Day 8 of taking myself to Creative Camp.

I’m a creative director trying to create toward the world I want, so I built a camp instead of a content strategy.

Today’s randomly generated prompt is:

Invent.
Weather.
Share.

And the weather is not a metaphor.

Chicagoland has some of the worst air quality in the country from Canadian wildfire smoke.

The air’s a mess.
My house is a mess.
My heart’s a bit of a mess.

The world? Yeah, you guessed it. A MESS.

And it hurts to breathe.

So…invent weather? What do I do with that? Invent…Weather…

I take in a big visual gulp of the world outside – the air thick with smoke – and know the prompt is calling me to speak to this moment.

Climate change. Climate, change. A peril and an imperative.

If I were to invent weather…I’d change the climate.

So what would a climate changed look like?

That’s when, for some reason, I think about Dan Levy. As one does. 😂

I remember hearing him talk about Schitt’s Creek – how people asked why the town wasn’t more homophobic, because wouldn’t that be more “realistic”?

“We show love and tolerance. If you put something like that out of the equation, you’re saying that doesn’t exist and shouldn’t exist.” – Dan Levy

I love this ethos of creating art, not only of the world that is, but the world that should be.

This is why I spent 10+ years doing social change theater, which  Augusto Boal calls “a rehearsal for the revolution.” We need these forums to practice the language, the actions, the feelings, and shape of a new world before we know how to build it and live in it together.

Today, I rehearse this new climate in poetry.

CLIMATE, CHANGE

Here, the air tastes clean.
It feels easy to breathe here.
It feels hard to hurt here.
Ourselves.
Each other.
The planet.We cleared the air, so we wouldn’t have to.
And the climate changed.

Now it’s time to share.

How do you share a climate changed?

Wish I could send my little poem in the beak of a dove with a rainbow of hope. But, then I think, I CAN send a postcard.

I decide to send this invitation for a climate, changed back where the wildfire smoke came from:

Canada. 💌

To a friend who is also rehearsing their own revolution.

I hope it makes it there. (Who knows? Maybe it’s coming to you. 😉)

I still have a pile of Adbusters scraps from Day 7 that I plan to compost into the camp ecosystem.

Yesterday, those scraps were part of a piece about fighting for creativity in public. Today, they fight for a creative way to clear the air.

I decide I’m making a reverse ransom note. Not, “We have your climate.” More like, “Here. We made a better one. Come and get it.”

I don’t find all the words I need. But this feels fitting.

Because it’s beautiful to paint a picture – hold a vision – of the better world, but then you have to build a bridge to get there: word by word, choice by choice.

So I write the rest myself.

Because imagining a better world is beautiful. But eventually, you have to put your own hands in it.

This is the work of a climate, changed.

Today’s Creative Camp takeaway:

Don’t mistake creativity for an escape from the messy reality of this world; it is a rehearsal of revolution.

The creative practice allows us to practice the words, the movements, the everyday acts of imagination, we’ll need in the new world.

The rainbow, among other things, is a sign of better days ahead. But we’ll need to make our own rainbows when the sky is covered in smog. And sometimes, receiving a random postcard is enough to put color in a smoky day.

So maybe this postcard is coming to you.

Is there someone you can send a rainbow to?

Welcome to camp.