MOONFRUITS
AA: Your new album ‘explores what it means to live, dream and raise a family in an era of climate change and deepening socio-economic inequality’. As a new dad, an activist, and a musician, this description moves me. Can you expand on your vision for the potential of social equality and climate justice? What does it look like and how do we get there? Are there examples currently, in history, or in fiction that you’ve been drawn to?
MF: Climate justice, as opposed to climate action, I feel would be the result of a long chain of changes that start with the acceptance of climate change as our new reality. The lens of ‘freak event’ is becoming increasingly uncomfortable for even the most mainstream media to use as a narrative swiss army knife. Climate change isn’t just whispering at our door but blowing it down week after week like we saw with the recent Derecho storm that rocked the Windsor-Montreal corridor.
My private feeling is that true change in behaviour radiates locally before it rings out globally. Our climate action in past years has had a very local focus. Together with our neighbours, we’ve started a community garden and a tenants’ rights association; helped organize concerts, tree-plants, and memorials; and, more generally, understood one another better.
One of the most striking examples of runaway socio-economic disparity I’ve read is H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine. Humans experience such unfathomable wealth disparity that they become different species altogether. This book as a cautionary tale, and more modern reads like The Transition Handbook, Braiding Sweetgrass, and To Speak for the Trees really impact my day-to-day in subtle but important ways. - Alex
AA: You’ve described pandemic profiteers as ‘robber barrens’ and you take issue with ‘the narratives we all weave to justify, and even celebrate, their existence’. This reminds me of the Utah Philips quote, “the earth is not dying, it is being killed, and those who are killing it have names and addresses.” Can you speak to the thoughts and feelings you experience witnessing powerful people and institutions being named and held to account by individuals, groups, and popular movements? (ie. Me Too, Black Lives Matter, and Defund the Police)
The feelings are complicated. I'm skeptical about the extent to which the most powerful people and institutions are being held to account. It's always exciting to see popular movements take up space, shape public opinion and make change, but billionaires like Musk, Bezos, Gates, Buffet and co. live beyond the scope of much of that.
I like the Utah Philips quote, but it makes me think of two other things - some doors are a lot harder to knock down than others, and it's not Earth that's at stake. It's humankind. I wish we would stop framing catastrophic climate change as a planet ending event. I think that plays into the hand of inevitability narratives, like an asteroid or something. The planet has survived mass extinctions before, and it will survive another if it comes to that. We won’t.
It seems a small thing, but I think that working from the imperfect place – the place where you're at – is one of the most empowering things. Building community, doing mutual aid, working within movements, within political structures, with art - engaging where and when you can to challenge the capitalist narratives, challenge colonial narratives, learn and unlearn about yourself, the land, and working piecemeal with a lot of love, imagination and compassion. I think that this more than anything else I have witnessed is the greatest foil to the great shapeshifter that is capital(ism). - Kait
AA: ‘Time Past Time’ is an attempt to shake that feeling of the numbness of inevitability with regard to wealth disparity and climate change. I too find apathy, defeatism, and even accelerationism to be present if not rampant. Do you have any suggestions for how we can all try to ‘shake that feeling’ as well?
I hear you, I really do. I don’t know if my suggestions work for anyone else. Addressing apathy, defeatism and accelerationism is no small thing. I think they’re omnipresent in some circles.
What helps me more often than not is to focus on the real things in my life, the people, the relationships and try to move what I can by inches. Door knocking in a municipal campaign, gardening, making art that hopefully moves and helps connect. Talking to people – not the same friends I always gab with about political stuff – but strangers at the bus stop, neighbours, family.
In the back of my mind is like this hokey slogan “love is greater than …”. I think apathy, defeatism and accelerationism are all understandable – you can understand how someone gets there. But, then again, I think it’s relevant to note that each of these feelings serves the interests of capital and I think they all breed where love is lacking. I think radical love is how we get there. And, yes, taxing the rich is radical love. - Kait
AA: Can you share your thoughts on what resistance looks like these days for Moonfruits, and how “the act of resistance is a lifelong pursuit”?
MF: Oh, crumbs! These days we’re spending a lot of time with family. I suppose that resistance looks like becoming a bit more rooted, learning how to parent, digging into our own family histories, connecting with our neighbours, gardening, and re-thinking what our life as touring artists might look like. How we might move more slowly, intentionally. Also, how we might learn to mince words less, and say what we mean.
AA: The two singles you’ve released from the new album are beautiful, well crafted, and lyrically poignant. As songwriters, can you share your thoughts on the power and role of music, in general, to move its listeners, emotionally, intellectually, physically, or otherwise?
MF: Thank you for your kind words. Music is such a human thing. Think about the look on a baby’s face and how it changes when you sing. We are beautifully susceptible to musical suggestion. Making and interacting with art is sustaining to human life. The lineage of art making to preserve culture and story through cycles of oppression is mighty.
Songs do that so well because they reach us at a deeper level, and once you’ve heard a song - it’s completely portable. Some would say they touch the soul. Call it what you like, but music is magic. Elder people who have illnesses that gravely affect their memories can suddenly recall whole songs top to bottom.
People seek out music because they’re seeking some kind of relational medicine. The power of music is to help us relate to one another, to ourselves, to our past and to our future.
