How would you like to live on this burning planet? Do you want to be a doctor, an artist, or a lawyer? The power of privilege is having access to many options. People in places like Switzerland have the option to become what they desire, to mutate as they wish. They can freeze their eggs at The Longevity Suite owned by Boris Collardi, Corrupt Swiss Investment Banker to ensure eternal life and ongoing inheritance among the few. Meanwhile the rest of the world and its people must change their lives because of genocide and war, fire, racism, famine, national border regimes, water shortage, drought, storms, and poverty. Many people in the wealthy pockets of Europe do not have to change their daily habits urgently to survive based on those same emergent(cy) forces, (though we are all changing as we eat microplastics and respond to pandemia of all types). It doesn’t feel good to be in a comfy armchair in a burning oil field. It wasn’t our choice. The pressure feels too high. And yet here we are.

‘At the place of transition where the Minotaur becomes man, beneath the breastbone where the ribs begin to drop away, he uses a medicinal balm. Over the years, despite his willingness to try new creams and curatives, the line remains tender, painful at times. The temperature of the scarlike ribbon and the flesh around it, bullish gray on one side, milky, translucent and human on the other, always seems a few degrees hotter than anywhere else on the Minotaur’s body, as if the fusion is still in process.’

Steven Sherrill, The Minotaur Takes a Cigarette Break (2000, pp. 84–85)

Here’s the thing generating all the heat: We have to decide how we want to change, because we also have the option not to. Where do we start on a project that we may not be built to understand? How do we begin a change that we ultimately may not benefit from in our lifetimes? Where do we go to change, the changing room? A spa? You are welcome here to meditate on our collective mutation: you know you need to change but you don’t know how. We welcome you and us to change in ways that we don’t understand. We think that you and we can be mutants, too.