There was a factory. Now there are mountains and rivers. If this is paradise, I wish I had a lawn mower. I thought we’d start over, but I guess I was wrong. And as things fell apart, nobody paid much attention. Don’t leave me stranded here. I can’t get used to this lifestyle.
So go the lyrics to the 1988 Talking Heads song ‘(Nothing But) Flowers.’ As bitterly cynical as it is catchy, the tune is an environmentalist anthem written from the perspective of some laggard who cannot adapt to life after a cataclysmic refashioning of society into a paradise not unlike Rousseau’s state of nature. I think of it as my personal hymn in the age of COVID.
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