Unstoppable
The Dawn of Decades After Paris
We come from all the lands to rally once again
Connected by all the dots of droughts, melting and rain.
We poured into the streets, a flooding of hopeful beats.
Four hundred thousand strong, the swell of a rising sea.Together we march in the streets of New York.
Mosaic of hope in the streets of New York.
An echo of fears, from years of falling on deaf ears.
The momentum won’t stop, and they know.We are unstoppable, another world is possible.
And we’ll turn it around, from the mountain to the shore.
The ocean’s acidic, rising and getting sick.
Hear our voices and those of a billion more.
We are unstoppable, another world is possible.Together we march in the streets of New York.
Mosaic of hope in the streets of New York.
An echo of fears, from years of falling on deaf ears.
The momentum won’t stop, and they know…
Two romantics met in 2013.
One was unpacking a twisted sense of ambition after working inside a state agency responsible for solving the mounting risks of climate instability. The other was dreaming of the next soulful musical outpouring to share with the world.
They didn’t know it yet, but they were unstoppable.
Feeling the Heat.
“Your mom is hot” he stated plainly as she escorted him to the door.
Heather raised her eyebrow and smirked, matching his playfulness. At least he didn’t notice her awkward slouch and bucktooth grin in the fading family portrait.
“Yeah, she is.”
Danton was one of the single men ushered to her 31st birthday. One of a few new acquaintances she had invited on a whim.
The rest were a surprise presence her friends issued, given her recent emergence from a tumultuous divorce. In retrospect, it was a veritable sausage party… yet she was verging on veganism.
2013 was the year Typhoon Haiyan decimated the Philippines. Heather’s heart was breaking with each increasingly terrifying disaster threatening the world’s most vulnerable people. She didn’t want anything else trampling it.
Danton was lightheartedly embarking on a mission to draw on people’s emotions and imagination. Perhaps building on his affinity for break-up songs: what the world could use is a tune to leave behind some bad, self-destructive habits.
Art was the path forward for him, and he was keen to invite Heather on it.
2014: the People’s March
As Heather prepared to break up with her day job bringing people together in the fight against climate change, she sought to express her vocational passion in some untethered way.
Climate Week in New York city, a region of the continent she had never been to, was beckoning her. It was resonant of all the tensions she was feeling.
An environmental movement with conflicting impacts, bringing people together internationally, while screaming for safety for their locality. A necessary moment of access to the Titans of government and industry who might somehow find their plea undeniable.
Danton figured it would be good inspiration for his music. He was keen to produce the next album to follow his first, Morcenx, which was an application of the focus from his undergrad degree. Could simply hearing messages about our pending future with an unstable climate help people be motivated to act?
They marched in the streets. They absorbed the chants. They snuck into the Harvard Club to sit next to the international journalists tapping notes as President Obama exclaimed “we are the first generation to feel the records breaking, and the last generation with the chance to do something about it.”
It sparked a desire to raise awareness of the importance of the upcoming COP21 event in Paris. They imagined what it would be like to reflect on the global climate action commitments… decades after.
That evening they found themselves in an elevator travelling up to a party for philanthropic ventures. They were standing next to cocktail party clad executives. Adorned in their marching gear, and holding a guitar, the owner of Tom’s Shoes asked: “Are you the entertainment?”
Someday, they mused.
2015: The Release
You will not find the album under the title of Decades After Paris. A first iteration of this creative partnership is under the name “Danton Jay and Heather Lynn.”
Aware of the dreamy, early relationship cloud they were in… they didn’t want to create something beautiful and meaningful and have it be tainted by a break up. Heather and Danton framed DAP as a project: something open to collaboration. Something resilient.
However, the name Decades After Paris was the title of the album, and it rolled and resonated enough for it to become the name of their duo… who also decided to signal their resilience by getting married in 2016.
There are many more little stories to tell about this rich, creative time. Stories about the sleepless nights crafting lyrics. About how their community came together to kick start the project. Or stories about their network and friends helping them to promote their project on National radio and on international channels that wanted to signal the importance of art and music in the movement to act on climate.
Ten Years Later
It has been 10 years since Danton and Heather met. November 2014 will be one decade since they travelled to NYC. 2015 will be a decade since the Paris accord. So much can happen in a short time. A lot MUST happen.
We still feel the world is carried away by distractions from what matters for our collective survival.
And, there are so many more ways we see people lifting our hope and demonstrating that we can carry our way through this.
As we approach the next Conference of the Parties (COP28), we’ll continue to share the songs and stories behind Decades After Paris.
If you want to listen to the whole story (including two singles released since), here it is:
