EARTHLINES 3: Exit from Fairyland

This week EarthLines publishes its fourth (Winter) issue. You can order your copy here.  During 2012 I have been writing a regular column for EL called Life in Transition. For Issue 4 I wrote about Recconnecting with the Ancestors; this is the piece in Issue 3 (Autumn) that begins at a reading for 52 Flowers.

 “Have you seen nature spirits?” asked the woman who had come to the reading at my local library. “What do you mean?” I asked, playing for time. Because I  knew, of course, exactly what she meant. 

Do you believe in fairies children? 

In the theatres of England children have been clapping their hands together to save Tinker Bell from death for over a hundred years. But even though I spent my childhood in Kensington Gardens, playing hide and seek around the statue of Peter Pan, I only ever saw trees in trees. 

“No, I haven’t,” I replied. But I have seen dragonflies, and bees.” 

I have heard the thunderclap of a peacock butterfly as it flew past in the garden, and felt the shocking vibration of a hummingbird as it hovered between my eyes on the mountain. I have walked at night through a field of glow-worms, gone swimming in a sea of phosphorescence and wished upon a shooting star. I have seen a lady orchid gleam like a torch in the dark wood in France. I have heard the valleys of Wales sing like a male voice choir. On a snowy day among the hoodoos of Utah I heard a pipe playing far below and did not know whether it was a man down there or Kokopelli, as the sound wove around the red rocks like a snake.  

I have experienced these things, and felt my heart jump. I have been held too in the spell of theatres and fairytales, and felt the sadness when the show is over and the parade has passed by. I have felt the gloom descend in the small unglamorous rooms of cities, and longed to escape again. Oh, the lights, the lights! 

I know now which feelings I trust, and those I have let go. 

Miles to go before I sleep 

I’m in the beech woods at the Uncivilisation Festival in the Hampshire downs and Jim Hindle, author of Nine Miles is talking about his experiences during the road protests of the 1990s. As a teenager he spent months living in the canopy of English oak trees nearby, where motorways now cut through the chalky land. 

“It was hard,” he said, talking of one oak-clad valley, “not to fall in love with it.”  

We are sitting in a circle and the trees around us are hung with slates commemorating the people who defended some of the most beautiful country in England. It’s a theme this year at the third Dark Mountain festival and one that is pulling me, where other debates about poetry and psychology and myth are not. There is an urgency and a poignancy about these stands against the machine of “progress” that feels real, a testimony I need to hear. How far would we go to put our life on the line for life itself? As road building is now resurfacing (46 major schemes are presently going through the planning process) and forests and mountains and oceans are threatened across the planet, it felt like the key question we needed to ask ourselves, as activists and writers and earth-defenders. 

She was our sister, our mother and our lover, he said. It was difficult not to feel what was happening. as the trees and the streams were killed all around them. 

I am not knocking wonderland. At night, under the stars at this festival, strange creatures emerge from the woods in the shape of dragons and hares, ravens and stags, to watch the humans as they dance a Brythonic dance around the fire to the music of bagpipe and violin. They are weaving the threads of  mythic story into our lives, and we love them for that. We live in a mundane world of dispiriting statistics and carbon emissions, and the depiction of the earth as an environment and ourselves as an unwanted population, does not speak to the deep ancestral places within us, or with our human hearts. 

It’s hard to defend life when it is being quantified by scientists, even those who argue that Gaia is sentient and atoms acts like consciousness. We need the mythos to fully comprehend its complexity. We need the sound of pipes among the stones and trees to feel at home. We need to fall in love with places to belong. What we don’t need is to escape into another heartless realm, ruled by superbeings who consider humans stupid and servile. We need to know what being human requires from us, and how wild nature is intrinsic to that knowledge. What part perception plays in all our liberation. 

Breaking open the head

One thing I know: when you shift out of your rational objectifying “left hemisphere” mind, you can see the fabric of the earth through your mythic “right hemisphere”, informed by the feeling of your heart: you can experience beauty and intelligence in the tiniest of flowers and the hugest of mountains. But there are obstacles in the way of this kind of perception. Our ancestors did not see the earth as a motorway view from a car window. This way of seeing has been systematically flattened by the schools of civilisation, and our desire for other deeper, more resonant dimensions distracted by an entertainment business that has been running for thousands of years. 

There are many ancient warnings against humans losing themselves in fairyland, in a deathless world of godlike athletes and fairy princesses, of starlets and enchanted mansions, places where the party never never ends. These realms demand an inhuman perfection from mortal beings and hold us all hostage as we watch their performances transfixed. 

But the earth -  wavy, wonky, pied, feathered, freckled, slippery – traps no one. It is a place of change and liberation. All empires know this in their own way and strive to keep their human workers caged in a mono-dimensional world, disconnected to its multi-dimensional nature. The shiny shows with their highly-managed emotions are part of this cage. They are a replacement for the true feelings of our hearts.  

Nature meanwhile is presented as being something outside ourselves, under control in enclosures, categorised and protected by Science. We are informed by intelligent people, who teach us The Facts, that there is no such thing as “wild” anymore. It’s all gone, they insist, disappearing whole forests, mountain ranges, tigers, glaciers and butterflies with a dismissive wave of the hand. 

But of course it is not: the wild is everywhere, penetrating the geometric heaven and hell of the civilised world that feeds on it, like a varroa mite on the back of a honeybee. It exists, even in the stony fabric of the cities, in the flowers between the train tracks, in the rain that slides down the windows, in ourselves - in the encounters we have had with the wild places, in our memories and imaginations. In the rivers and rocks of our bodies, in the wind of our breath and the roar of the oceans in our blood. Maybe if we had a keener sense of what that means we would be urgently putting ourselves in the way of the machines that cut down and divert the natural beauty world. Maybe we would be less keen to give the trees to gnomes and goblins, and our gardens to devas and instead pay attention to what being human requires of us. 

But some of us have run widdershins into the Snow Queen’s realm, lured by the promises of power. We find ourselves trapped on the Lake of Reason. We cannot hear our sister call us, we cannot hear our grandmother’s drum. We have forgotten who our lover is, who we are ourselves. The Queen has frozen our hearts, and we are stuck in squares and pixels, crystallised, haughty, cold, indifferent to all who visit our house. Something needs to crack us open and break the spell. Someone needs to bring us home. 

Long shore drift 

On Southwold common the circus stands deserted. The pier is empty and the beach awaits the matinee performance, where each day people come to take off their clothes and immerse themselves in sea and sunlight, to touch the wild edge of the kingdom. It is early morning and I am floating like a starfish, moved by currents down the coast, sand martins skimming the surface, a seal swimming below and sometimes appearing, a sleek head looking strangely like my own.  

It seems to me in such a moment that the most radical act we can do now is to make ourselves at home on earth – at one with sea and bird and creature - and remember how that feels, and keep remembering. That these brief encounters become our measure, rather than the bright exception in our lives. That instead of secreting them away like a holiday postcard, and consoling ourselves with entertainments, we bring that moving earth-sea feeling into everything we do, that kinship and closeness with all beings into every exchange we have, and most especially within ourselves. Because the most dangerous machine we have to halt is not the digger in the woods, but the one inside our own heads. And the greatest ally we have in this action lies in our own physical form. 

Wavy  

Wonky 

Dappled 

Feathered, 

Freckled  

Slippery 

Warm  

Alive.

Slow Train to Hebden Bridge

This month is all about time. I have been running up against a major deadline with the new edition of the Transition Free Press and haven't had a minute spare to write any posts. Ironic then that this week's report should be an introduction to Playing for Time - a collaborative handbook about Transition and the Arts, authored by Lucy Neal. Last year we set off to Hebden Bridge in Yorkshire to visit the house where the main part of the book will be created.

Heading North
The North is different my mother would say. People are more friendly and direct. She was from Yorkshire and would fiercely defend the wild moors and noble market towns of her youth. Heathen Southerners, as we were, we sided with our father (from the Sussex Downs), as they fought an ancient battle over the dinner table.  She was outnumbered.

Sometimes however, roots go deeper than history.

And the North is different. You feel it coming out of Peterborough. some kind of barrier slipping away between people, some rugged shift in the texture of place, stone and brick. The influence of an industrial past. We only went for a day, but it struck me each time I changed trains or breathed in the air. I hardly travel outside East Anglia, so perhaps I have become more finely-tuned to the shifts and changes in landscape and atmosphere. Paying attention and celebrating diversity of places and people lies at the heart of this new work we are embarking on in 2013. It has been a project that Lucy has been focusing on for many years, a culmination of a lifetime collaborating with artists and performers (running the theatre festival, LIFT) and her pioneer work with Transition Town Tooting.

