Interludium - A Biosphere Project Blog
- filipvk
- May 21
- 8 min read
Updated: May 29
In which is told about a short pause in the blog, about how I won't be idle during that break, with at the end a hint about what you can expect after this pause.
Audio version of this post, read by me.
Dear friends,
those of you who are old enough will remember it well: the days when we only had one or two channels on television, with rickety antennas on all the roofs and bulging TV-screens on which color was still a novelty.
Those few channels didn't always broadcast, and between programs there was sometimes nothing to watch, or just “static noise” or a test image. Something that is completely unthinkable today.
To fill the gaps between programs, here in my country Belgium the 'interludium' was invented: usually a bit of music accompanied by a romantic film clip or a photo of birds in nature. Where has the time gone?
"An interludium (Latin: inter, between, and ludere, to play) is an instrumental interlude. The term is used in church music, opera, operetta, and songs. Sometimes an interlude appears as an independent composition, for example as an interlude in a cyclical work or suite.” (Wikipedia)
A pause, in other words, in between playing. And I do want to continue playing, no matter how serious or heavy the subject of this blog or my musings may sometimes seem. For I am of the opinion (along with many others) that the convergence of ecological and other crises we are currently experiencing could well be the prelude to a much more beautiful world, even if that sometimes seems further away than ever. A bit like the process that the caterpillar goes through in the cocoon, which at first glance seems extremely destructive (the caterpillar is completely destroyed) and in no way seems to herald the wonderful beauty of the butterfly (caterpillar and butterfly share exactly the same genetic material, by the way).
I have decided to take a short break from my own 'play' with this blog and musings, in order to make time and space for a number of things that have been waiting in the wings for a while. A temporary change of playing in between plays. What will I be doing?
I want to do some 'maintenance' on the website. This includes making adjustments to certain pages and also editing a few older posts and essays, and retroactively adding audio versions to them.
I want to create the promised page with links. This is something I have wanted to do for a long time and that I consider important: this page should provide a clear overview of links to people and institutions that I consider important and relevant to the information I am trying to help synthesize and disseminate.
I want to prepare the YouTube channel of A Biosphere Project for renewed use. Initially, I used YouTube to provide audio versions of the longer posts and essays, but since I switched to Soundcloud for that, the YouTube channel has been lying idle. My intention is to experiment with short videos on YouTube in the near future, in which I want to talk about everything I am working on in the blog and the project in a concise and accessible way. I am also considering the possibility of starting a kind of podcast on that channel, in which I will engage in conversation with others.
I am planning a page with 'featured videos'. The blog posts and musings of the past two years contain a lot of videos that may be difficult to find now. My intention is to bring together the most important videos with lectures and interviews from the various posts on one page on the website.
I am also considering some changes to the homepage, including greater visibility for my photographic work, which may play an important role (play!) in the future travel project.
I am continuing the research for that travel project, something I will tell you more about after the 'pause'.
I am going to make some adjustments and maintenance to my Substack page, and am considering using it in a slightly different way. Until now, I simply copied the posts on this website to Substack, but in the future I am considering turning it into a different kind of blog, parallel to the one on this website.
I will continue emptying my former painting studio in Antwerp, in order to possibly rent it out. This is a project that will still require a lot of work (or play).
I want to start preparing for a possible studio sale of my visual art that is still in my possession, to help finance the future travel project.
All of this will keep me busy a while. I expect the pause in the blog and musings to last about one and a half to two months, depending on how I progress with everything mentioned above.
You can however use the time to catch up on older posts, musings, or essays that you didn't have time to read or listen to before. This interlude could be an opportunity to get acquainted with certain texts in which I have laid the foundation for my further work (play!). Here are a few suggestions, also for newer subscribers to the blog who may never have seen these 'older' posts. You can consider the following posts important for a good understanding of where I want to go with my research and the project. Many of them can also be found in the 'Featured' blog feed on the website's homepage.
If you never got around to it, you can turn to the two essays 'Let Us Not Talk About the Climate Crisis Any Longer', Part One and Part Two.
Part One already has an audio version, Part Two is one of the essays I still want to provide with audio.
In Part One, I give a sobering summary of all the ways in which our biosphere is in dire straits, which is why I propose that we stop talking about 'the climate crisis' because that crisis is only one aspect of what I prefer to call 'the biosphere crisis'. In part two, I try to place this convergence of crises in a broad framework of systems thinking, psychology, mythology, storytelling and metaphysics, with an emphasis on why there is still reason to hope that a better world can emerge from the chaos that only seems to be getting more intense at this point. It is a text in which I touch on many of the things I want to be working on in the coming years, such as the amazing new visions emerging in (quantum) physics, astrophysics, evolutionary biology, and the study of the phenomenon we call “consciousness,” visions that could form the basis for a new worldview and a new way of finding our place in our world and our universe. I also discuss this in the blog posts 'Science and the Emerging New Paradigm', 'The Scientist, the Monk and the Philosopher', and also in the musings 'The Most Important 25 Minutes of Your Life', 'Five Sigma (You Are Not Going to Believe This)', 'A Wondrous Afternoon With an Extraordinary Scientist, Gentleman and Visionary', and the essays 'A Selfie of Planet Earth', and 'Let Us Not Talk About the Climate Crisis Any Longer (Part Two)', particularly in chapter 10 ('A Wondrous New Panorama').
In the musings 'It's All Magic', Part One and Part Two, I talked about new (and at the same time ancient) ways of looking at the fundamental mystery of the world and existence with wonder, as a way of 're-enchanting' the world and falling in love with it again. This may be the only way to truly find our way through the maze of crises we are going through.
In the musing 'And What if We Are All Still ‘Flat Earthers?', I discuss the ways in which our perception of our world and ourselves is not yet aligned with the scientific knowledge that we live on a sphere hurtling through endless space. And in the musing 'What’s Your Story?', I talk about stories as foundations of worldviews, and worldviews as the foundations of how we interact with our world, a domain that I will continue to explore in the coming years.
And then, of course, there is the recent series of six musings on silence, which I am quite pleased with and would highly recommend if you haven't read or listened to them yet.
You can also read the short and/or long version of the summary of the areas on which my research has focused in recent years. You will find this summary in the menu at the top, under the heading 'Project'.
Or you could listen to the seven delightful sound recordings of lectures/performances by the inimitable philospher/ shaman/ wise man Alan Watts in the blog post 'Playing Hide and Seek With Alan Watts', seven gems of wisdom for times of crisis, dating back to the sixties and seventies but having lost none of their power, humor and poignancy for these times. Very warmly recommended!
So, that is a small selection of what has appeared in the blog and musings over the past few years, which you can delve into if you haven't had a chance yet.
Once this pause is over, I want to continue blogging and musing, and you can look forward to posts about bio-regions and regenerative agriculture, about post-activism, about travelling (and flying) in times of biosphere crisis, and visions of a possible civilization that would require much less energy. Expect also more about degrowth and other visions of economics, about the wonderful complexity of the water cycle, about 'keystone species' and how they play a decisive role in ecosystems, and about how humans could also become a 'keystone species' on this Earth and regenerate ecosystems.
In the future musings, I want to give a voice to a series of scientists from different fields who have one thing in common: they are convinced that our current view of reality is wrong, and that 'reductionist materialism' is absolutely not an adequate description of who or what we are and what the world is. This insight could be crucial in developing a new worldview that would help us take a different place in the whole of our biosphere, because our worldview largely determines what we do and don't do on our planet. I would also like to continue musing about how to be 'good ancestors', about the benefits of musing about deep time and space, and about 'moral ambition', as Rutger Bregman's new book is called, a powerful plea that we should all start to play (play!) our part and use our talents in the transitions that await us. And I also want to defend the idea that if you want to improve yourself, you can just as well start with the world (a reversal of the usual mantra).
To be continued! Possibly at a slightly slower pace than before, to leave room for preparations for the travel project and explorations for a first book. Not to mention the space for the necessary rest and relaxation every now and then, something I sometimes tend to forget.
If you enjoy the blog and my musings, and find my project worthwhile, you may consider supporting me and the project with a one-time or recurring donation, or by becoming a supporting member or sponsor. You can find all the information you need on the support page. I will send a more comprehensive reminder about this after the 'interlude'. My work is supported by donors, and you can also contribute if you wish. Every contribution is valuable and helps me to devote all my time and attention to A Biosphere Project.
I wish you all the best during the 'interlude' and look forward to what will follow. Thank you for reading and for following the project!
All the best to you,
Filip
