ecologies of practice, place and body
Slow, immanent, seeping permeation of relation with place and each other (whisper, ripple, shimmer, rumble); nourished by deep listening and field work.
[I confide in your texture]
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ecologies of practice, place and body
Slow, immanent, seeping permeation of relation with place and each other (whisper, ripple, shimmer, rumble); nourished by deep listening and field work.
[I confide in your texture]
Soundcloud
Vimeo
Reflections
Places: Wurundjeri and Bunurong Country
Deeply listening, paying attention. How this sensibility has changed since doing this field work. The subtle, subconscious, slow permeation of ideas and ways of being/sensing/listening/attending (attuning - AM Kanngeiser.)1
I can hear the splashing and bubbling of the creak, traffic left and right. Planes overhead, a few birds chirp. I can hear the leaves rustling as the wind passes through. I can hear a deep rumble beneath me, an accumulation of sound that resonates with the earth.
Earth, you are so loud. The Anthropocene is so acrid. Her singing is percussive and
cruel;
PHHT. CRRK. Xzzzzzz.
The feeling of bitumen under my body feels familiar. It feels familiar in a primordial way,
but its all a ruse. I’m roused into thinking I’m walking on rock that has spent millions of
years undulating with the earth, not a biproduct of patriarchal harvesting. I suppose it’s
all the same though.
Geoff says there used to be a waterway here, he says it’s still here - if we listen close
enough to the crust of the earth, we can hear it gurgle.
Just have to tune out the sounds of electricity and the petrochemicals filling my
lungs first.
But I can still hear birds singing, they remind me of the cacophonies of rainbow lorikeets
and sulphur crested cockatoos that cloaked the mountains where I grew up, deafening
me with their primal screams of joy at dawn and dusk. These days I am mostly deafened
by the hum of industrialisation.
But I am reminded today that the earth is still singing, if I only listen.
So I listen.
The percussive metallic clanging of the Anthropocene falls into rearview, and the earths
song becomes a little louder. I hear the trees. Leaves caressing one another; a gentle
sonnet of symbiosis. Avian appendages dance on the air and flutter in my ears, while
they sing to each other
I like to imagine they are singing to me.
The sun beats down on me, I haven’t drank much water today, I feel dizzy, but it feels
good. I lie down on the grass, I press my ear to the soil, I hoped if I listened hard enough I
could hear the earth sing. I couldn’t. But I could hear the colonised waterway to my right
gurgling, her sulphurous scent is familiar.
We reach a muddy polluted marriage of two waterways. I say hello to an eel. I wonder
what she hears down there, among the microplastics and chemicals that are all she’s
known. I try to communicate with her telepathically: “Is the Anthropocene still loud and
acrid down there? Does the clanging hurt your ears too and fill you with a perpetual
anxiety as well?” She doesn’t respond. I like to think she would’ve said “No. I only hear
the humming of the earth and the anticipatory excitement of the reeds that grow in the
muddy marsh I call my home. What is the Anthropocene?” (I know she’s well more
aware of what it is than I would ever wish.)
I am trying to be less naïve, less essentialist, I know that everything is nature, including
the petrochemicals and the metallic clanging in my ears, but I find it hard to not yearn
for some internalised Judaeo-Christian ideal of eden. I am reminded of my case worker
in rehab; she once spoke to me of the importance of mindfulness and presence. She
spoke of some ‘enlightened’Caucasian self help guru whose name I can’t recall, she
said according to him “everything has it place, and to the enlightened, the sound of a
babbling brook is as beautiful as a busy street”. And I thought that was a nice enough
sentiment, but I find it hard in practice.
– I yearn to only hear the sounds of the birds singing and the plants caressing
one another as the earths breathe animates them.
I know this is probably morally hypocritical of me. I know it will never happen.
I’ll try harder to love the whole symphony.
1. A.M.Kanngeiser. ‘To tend for, to care with: three pieces on listening as method,’ Part 2: being-with.