the lore axe project was under development for about 6 months, following a period where the duquesne light company cut our power for 8 hours/day for two work weeks. i wasn’t able to work, i had no internet, i couldn’t relax because of the chainsaws, couldn’t open my fridge for food or turn on my stove to cook it, and i had so much anger and free time that i started writing lyrics.
it was the first year of a new presidential term and a lot of sinister climate change urgency came with it. we’re on a planet in a biodiversity crisis, myriad humanitarian crises and genocides, bombing and fracking our only life source to hell, and i could not wrap my mind around the fact that local people were spending their one wild and precious life CUTTING DOWN TREES.
as the chainsaws roared on, I continued to spiral.
how long had we been worried about climate change? i attended college under the second obama administration and thought m/y generation’s job was to convince the public that climate change was real. as if it wasn’t al gore’s whole platform in 2000. as if you can’t find mention of it all throughout 90s media.
as if the lorax wasn’t written in nineteen seventy-one.
simultaneously, racist violence is bubbling up in the u.s. in the form of immigration raids (notably, much of the lore axe track “unless” was written while i was reading resisting borders and technologies of violence and karla cornejo villavicencio’s the undocumented americans). the u.s. is also finding political enemies internationally in the name of oil, the same oil who funded djt’s campaign against drag queens and trans people. and everyone i know who values life is traumatized daily from doomscrolling the horrors, unable to speak uncensored on the platforms where they do most of their communication.
m/y roommate tavi (aka v.v.itch) is a musician and jokester and we started imagining a scenario where dr. suess’s beloved lorax character is so fucking over all this shit that he’s graduated from cutesy rhymes to full-blown hardcore punk. screaming over heavy bass until he’s spitting bile. he’s gone from solemn scolding to a violent demeanor.
she walked past m/y room with a laugh … “what if it was lore axe: i scream for the trees?”
…and it became exactly that (link to listen on bandcamp)
fuck you, duquesne light
you cut down trees, you cut down dreams
i represent the living
for the trees i fucking scream
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