pick your sound
"Overlaps may help to explain the common appeal of music and literature as art forms, differences may help to explain any idiosyncrasies in their respective capacities for affective impact"
Arrival
Sunlight. Warmth. These are my first thoughts, hazy and indistinct. First a leaf, then another, then one more, turning light and water into myself. I am told I am one of many. That there are others like me, who serve the same purpose, or a similar one. There is a small one, and two large ones. She rattles off names from a little book; sage, rosemary, basil, mint. She giggles, asking me to guess which one I am, I want to tell her that it doesn’t matter, and that I do not exist to have a purpose. But the small one cannot listen.
Attachment
'In order to make a leaf sequence, all the leaves of a plant are laid out in the order in which they were formed, from the oldest, most basal leaves to the newest most apical ones. It soon becomes apparent that there is a great variety of shapes and sizes and that no single leaf can be seen as representative.'
The small one is excited. I can feel it in the air, how it electrifies with her emotion. The large ones are at home, they listen, they are going to make food together. It is so special. I am to be part of it. Small one, is it my purpose to bring you joy?
‘The plant world asks for a schooling of the imagination not towards ‘objectivity’ (the grasping of objects) but towards participatory movement (thinking with processes)’.
Distance
She makes sounds, without words, without meaning. It is so important to her. The sound peters out through my leaves. Maybe because it finds its death. Maybe because it finds its home. She calls it singing.
'...nature leaves no gaps... in the end, I will have to see this progression of uninterrupted activity as a whole'
Life
It’s been days since she came back. My soil is dry; I can no longer absorb what I need to survive. She is so different to me, I am not sure she even lives at all. She is the one who brings the rain, descending through her upturned hands like a blessing. Outside the rain falls, without end. I watch the grasses flourish under the water with hunger. I try not to be jealous, but it’s hard to watch joy when you have none. My leaves wither and crisp. Sunlight, warmth, water, But not enough.
metamorphosis
is
not
‘the outward alteration of one form into another
but the differing outward expressions
of an inward idea’
Departure
Oh! Small one, is this what it means to sing? This oneness with the heavens? With the world? Small one, the rain comes not from you but from the sky, and it falls on me, and the plants around me, and we drink it greedily. It is so cold. It is so healing, not to die. But only if the sunlight comes.
​
If it is enough
‘The human mind is ultimately the organ of the world’s own process of self-revelation …
Nature’s reality comes into being through the very act of human cognition’
