do tell the earth songs to the wind

In our human experience, so many of us tend to find the mystical in nature. Or perhaps we find it through nature, using nature as a lens that refines our perception and understanding. So much in the natural world remains analogous to how our lives and the greater cosmos appear to function, that it is difficult not to draw the parallels.

We needn’t stray too far to stumble over it. Schelling (1775-1854) expounded on it in his earlier years, as he paused for breath midpoint between his initial adherence to Fichte’s ideas and his later burgeoning rivalry with his erstwhile friend and roommate, Hegel.** In many ways, our views of movement, or of something that is sometimes phrased as ‘the unfolding of the mind of God’, may depend largely on our own individual penchants or predilections. Where Hegel may have understood the unfurling of the universe in terms of the movement of history, theology, and politics, Schelling perceived Nature as representing the great unfolding of cosmic mystery and meaning.*** Although ‘Naturphilosophie’ stems from impulses embodied in other thought systems (Chinese Taoism, for example), and although it fell variously in and out of fashion with the mainstream of rigorous thought in the West, it nevertheless remains with us in a multitude of ways. Having had great influence on artistic expression, it also continues to emerge in literature, and in the works of those like Emerson, Thoreau, and Walt Whitman as a kind of counter perspective to the Puritan weltenshauung that seems to structure much of North American understanding even today.***

Yet, I can almost feel my small collective readership rolling their eyes, or throwing up their hands in frustration. Is this not a blog about Shakespeare?!? Well, where is it? Where’s the Shakespeare?

Not in the title words. Instead, those come from Opal Whiteley (1897-1992), the Oregon born child prodigy/nature mystic whose diary became an international sensation when it was published in 1920. She wrote:

And all the times I was picking up potatoes, I did have conversations with them.  Too, I did have thinks of all their growing days there in the ground, and all the things they did hear.  Earth-voices are glad voices, and earth-songs come up from the ground through the plants; and in their flowering, and in the days before these days are come, they do tell the earth-songs to the wind … I have thinks these potatoes growing here did have knowings of star-songs.

Opal Whiteley, 8 years of age, The Singing Creek where the Willows Grow – The Mystical Nature Diary of Opal Whiteley, Penguin, 1995.***** 

There’s that long view, the mystical perspective of something bigger than ourselves. Writing of “the days before these days are come” and “the knowings of star-songs” hint at a greater scope beyond our small imperfect ken. Days rolling on to something else, meadows beyond meadows, and fog clearing after socked in days to reveal a fragment of diamond stippled night. Those stars, as familiar but distant points of knowing light may seem far off, but never seem so far from our speculations, especially when we consider unions. For union expands the self, with the potential of extending the single self greater than its initial limitations or its initial understanding. This union, merging, mingling, even dissolving is the very crux of mystic experience. As Juliet anticipates her approaching tryst with Romeo:

Come, gentle night, come, loving, black-brow’d night,
Give me my Romeo; and, when he shall die,
Take him and cut him out in little stars,
And he will make the face of heaven so fine
That all the world will be in love with night
And pay no worship to the garish sun.
O, I have bought the mansion of a love,
But not possess’d it, and, though I am sold,
Not yet enjoy’d: so tedious is this day
As is the night before some festival
To an impatient child that hath new robes
And may not wear them.

Romeo and Juliet 3.2.20-8

Here, Juliet envisions Romeo making an Ovidian metamorphosis into stars at the very point of climax, improving the very face of heaven. The opening of the self reflects a greater knowing, a greater understanding, of potential participation in the heavens rather than distant adoration. This is the point where we surrender to finally receive the universal gifts.

In Karin Brown’s photograph above, the patch of sky centred in the frame is roughly the shape of the human heart, again reflecting that our engagement with what lies beyond our single self tends to be, in terms of mystical experience, emotional and spiritual. This intermingling, this promiscuity of our spirit with a greater spirit or universal force or energy, also transcends our physical sphere and the borders of our present existence, understanding, or experience. By giving up the self as it is, we join a union that exceeds that self and we transcend the mundane existence for an active intimacy in the greater cosmos of which we are a part.

Marginal thinking? Perhaps. Let us move away from lovers then, and instead consider monsters. Here is Caliban, the ‘monster’ from Shakespeare’s Tempest uttering one of the most oft quoted passages in the canon:

Be not afeard. The isle is full of noises,
Sounds, and sweet airs that give delight and hurt not.
Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
Will hum about mine ears, and sometime voices
That, if I then had waked after long sleep,
Will make me sleep again. And then, in dreaming,
The clouds methought would open and show riches
Ready to drop upon me, that when I waked
I cried to dream again.

