Organ Music

A rule from a benign landlord

When Sarah closed her practice Sarah Wigglesworth Architects in 2024, we had space available in our office. Given that space is a precious thing in London, we wanted to use it generously and with intent. We therefore offered it to the core team of the Hard Art collective, an amazing group of people who have been involved in activism and thinking - founders and members of XR, of Animal Rebellion, of Ocean Rebellion and other organisations. It is a joy to work with them. The team at Stock Orchard Street, catalyses and supports the broader cultural collective of artists, activists, and scientists standing in solidarity in the face of climate and democratic collapse. Our hope is that the office at Stock Orchard Street becomes known as the alternative to Tufton Street, as missives, actions, writings and hope emerge from its walls. However, every landlord has to have rules. This is one we set on the day Trump and Vance set out to humiliate Zelensky.

ORGAN MUSIC

Ted Cullinan, the late great architect, once recounted to Sarah and me the protocols for his dinner parties. This was when he and most of his friends were in their eighties, and inevitably conversation returned to people’s health, failing organs and various ailments. Ted therefore had a rule of only being allowed to talk about what he called ‘organ music’ for the first ten minutes of dinner, before moving on to other things.

I think of this story as I hear the conversation bubble up in our office from the Hard Art crew on the floor below. The mood, particularly at the start of each day, is dominated by the latest Trump/broligarch/autocratic/climate denier/fascist outrage. The same sense of being overwhelmed by these forces is true of the podcasts that I used to hold dear; it is all they talk about. Steve Bannon makes clear that this avalanche of outrage – ‘the days of thunder’ – is absolutely intentional. It achieves several objectives all at once. First, it takes all available bandwidth of anyone who is not on the same page, and this effectively brings us onto their page, leaving us no space to think on our own terms, no air to breathe afresh. Second, it means that everyone exposed to the avalanche is left in a permanently reactive state. Any of our actions are simply counteractions, and this limits their agency because they are framed by the density of the activity and values that we are so violently opposed to. This paralysis is true of all binaries. Third, our responses are always saturated with fury. Again, the other side wins, because from a state of pure fury it is not possible to imagine other futures; through tears of anger it is hard to see care or find love. Finally, their shifts make us believe that the Overton window is on the move along an axis from left to right. In reality, the house where those windows were placed has crumbled. Left and right no longer have the same meaning, truth has no stability, and all structures are febrile. The urgency now is to stop looking through their windows, and instead make our own, but not as a frame, as a set of relationships.

So our suggestion for Hard Art Towers, aka Stock Orchard Street, is that we introduce the Organ Music rule. Ten minutes a day where outrage and reaction are allowed, then we get on with what is really important. We have between us all read and talked enough to know why these brutalities are happening and to know where the cruelty is coming from (though I must admit to being shocked by the extent of the cruelty). An awareness of those causes is more important as a way of being than is a state of endless reaction to the symptoms. You can’t switch off the news altogether, because that means any proposals have no context. You can’t just talk of joy, because that is escapism. But we can’t allow ourselves to be overwhelmed by the forces of evil, because that means we are doing their work for them—and right now, more than ever, the urgent task is to get on with our project.