Matthew
The most unique thing about this planet is the fact that as far as we know, it's the only planet that can sustain our species. So we're pretty lucky to have a place for us to live in this universe.
Topic
Type
Article | 05:03 mins read
Portrait of
Matthew
Location
Copenhagen, Denmark
Still photography by
Frederik Kjeldgaard
My name is Matthew Bailey. I’m 33 years old. I’m a performing artist and a teacher.
What was your childhood like?
My childhood was a lot of school and a lot of church. My school was connected to a church, which I went to, and my father was a singer in a gospel band called The Sons of Promise. And my mother was the office manager at the school. So I was there a lot.
I wanted to become a marine biologist and then I wanted to study law. And then I made friends with the wrong crowd. And at 17, to make the long story short, one of my friends committed a murder. And that split up our whole group of friends. And in my what should have been final year of high school I went through a depression. And then I didn’t know what to do. I just slowly was going down and down and down in terms of my motivation and enthusiasm for being at school at all. And I dropped out, and it was when I dropped out of school that I was invited to take classes at a dance studio. It gave me a purpose at the time when I felt purposeless. And it also gave me a way to express myself when words couldn’t. At the time, I think there was a lot of sadness.
I could process my moments, my feelings in those moments through a movement, I could feel something and interpret that through my body, through movement, and I spent many hours alone in the studio not working on anything in particular, but just moving through the space.
There was also, a lot of moments where it was like a meditation where you kind of just escape reality and all the things that are happening around you and you just quiet your mind and allow the energy to flow through you. And whatever happens physically, it is as it is and you don’t judge yourself.
So I’m going to give you a little challenge now. Please close your eyes and describe the process you go through when you start dancing.
When I begin to dance, I feel, like a shift from the external to the internal. I start to feel my body in a different way. I can feel the surfaces of my body. I can feel how my body relates to the space around me. I feel my muscles stretching against the bones and the joints.
Oftentimes I will think of where the movement is being initiated from and then feeling how the rest of my body reacts and follows that initiation. Then I allow the echo of that movement to happen until it stops. So it’s this constant. It’s like yelling into a dark space, hearing the Echo Go and then yelling again just before the Echo dies and then yelling again and then yelling again and then feeling the reverberation of that echo follow and flow through my body.
And even though I can sense the whole world around me and I can feel my body in relation to the space around me, I am not there. It’s like I disappear, my personality disappears, and I’m just a body and energy moving through space and reacting to choices and the ripples of those choices.
How is your relationship to nature?
My relationship to nature is a relationship with a lot of love. I love nature. I’ve been outside my entire life running through the woods. I had a wild imagination so I could entertain myself in the forest for hours and hours. I loved also the beach. I have a deep fear and respect for the ocean.
I think nature is super dangerous and powerful. We are so small in comparison to our environment, and we know so little about the true nature of our reality. So I have a deep love and respect and curiosity for our environment as a whole.
In nature you feel a lot more carefree. You can lose yourself, lose sense of your responsibilities because you are back out into this sort of what seems like infinite environment.
What makes you happy?
A sense of stability and balance and peace in regards to my life situation as well as my relationships with other people, make me happy and feel calm. There are some moments in life where, you know, excitement brings me happiness. But in general, peace is what makes me most happy. Peace and balance.
What is sustainability for you?
Sustainability is balance. When you use what can be replenished and where you don’t over consume and where everyone has access to all of the resources that are necessary for them to consume what they need and replenish what is necessary.
What makes this planet unique?
What makes this planet unique is the fact that it is the perfect environment for us to exist at this point. It’s an environment that has more than enough resource for all of us.
Another thing really beautiful about the planet is the fact that it is a finite environment, so we do have to be aware and conscious of how we use things and how much we use because the balance can be thrown off quite easily with the technologies we have. But just in general, the fact that we can sustain life here is pretty unique.
What do you fear the most? Regarding to the planet.
In regards to the planet, I fear that the world that we leave behind is not going to be able to provide the life that we’ve been able to enjoy at this point in time. It´s scary for me to think that our children may have to suffer through some pretty incredible disasters because of the choices that we’ve made. And the scary thing is that it’s already happening. If these are the storms and fires that we’re having now, and if we look at the time and how things have accelerated in the last decade, two decades in our lifetime, it’s insane. I think that everything that we can do to start to reduce our impact and slow things down is worth doing.
What can we do as individuals to save the planet?
We have the knowledge and much of the information and technology available to us to change our lifestyles and to do what’s necessary to slow things down. But I think that we as human beings are stubborn and we want things as we want them, and we like our habits. We like our cycles.
The science is out there about eating meat and about the effects of meat, agriculture on the environment and also within our own bodies, the consumption of meat on a daily basis is scientifically proven not to be good for our systems.
But we enjoy things and we like to continue to consume the things that we enjoy. And I think that the one thing that would help us out in a big way is if we could all change our minds about the value of our lives without the luxuries that we’ve grown accustomed to.
Our world is run through economies. And that being said, we as consumers have the power to influence economies by what we choose to invest in. When you make a purchase, you’re investing in a specific area of the economy and by continuing to invest in businesses that do not practice sustainable.
I think that it’s a fantasy to think that we can continue to buy a new outfit every weekend and mangoes through the year for the rest of human existence and there not be a negative effect on our environment.
It’s the same with fast fashion, the production of clothing all year round. It’s not necessary, and I think that many people are choosing not to buy. And of course, when the demand decreases, then they produce less. So we speak with our wallets. We can invest in those projects that are going to help to move us towards balance like, local agriculture or local vintage shop or just sourcing local work.
And we can also talk to each other and try to change people’s minds who don’t believe the same.
If you only had one year to live what would you do?
If I had one more year to live, I would connect with as many people that I could. Loved ones, friends and family. And I would have as many incredible experiences as possible. And if I had the opportunity to go to outer space and see the planet from outer space, that would be the final cherry on the cake, really. Just to get that perspective of all of us, just as one spot would be incredible.
