Our normal is another’s crisis: our tank of gas puts Tuvalu under water; our cheap tropical fruit grows in a rain of Guatemalan bullets. We— the we of the educated and decently-secure Global North– don’t experience this directly, not without a certain counter-socialized moral effort. But then, there will always be people who don’t notice that the world has ended. Marin: unthinkably expensive fixer-uppers, chilly moss-blanketed redwoods, virtuous grocery stores, sheer red rock, hideous traffic (since 50 years ago upscale neighbors turned down the chance to have the BART come) dotted with nonpolluting cars. It takes seeing another’s comfort sometimes for me to remember that my, like anyone’s, comfort is breathtakingly fragile, and is also a force that gives me meaning, a frame for life, a sense of what’s normal. “Moon over Marin” is a serious, stark tune, an outlier amid the laughing hysteria and vivid contempt of the Dead Kennedys’ Plastic Surgery Disasters. A solemn and comfortable last survivor– park ranger of the ruined shore? a last resident whom this life suits just fine?– walks their section of the oil-choked, poison-leaching beach in uniform and gasmask, then returns home for a sacramental cleanse in a “scalding wooden tub.” Above it, the clean bright unspoiled Moon is as permanent as our life, its tidiness and predictability and comfort, is transitory. We have more power than we realize.
Jay Aquinas Thompson 