One and a half hour of an interview of Fareed Zakaria by Erza Klein, a rather lofty and documented session of geopolitical considerations.

One and a half hour without a single mention of the climate change reality.

I am not offended, I am not surprised, I am not even affected anymore by this absence.

I am only further encouraged to push for TINYisPOWERFUL to seriously review its vision and mission statements in order to place the subject of climate change at their core. Because extractivism, pollution and social misery form a model intersectional trio of universal importance, they should have been part of the Erza Klein/New York Times show and be listed as global influencing forces, were it only to stress their absence  from the vocabulary of the powerful men who are running the world to its grave.

Many examples come to mind, of artists/activists or other creatives who genuinely ask themselves, or are asked by others, questions like: Should I insist on this or that issue? Does this art piece bring understanding to this event? Would it make sense to keep silent about that? Relevance, timing, depth, intent … all concerns which should feed creativity in/with community(ies) as small as TINYisPOWERFUL, as large as a neighborhood, a city, a country, the world. Why not?

There is one question in particular, that, now deceased and much regretted playwright, Nayo Watkins would consistently ask the folks she was working with, referring to the art at hand: WHAT DOES THIS DO FOR MY PEOPLE? When asked, Gwylène, who worked with Nayo often, would freeze every time, intimidated, she says. She did not have an answer … I suppose her frightened silence triggered in her a process which eventually changed her whole approach to art making. I can remember that a few years back, I too was changed by Nayo’s question. It directed me on the path I am still walking every day concerning, not the strength, not the beauty, not the value of my production, not any of that but – singularly – how much, with my work, do I contribute to tightening the proximity of everyone to everyone else. Here, I talk about a disposition becoming a practice. A disposition towards others becoming the reason for doing what we do. And I venture that both, Zakaria and Klein, had they been more cognizant of whatever is most concerning about the future of the world, they would have bumped into the issue of climate change. But, in fact, they mostly talked about the the two characters least concerned with it: Putin and Trump.

This is a problem.

Of course, Simone Weil’s fingerprints are all over today’s entry. The more I learn about her, the more familiar I am with her deep intelligence and her risky excesses, the more humanity I find in her, the more humanity I want to deliver to everyone I frequent or think about. She is radiant to the point of being contagious. And she comes at a time when, for me, the next art-fed venture depends entirely on how I wrap up the present art venture: a Tale for Reparations. At the moment I have no idea what this all means, past the necessity to illuminate the inevitable link between climate change and global solidarity. These are precisely the two paradigms most vilely undercut by the Putin-Trump alliance.