“These costumes are survivors. And – hopefully – we will be too"

“These costumes are survivors. And – hopefully – we will be too”

by Suzanne Bocanegra

Our planet has always experienced natural disasters—but the climate is changing, and those disasters are becoming stronger, more frequent, more destructive, more dangerous.

I began to imagine a world where natural disasters are not just an occasional event, but a constant event, a way of everyday life.

What would society look like, living in that world?  How would the people in that world try to keep themselves safe? How would they deal with their fear?

I was thinking that maybe they would sing together, in an attempt to save themselves.  And to console themselves.

Choir singing is the oldest form of collective music we humans perform.  Choirs have been around for millennia, developed across all cultures, in all eras.

People singing together is so very human. We join forces with each other. With the planet falling apart around us, it instills in us the sense of cooperation that we will need to survive. 

And singing together reinforces a sense of community. We are not alone. We are in it together. There’s comfort in that.

I grew up Catholic.  When I think of choir music I associate it with its historic connection to worship.  

I remember that church music as serious, sincere and earnest. And beautiful.

In the church I saw people harmonizing and singing together in order to save themselves spiritually.

Maybe in this future on earth people will need a choir harmonizing and singing together in order to just save themselves-- period.

I wrote these texts by imagining songs that would teach people the instructions for how best to survive the natural disasters they might find themselves in.

Like the songs sung in a church, these new songs can provide comfort but they also can provide knowledge and they can provide hope.

* * *
I tried to imagine what the people in this world would wear.  What kind of storytelling could be told through their costumes.

I imagined you are in a world that no longer has the ability to make anything new.  You can only repurpose what the world has already spent its resources making.

With that in mind, I cobbled together old cast offs from the world of theater, old vintage clothes, old blankets and scraps of cloth.

These bits and pieces of past lives, of materials people once used to make sense of the world around them, have survived in these costumes.

These costumes are survivors. And - hopefully - we will be too.