moving around and getting sounds into ears where people are. This world deems it necessary to mine oil or lithium as the price of sojourn.

I try to minimize my role in the destruction our current market system has wrought. I’m not sure it is always enough, but I do what I can to make it work.

Capitalism holds care for ransom. Movement and the healing that sound provides are nodes of liberation within that system. Researching these works has brought me to the plantations of the River Parishes of Louisiana where men were worked to death in 3-4 years unless they took their cane cutting machete and used it to escape, or to turn against their enslavers. These Parishes now host cancer borne from petrochemical runoff, and a prison where white guards on horseback corral Black bodies that society never gave a chance.

None of this exploitation happens in isolation. There is a global pattern of commerce and exploitation forged in the holds of slaving vessels and the trading desks of global markets that needs to be broken, before it breaks us all. I hope my work plants seeds that can flower in its aftermath. A humble dandelion has the strength to sever a sidewalk, maybe my music can seed a garden in the wake of the climate crisis.

Artist Climate Policy

I don’t have a climate policy but I have a few guiding principles:

waste not: that’s where you get into the take the train and bus whenever possible; limit use of petrochemicals as much as possible—in travel, agriculture, building, paints, chemicals; try to grow your own food and produce as much of your own stuff as possible and operate in a system of barter and/or community care; advocate for the public good and public goods—do advocacy work and connect with organizations and let people know what’s goin on.

There used to be this great train line from Jacksonville, FL to New Orleans, LA that got wiped out by Katrina. It’s not back—and the old, planter class administration that runs the South isn’t prioritizing getting that back up and running.

We’re built on making money through throwaway. How do we live without the throwaway and build a society and markets that aren’t based on throwaway—if you drink a coke you throw away the bottle, if you eat something you throw away the wrapper. [aside: I would put people in there too]. I try to rely as little as possible on things that get thrown away.

treat folks right: make sure everybody gets paid evenly and on-time; I asked someone to quote me for a job—they quoted real low—I tripled their rate; work in community; prioritize women, black, brown, African, Middle-Eastern, Indigenous folks, Pacific Islander folks, South & East Asian descent––folks who haven’t been in the forefront for a while; I prioritize these folks both in my hiring and team and in my decisions. I try to give a voice to talent and folks who haven’t been heard from in a while.

care—operate from a stance of care: Care is its own thing. It can be more like care for myself––making sure I’m always setting part of my budget aside for the earth, for the land, for my needs to be housed, fed and taken care of; care means understanding that we live in community and we live in an engineered system of scarcity; we live in a system where you need a car so you need insurance and a title and then you need gas then you have places you need to go to pay for those things–it’s a trap. How do you get out of that trap? You operate from a stance of care—I care about the world enough to put aside as much as I can of this madness and find a way to live where I’m not in the mix of all of that. And if I can’t operate by getting out of it I can do things to mitigate the effects of the behavior I’m caught up in. One of the ways I do that is by making sure there’s always plant life around me no matter where I am so I and my neighbors can look at something green. That’s care.

Vision for the future:

I think when you live in a wasteful society it’s inevitable that so many fall by the wayside. So many never realize their potential. I’m not saying I want a utopia—by nature “utopia” means no place. It doesn’t exist. What I want for is a society where people are encouraged to pursue whatever they’re good at and bring that out into the world. And reorganizing society so there’s not this pressure to exist in this grind, this “gotta get by”, everything is plastic and one-use only—everything can be used over and over again. There’s no reason to go to Starbuck’s and get coffee in a plastic cup. We could just have ceramic cups, go into the store for 5 minutes; drink the coffee and leave. There’s no reason we need to get in our car and be on the go like we are now. We can slow down. It will be fine. Faster is not always better. Haste makes waste.

Let’s talk about shipping! The sea is a wonderful, light way of transporting things. We have the wind. We can have really advanced meteorological systems. We can have wind-powered ships! We have all the technology already. We have all these ride-sharing platforms. What if Uber was a public good? If there were public cars or buses and then urban planners could see where people want to go and make those places accessible.

When we slow down and take time for the rituals, like quilting, cooking, care, cultivating, playing music, creating community – when we start viewing these acts as important as profit, things start coming together and problems start getting solved.

Reflections:

I've been navigating the Earth's broken heart New Orleans, a city whose romantic grandeur has ceased to sustain human life year round. The swamps catch fire. The Indigenous peoples used this as a seasonal trading ground, and that's what it continues to be. But, what came to be traded after the English, French, Spanish, Confederate, and American conquests of the town originally known as Bulbancha was shares of Black suffering with a never ending expiration date. Music sounded a freedom call amid this suffering. Jazz was born. Music provides a means that we can envision futures and hear them in real time. If we are to overcome the looming climate catastrophe it'll be necessary to dial in beyond what we think is possible. But, two atoms are intertwined on a quantum level. The impossible is everyday. We simply have to learn to listen.

Credits and Links

This Climate Impact Report was prepared by the artist, Zeelie Brown, based loosely on a template available at Artists Commit. Artists Commit CIR Mentor, Jessica Gath offered guidance and support.

The voice of Thunder was performed at multimedia showcase accompanying a group exhibition at All Street NYC. Curators were Ciaran Short & Jabari Butler. Exhibiting Artists were Austin Sley Julian, Christl Stringer, C. J. Jackson, Faith McCorkle, Freddie L. Rankin II, Garry Grant, Shangari Mwashighadi

CLIMATE IMPACT REPORT