The Tempest 3.2.129-37

Caliban’s natural perspective seems both more limited and more expansive. Instead of envisioning stars, he not only hears the islands sounds, but he also delights in them. He longs for the celestial participation that he sees in his dreams, and the sounds of his island home sometimes take him there when they make him “sleep again”. Because his participation in the natural world around him already exceeds that of the other characters in the play (with the exception of the spirit, Ariel), Caliban needs no magical intervention beyond sleep because, although his dominion has been usurped by Prospero, he already has a more pronounced union with the world than other characters around him have.

Are there other ways to foster the connection with something greater than ourselves? Of course. As many as there might be thoughts. Singing, for example. Worshippers sing in churches not only because the Bible commands it: Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God. (Colossians 3:16) We also sing because older occult traditions hold that the singing voice is closest to the voice of the angelic or the intercessors between the mortal and the universal constant, so when we sing in worship, the angels most readily hear us in our attempt to make our human voices more like their own, and they carry our prayers, thoughts, and hopes to that greater denominator of universal presence–the “is”ness of “I am that I am.”

Yet, most other cultures sing as well, and often do so, at least in part, with an expansive and connective aspect. The more traditional Diné (Navajo) of the southwestern United States tend to sing the sun up every morning, and their ways of restoring balance to their worlds are often translated as “sings”. In truth, these rituals, being intricate communal affairs occupying many days, involve much more than merely singing, but the term remains an accurate description of the comprehensive beauty of the communicative channels evoked in the processes. Many other, if not most other, indigenous cultures also. Here is a recording of a chant for world peace by the well known Tibetan Gyuto monks. It’s a longer recording, but it offers a taste of Tibetan Buddhist chanting, and it promotes world peace, so it is good to have a listen:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L42AnSAdzXw

Here is an astonishing TEDx talk where the Tuvan group, Alash, demonstrate traditional Tuvan throat singing, of which the late physicist Richard Feynman was a huge fan:******

Of course, the Tuvan throat singers are renowned not just for their ability to simultaneously generate multiple tones in their singing, but also for their reflection of the natural world around them–with many of the traditional pieces being deliberately evocative of the natural world around them. Horses, insects, and even the rising moon have been enshrined in vocal pieces performed by Tuvan groups.

Which brings us back to Nature with the capital “N”, the Nature in which we find a direct reflection of the greater soul, the Atman, or the face of God. Of the traditional English ritual year, Ronal Hutton tells us “for most people the first sign of the opening of the season of ceremony would have been the decorating of buildings with holly and ivy on or just before Christmas Eve.”******* Indeed, in old English churches, the ‘green man’ motif tends to be prolific, often carved into the stonework in various places as a nod to the ‘sacred groves’ that occupied the spaces before the churches were built–a practice that swept across those parts of the world that became Christianized as older pagan ways were incorporated into the bases of today’s Christian ritual practice.

In fact, our connection with some greater movement seems so much a part of us that it remains with us everywhere. In Shakespeare, yes, and also everywhere else, around us, within us, and between us too, it is so often better described by great writers that we tend to overlook it. Here is Kenneth Grahame in a passage from his great mystical work, The Wind in the Willows which, although lengthy, is also worth it:

They got the boat out, and the Rat took the sculls, paddling with caution. Out in midstream, there was a clear, narrow track that faintly reflected the sky; but wherever shadows fell on the water from bank, bush, or tree, they were as solid to all appearance as the banks themselves, and the Mole had to steer with judgment accordingly. Dark and deserted as it was, the night was full of small noises, song and chatter and rustling, telling of the busy little population who were up and about, plying their trades and vocations through the night till sunshine should fall on them at last and send them off to their well-earned repose. The water’s own noises, too, were more apparent than by day, its gurglings and ‘cloops’ more unexpected and near at hand; and constantly they started at what seemed a sudden clear call from an actual articulate voice.

The line of the horizon was clear and hard against the sky, and in one particular quarter it showed black against a silvery climbing phosphorescence that grew and grew. At last, over the rim of the waiting earth the moon lifted with slow majesty till it swung clear of the horizon and rode off, free of moorings; and once more they began to see surfaces—meadows wide-spread, and quiet gardens, and the river itself from bank to bank, all softly disclosed, all washed clean of mystery and terror, all radiant again as by day, but with a difference that was tremendous. Their old haunts greeted them again in other raiment, as if they had slipped away and put on this pure new apparel and come quietly back, smiling as they shyly waited to see if they would be recognised again under it.

Fastening their boat to a willow, the friends landed in this silent, silver kingdom, and patiently explored the hedges, the hollow trees, the runnels and their little culverts, the ditches and dry water-ways. Embarking again and crossing over, they worked their way up the stream in this manner, while the moon, serene and detached in a cloudless sky, did what she could, though so far off, to help them in their quest; till her hour came and she sank earthwards reluctantly, and left them, and mystery once more held field and river.

Then a change began slowly to declare itself. The horizon became clearer, field and tree came more into sight, and somehow with a different look; the mystery began to drop away from them. A bird piped suddenly, and was still; and a light breeze sprang up and set the reeds and bulrushes rustling. