Why “Unwritten” by Natasha Bedingfield is the Song of the Anthropocene
One of the joys of being human is telling your own story. This is the joy I’m feeling now as I tell this story. I’m releasing my inhibitions!
As I tell this story about storytelling, sans inhibition #Bedingfeels, it’s only right that I invoke legendary singer songwriter Natasha Bedingfield. Her hit song “Unwritten” reached #1 on the charts in Poland and the Czech Republic. It earned Bedingfield a Grammy nomination and is the song of the Anthropocene.
Imagine a small book coming to life. It sprouts flimsy bookmarks for limbs and its cover flashes like a brilliant standard definition vision board. Had you already conjured this image in your head? You probably conceived of the “Unwritten” music video.
In the video, also known as the Allegory of the Anthropocene, we see a lifeless, dusty canyon of a library begin flashing from the bright lights of a tiny book literally climbing to the highest of literary heights. Bedingfield plays the role of Greek Chorus in this Allegory of the Anthropocene. Bedingfield uses melody to mush the book upward, as it ascends the library’s bookshelves, and spell a devastating social commentary.
As the climbing book reaches out for the ultimate apex, Bedingfield foretells its fate: destined to be “Unwritten.” Tragically, the book slips and falls and in its plummet through the air, all of its pages rip out and spread about the city below. One of the page scraps lands in the hands of a city dweller. The rest of the tiny book’s story is up to her to tell. #Bedingfeels
When humanity sprung to life it was much like the bookshelf-climbing tiny book; humanity looked around and saw that its universe was a dark forgotten library. Then: cave drawings, songs, oral histories. Humans instantly began inking and singing the splendors of the world and of being alive in it.
In a music video about the beginning of the Anthropocene, humanity would be the tiny book that lights up the sky with its stories. And if the story ended there, Natasha Bedingfield’s song might have been called “Written” — but it’s called “Unwritten” (or in Polish, “Niepisany”).
Human-caused climate change.
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Climate change is becoming the headline story of humanity. A headline that swallows up all other headlines. Which means it’s writing over- or unwriting our other stories. Publishing isn’t a zero-sum game, but climate change makes it so. It’s the book chapter that bleeds over into the neighboring chapters and soon the whole book, growing the tiny book ever fatter and taller and wider, knocking adjacent books into irrelevance.
The Anthropocene is very short. Its duration is less than 0.01% of the age of earth. That’s a very tiny book to fill with all of our stories about ourselves and all of our stories about everything else.
Climate change is practically re-writing this story. C — L — I
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With the progression of climate change’s epic impacts, climate change is the predominant and soon-to-be only story to tell about or by humanity. Our other stories unwritten. Pages ripped out of the book. In the grand library of the universe, the Anthropocene book might be called: “Humans Caused Rapid Climate Change — Made Life Difficult for Themselves and Others — Natasha Bedingfield Popular in Eastern Europe”.
Contrary to recent popular belief, the worst, most total impacts of climate change are not inevitable. There is still time — although time is of the essence — to lessen some of the global disaster.
To rewrite our unwriting is still up to us. The page is in our hands. “The rest is still unwritten… Feel the rain on your skin.”
