An animist farmer and author whose artistic interests include the courtship of landscapes for food and seed and translating animist thought into the language of physics.
I am an animist farmer and author living in the piedmont of the Southern Appalachians. My artistic interests are the courtship of landscapes for food and seed; the living sculpture that is my home; the performance of school-teaching; and the translation of animist thought into the language of mechanical physics.
In collaboration with my wife, I have co-authored three books. Sacred Violence tells the story of our material withdrawal from the violent economic systems that define our culture. Quantum Justice broadly outlines a theoretical framework for understanding collective human behavior, and Massive Information is a collection of essays that more concisely presents the wandering narrative of Quantum Justice as a synthesis of thermodynamics and gravitational theory.
My work has been published in Dark Mountain (issues 15, 17, and 20), Ecological Citizen Journal, Counterpunch, Resilience.org, and elsewhere.
I make no separation between my art and my life. There’s some irony in the contrast between my written work—which so often tackles the broadest and most abstract roots of our cultural crises—and the mud, bone, sawdust, and blood viscerality of the lived experience giving rise to those words.
Paul's ClimateCultures posts
Super Wicked Problem – or, the Crisis Formerly Known as Climate