The book will document the practices of creators and makers and directors, who are working with communities within the context of Transition. It encompasses many disciplines - from theatre to writing to crafts, and also those that may not traditionally be considered "art", such as community food-growing or street festivals and pop-up shops. In fact the book questions deeply what the use and function of art is in times of planetary shift and social change. Is creativity there to further entrench a hierarchical, business-as-usual culture, to uphold an Empire which sees Art in terms of commodity or entertainment? Or do artists serve a primary function, as agents of change and cohesion within the collective, moving us from one kind of world to the next? A reminder of all that is possible, and how we can activate the power of our imaginations and deep memory, not only to face the challenges ahead, but to create a future we actually want to live in?

Co-operation
We met at Leeds and took a little train down the Calder Valley. I am exhilarated by the sight of hills with their moorland tops and the rushing rivers (O so flat and slow in Suffolk!) and we alight in Todmorden to meet Esther and Mary, two of the movers and shakers behind the Incredible Edible project. This growing began here in Todmorden in 2005 at the same time as Transition, and shares many of its principles. Like Transition it has spread to countries all over the world, and there are Incredible Edible towns from Lambeth to Brazil.

The project began by "propaganda" aka guerrilla gardening, where pieces of unloved land around the town were planted up with fruit and vegetables for everyone to pick for free. The project has expanded to include school gardens, local food markets, chicken clubs, bee parades, community orchards and growing spaces in public places throughout the town, and even along this railway line.

When Tim the ticket collector died we planted his favourite veg as a memorial, explained Esther (he didn't want flowers). "You've heard of the Bluebell Line, well we have the Broccoli Line." Would we still be here on Saturday when there was a Festival of Lights, they asked, where three towns have a great parade of lanterns and huge puppets, and there is a bike ride all along the valley at night?

We wished we were, but already we are back on the road to Heptonstall, above Hebden Bridge, to find our tiny stone cottage, and meet Mark Simmonds of Co-ops UK. Over a powerful pint of local cider, we discuss the extraordinary amount of community projects that are happening in the area, from workshops in Sheffield to the renovation of some of the "Tops" above the village, to manage the land for wood fuel and berry picking.

Co-operative societies have always flourished in the North, and so it feels right that we begin this co-operative project here among these wild hills and close valley communities. And right too, for writing, for this is the place where the poets Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath once lived and, beyond the ridge, where the Brontes wrote their novels. If set and setting are the prerequisites for all good creative ventures, we are in the perfect place. The next morning we set off on the windiest day of the year to walk to the poets former home. As we head up the road I anticipate a coach and four coming round the brow of the hill, to leave a young women in bonnet and cloak to face her emergent destiny. But she does not come.

We are living in a different time. To discover the enduring images of our time is the task ahead. 

Lumb Bank

This is the table where the main material will be forged. It's the dining room of Lumb Bank, home to a former mill owner, and briefly to Ted Hughes (who was from Heptonstall) and Sylvia Plath (now buried in the churchyard). The house belongs to the Arvon Foundation, who run writing courses throughout the year. The foundation is an integral part of this project and something of a new venture for them as well, as most of their courses focus on individual creative writing of plays, poetry and prose. In early March 12 of us will sit around this table and, guided by two tutors, start exploring and putting together a collective vision for the future of the arts. For the past two months Lucy and I have been holding conversations with many of the people on the project (mostly via Skype). Some will come up here and we'll pull together ways of presenting their work.

The book is in three parts. The first part frames the book and will include essential "big picture" introductions, from Paul Allen of CAT on the history of energy, to Rob Hopkins on Transition. The second main section is a showcase of the different arts practices and people involved, and the third a methodology or roadmap of their practices, so that people in initiatives and communities everywhere can be inspired to do similar work. In the way for example that Anne-Marie Culhane of Grow Sheffield, inspired many of us to run Abundance projects, sharing unwanted fruit from our neighbourhood trees and gardens. Everyone taking part in Playing for Time is a story in their own right and it is my intention this year to write these stories, and give my own take of the process it will take to create a work-in-community, that is the traditional preserve of individuals.

Return
Meanwhile after discussion with the Foundation organisers and an exploration of the house with its barn and gardens and wonderful airy rooms overlooking the valley, we headed back to our separate destinations: Lucy travelling to meet one of her daughters in Sheffield, my four-train journey south and east of the country, with the timetable Mark made for all the arrivals and departures in my hand.

Right now  at 10am I am about to talk with Lucy and our next practitioner and producer, Ruth Nutter, and then it's back to the paper. "I think twenty to eleven is a good time," said Lucy, as she sent me the top picture of the clock. As long as it's not High Noon," I said. "Or as my friend and fierce doorkeeper, Karen Binns used to say, "Two minutes to 12 people - time to wake up."