If we’re being honest, today should really be some kind of national day of mourning for Prince, but, alas, it was already penciled in as a day to celebrate something almost equally important: the frickin’ planet that we live on. And if we don’t want Earth Day to become a day of mourning, there’s a lot of stuff we need to take care of. That stuff can be stressful though (and honestly, that’s something that Congress needs to be stressin’ over today), so we thought we’d map out a little afternoon for you to stay at home, turn out all unutilized lights, and appreciate the Earth before it becomes Mad Max 5.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MfyZwEp49j0
Take a Timed Shower with the Help of Yeezus
Generally speaking, Kanye West is mostly known for worrying about numero uno, but when applied properly, we can pretend that he cares about other stuff, too. For instance, Kanye is featured in a playlist Guvera made that’s a collection of five minute songs—five minutes being the recommended shower time (and eight minutes being the average). That’s right. If you use this playlist properly, you’re saving the world with Yeezus.
Listen to Neil Young’s “Mother Earth (Natural Anthem)”
Neil Young has had environmental concerns since the early days—and has been pressing those concerns pretty hard lately—but never did he a make a more compelling or beautiful case for them than he did on the Ragged Glory closer “Mother Earth.” That track is subtitled “Natural Anthem,” and though that is a nice way to look at it, it honestly might as well be called “Required Listening.”
Watch Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
There’re lot of apocalypse/disaster/zombie movies that could be a solid choice to sit down with tonight—after all, what better way to appreciate the comfort of relaxing on your couch than to watch that damn boat flip over again in Poseidon Adventure?—but perhaps no film has captured the fragility of our planet’s equilibrium better than Dr. Strangelove. Remember, guys, we’re just one War Room fistfight away from riding the bomb into the doomsday.
Read W. G. Sebald’s The Rings of Saturn
In his best-known work, the late German author W. G. Sebald treks around the British countryside by foot, calmly remarking upon features of the land and spinning tales of history, science, art—whatever happens to come to mind. While it might sound academic (and, to be sure, this is no beach read, coastal setting be damned), Saturn is a reminder of the way our histories are carved into the earth itself, and the ways we carve the earth to make our histories.
Georgia O’Keeffe
Black Mesa Landscape, New Mexico / Out Back of Marie’s II 1930
Oil on canvas mounted on board
Georgia O’Keeffe Museum. Gift of The Burnett Foundation © Georgia O’Keeffe Museum
Prep for Georgia O’Keeffe’s Retrospective at the Tate Modern
The Tate Modern recently underwent a massive £27 million renovation, and to celebrate, they’re hosting the largest-ever showing of work by American landscape painter Georgia O’Keeffe. The Tate aims to challenge the predominant “conservative male” reading of O’Keeffe’s work that suggests her flower paintings are actually portraits of vaginas. What that means, then, is a reclamation of O’Keeffe’s naturalist bent. FL
