If I Ruled the World: Toyah Willcox

I loathe AI and that songwriters are using it. We are creative human beings and our creativity uniquely creates a unique culture. But the one thing that AI could really help us with is a repercussion predictor. What I mean by that is if you make that move in anger, revenge or envy, you need to know the consequences of your actions.

I think AI would really help young people so much if they could just have a level of repercussion prediction, they might think twice rather than taint their entire life with a bad action. Within social media and general social contact via the internet, a repercussion predictor would be really useful.

The majority of us forget to put life balance first. Quality of life balance adds to the quality of everyone. We are very lucky in the UK that we have two days off a week. I often work in America and I’m so shocked at how hard Americans are expected to work. I think that the rule of life balance should actually be a law, so that the quality of your life suits you as an individual.

You would have choices but also that you are reminded that life isn’t all about work, email, bureaucracy and accounting. Everything that a postal service used to do has been deflected back to us. In my working world, I would insist that were two days a week where there is no communication with work.

I read a lot of sci-fi and I’ve just read this in a book called Planetfall by Emma Newman. It’s about recolonising on a planet that took 73 years to reach. Every house has a 3D printer which directly recycles patterns that you get off the internet for your pots and pans, cutlery and clothes. It’s recycling within the home, which stops the contamination of recycling moving from country to country—so you’d end up with a clean sea.

The idea of this is that nothing is thrown away, it’s put into different compartments. You can recycle your metals, plastics, paper and clothes. 3D printers are very expensive at the moment but I think it’s the way of stopping the mass destruction caused by waste.

There is no shame in food distribution and food banks. If you need food, your body needs food. It’s as simple as that. Good food lasts five days and on the shelves in many places, it’s only allowed to last one day. I would like to know that I could gift the overflow of vegetables that I’m growing in my garden to a food bank or an honesty table outside my house knowing that people who need it would take it.

Honesty tables are not asking for anything in return, it’s just asking people not to behave greedily, and to take what they need. I’ve seen this in a very small Alaskan township where you have, outside a supermarket, a bank of refrigerators. You can go to them and donate practical and lovely things. People can just go and take what they need. It works.

I was so shocked when I learned the amount of children who don’t have a bed. I think it should be law that every child born has a designated sleeping area. It sounds so ridiculous but how have we come to that?

There’s a fantastic charity in Leeds called Zarach, run by a charismatic young woman, that simply collects beds and delivers them to families. We need more of these people in the world!

What I mean by that is that when I was a child, we were taken to places where we could experience how those four elements contributed to our lives. I think increasingly we’re moving away from realising that Earth is a living organism. It came from fire, we come from water, we need air and earth. It’s as simple as that. The majority of pebbles we walk on have come from the creation of this planet or have arrived as meteors. There’s no such thing as anything on this planet that is worthless. Everything has the building blocks for life.

This came to me when I was listening to some young teenagers who didn’t know where bacon came from. They had no concept of the living animal providing. I remember as a child that this was enforced on me, that everything has the building blocks for life. Humanity is not a leading life form. It’s the lucky life form at this present time, that developed language, hunting and how to make fire. Fungus is the leading life form. I think we should know that and we should learn our lesson from COVID.

I am very passionate that animals have souls, and most religions say that they don’t. Animals experience empathy, joy and pain. We do not have a right to kill them en masse.

I have never met an animal that does not have empathy. As you get older I think it’s a lot better for you to have a very dominantly vegetarian diet.

I used to live in Menton in France and they would have a national concert day, but I don’t think that’s what it was called. Every school would take the school orchestra out into the square. They would play music and the dance classes would do dance. It was a very beautiful spectacle. I’ve seen it in Israel as well. On one day per week in Israel, most communities will go and dance in the square, with live musicians playing.

A National Concert Day would be where everyone who can play an instrument could go outside their house and play. It’s as simple as that. 

Toyah Willcox tours the UK in October 2023 

Her Toyah Live At Drury Lane album is out now