“SeaMonster Monk” is a ten-minute audio-visual narrative of my long, unfortunate relationship with garbage in the sea. It is a live soliloquy on the deep grief that overtakes me when I am faced with the continued destruction threatening life on the planet. The live action takes place in front of a life-size video projection with natural sound showing my feet walking by the sea. The shore is infested with plastic water bottles, bottle caps, piles of Styrofoam, fishing lines, all sorts of large plastic items, and an array of tiny fragments of plastic washed out by the sea.

Behind the rocks I discover huge knots of discarded nets, colorful ropes covered in seaweed, and I struggle to liberate them. I select certain items, dislodge them from the rocks and set them aside. A few seconds after the video projection has started I appear live in front of the video / stage pushing a wheelbarrow full of the collected items that appear on the screen. As the video unfolds behind me I pull the items one by one out of the wheelbarrow, I examine them and I place them on my body, my head and my feet. As I interact with the discarded / collected objects I speak of the dying whales, the salmon that never made it home, the Great Pacific garbage patch. Eventually I get completely tangled up and buried under the nets and from this place I sing a very popular song from the 1950s which celebrates the seaside, the crabs, and little fish that call the seashore home.

After the song I rise out of the heap in silence, remove the items from my body and change into Indian ashram whites. The video has changed into lighter, more lyrical, floating images. I sit cross-legged on the heap, I close my eyes, and I sing an ancient Sanskrit / Telugu prayer speaking of renunciation, fearlessness, compassion, love for the Earth, as a prayer, a plea for change. I then get up, slowly collect all the items on the stage, place them back into the wheelbarrow and walk off in silence with the sound of the sea from the video.