vs.

Neil Young was recently in the news for two things, the first being that he's got a new film out. However, the second, and more relevant story is that whilst showcasing his film at the Berlin Film Festival, the political rocker imparted the following message:

"I think that the time when music could change the world is past... I think it would be very naive to think that in this day and age.

"I think the world today is a different place, and that it's time for science and physics and spirituality to make a difference in this world and to try to save the planet."

Sad words for a generation who once marched against a war to the sounds of 'Ohio', a song written shortly after the Kent State shootings, in which student protestors were gunned down by the national guard. Has Neil Young given up, then?

On the other side of the spectrum, stands, as ever, Noam Chomsky, the most clear-sighted visionary of the actual left. In the Guardian today, Cornelia Parker discusses a sit-down interview she held with Chomsky about apocalypses, both nuclear and environmental, with the focus primarily on the latter. In her own words...

What was the most important thing I learned from Chomsky? That capitalism compels us to work ourselves to death in order to stuff our houses with things we don't need. Perhaps this is one thing art can do: create a new aesthetic, one of austerity.

There are other things art can do. It can imagine the unimaginable. I have just read my first novel in more than two years, Cormac McCarthy's bleak but redemptive The Road, in which the author imagines what the end of the world might look and feel like (McCarthy regularly talks to scientists). Artists can bear witness. We are free radicals in a way that scientists can never be. Humanity may be on the brink of disaster, but this could be an exciting, creative period, with everyone - philosophers, artists, politicians, bus drivers - doing everything they can to avert it. My Chomsky piece is me putting my head above the parapet.

Perhaps Neil Young himself can conclude this article with the most eloquence:

No one song can change the world. But that doesn’t mean its time to stop singing.