Disclaimer: I wrote this in 2012 as an atheist man, neither of which I consider myself to be now. It was originally written as an artistic recruitment letter, and I handed copies out to musicians I thought were cool. Nobody got in touch. I may come across a little crazy in the following words, and I think I'm probably more in that direction now than ever, but I'm way more chill these days. Honest...

Also, now I call myself The Middle Corner.

Hi there. My name is Chris Biatch (ridiculous name I know, but it’s my cool punk name from when I was younger) and there may be a slight chance that I’ve been smoking too much weed recently. I have been watching lots of conspiracy documentaries, read a few non-fiction books and countless articles (a.k.a. stereotypical stoner half research), and I’m getting myself really quite paranoid about what the future seems to hold for our planet, as I’m sure many of you creative types will do as well. The worrying trend seems to be that the rich get richer (and more powerful) and the poor get poorer (and become less represented)(and cannot afford basic human necessities)(and begin to freeze or starve to death), while we continue to destroy the planet by consuming so much of the bullshit that the rich are telling us we need, until the tipping point, leading to bloody riots, power vacuums and increasing numbers of scared people putting their faith in fascist regimes. Or if we’re lucky, we might all just get frozen in place in the new ice age, right before the first Molotov cocktail lands. Everybody knows that it is happening, but the majority of people are too strongly conditioned by the media to really organise. Look around the world, revolution is happening EVERYWHERE. Just because we live in the UK does not mean that we don’t have our own flash point, and I genuinely believe we’re nearly there.

What I want to do does not involve marches, flags or protests. I don’t think they are the answer at all. People marching with banners come across to the general population as a bunch of hippies and students looking for something to rebel against. They believe what they are spoon fed by the morning papers, the evening news and their favourite celebrities. The problem with 21st century society isn’t just the absurd laws and tax havens, but the way that our society perceives itself as tolerant, free thinking and constantly improving when it is materialistic, individualistic and closed-minded. There needs to be a change in the way people think – a social paradigm shift.

Which brings me to why I am contacting you guys about this. I’ll be honest; my opinions on pretty much everything have been directly affected by the movies I have watched, the books I have read and the songs that I have listened to. People look to art in all its forms to help with so many of life’s questions, almost as a sort of moral compass. How many times have you read an article or seen an interview with one of your heroes and they’ve said something that has just clicked for you? Maybe it felt like they had just perfectly summed up what you sort of already thought? Or maybe it helped you completely alter your perspective on something. I think between us, we could really begin to change the way that people live and think.

My idea begins with a book/pamphlet/leaflet sort of thing called the Book of Problems (the name is definitely debateable). I don’t know who’d be up for contributing, but I was hoping to make as comprehensive a list as possible of everything that is wrong with the world, and then coming up with simple solutions. And fuck everyone who says that some of the problems aren’t that simple. Yes they are. It is people accepting people saying it’s not that simple that stops it from being that simple. It won’t just cover the environment, politics and the economy though; it will talk about people’s attitudes towards education, sex, relationships, love, sexuality, gender identity, compassion, empathy, drugs, mental health, self-discovery, creativity, friendship, community, social networking, conflict, fashion, food and anything else we can think of. I want the problems and solutions to be very carefully phrased as to have the strongest impact, which I know that many of you lyricists, poets and writers could help me with. I want this to be a slow, formative movement, spread almost exclusively by art and conversations, getting people who agree to keep spreading these same carefully phrased words. It will be a subtle revolution that will not have a name that can be tarred or ripped apart by some cynical right wing journalist with more readers than brain cells.

Depending on how many people would like to get involved with this first step towards saving the future, we could either meet in person at my flat or anywhere else suitable and private, or we could find some chat room online that we could all talk in. I don’t know too much about computers, so if anybody knows of any good chat rooms we could use then please let me know.

In the interest of transparency, I have no experience organising anything, so any help from anyone will be greatly appreciated. I see no other way of creating a future I would be happy to leave to my children.