What is the Meld? (Book Release Reading with Rompus live art collective)

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• published: 30 Jun 2016
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Video clip from the book release for Meld Resistance, book one of the Gardenpunk series. Buy the full book at http://www.gardenpunknovel.com! And see more of Rompus's work at http://therompus.com/! "Days and then weeks blend together in the Meld, playing in the dirt, and nights blend together, playing at the swinger clubs, dancing, attending performances. Every spare square inch is gleaming greenhouse in the sun, green walls to reduce heat build-up and water catchment systems everywhere. We’ve got carbon capture devices on the sidewalks next to the Meld gas dispensers. We’ve got solar arrays next to the rooftop water tanks. Everything’s connected to central systems and constantly being optimized. Everywhere I turn, all the technological solutions to climate change we heard about through the first half of the 21st century are being implemented with rapid speed, assisted by robot hands and augmented construction suits. They give me a room in a house with seven other new and old Meldies. Everyone looks ageless, wrinkles smoothed out, optimistic strides, thin, bird-like bones. Days melt together, hanging out, doing what we do. Clothes are always optional, and comfort with one another comes quickly. Wistful conversations about our lives before the Meld fill our evenings. When the talk gets too sad, we stop talking, sigh, take deep breaths and smile knowingly at each other. We mostly communicate in sentence fragments and laughter. The words never stay with me, but I remember the feeling afterward. A warm, braided feeling, like eight hearts intertwined. Thanks to the airborne drugs we don’t get very hungry in the Meld, but touch happens constantly. Our graffiti covers the old park walls to pave the way for future urban farms. Screens everywhere play nature videos and scenes of lovemaking. To call it softcore pornography seems so crass, when it blends so seamlessly with the scent of honey wheat pumped through the air. Endless pop music plays from towering speakers in the streets. The Meld imparts a synesthesia such that I cannot quite distinguish colors from one another. An indistinguishable colored gemstone glow occasionally covers the world - turquoise, emerald, amber, garnet, cerulean, citrine. Sometimes we go outside to dance madly in the streets for three minutes at a time, with each other, with the music and surrounding colors, before we get tired and have to slow down. Breakfast in the Meld is vitamins and medicines in the tap water to calm our gurgling stomachs. We have one solid meal per day at the block community kitchen consisting of garden vegetables and flavored starches from the solar factories up north. My flesh begins to feel like slack, ropy cables inside me. I can feel my muscles thinning. This is the new evolution. I don’t exert myself too much. Sex happens all day at any time of the day with anyone who’s down, and every time it feels intense, beautiful and sincere. The day consists of navigating emotional undercurrents whose gravity pulls us from playful hesitancy to mutual satisfaction." Are we feeling it yet? Are we feeling the good future? We fight so hard that we forget our heart’s desire is right there in front of us, in the universe’s palm. If only we allow ourselves to receive what is given. If the Meld and its stories are to be believed.