SHIFTING BASELINE SYNDROME 


   The process by which our perception of the ‘natural’ world
   becomes degraded as the ‘baseline’ shifts with each generation. 

       for Peter Fiennes 
 
When you said ‘Shifting Baselines’ I believed 
You were paying deference to those 
Hard Bop inventions of Charlie Mingus,  
 
Ron Carter’s steady licks alongside Miles,  
Or Jimmy Garrison’s pulsating sound 
On John Coltrane’s sublime A Love Supreme
 
But you were talking about how, today, 
‘Natural’ would be seen by those before us 
As ‘spoiled’, and what we see as ‘neglected’ 
Our children will soon see as ‘natural’… 
 
The way that the sound of the A38 
At the end of the garden has replaced 
The ambience of birds, with countless tyres 
Thrumming their hungry pulse against the pitch. 

 

 

Andy Brown

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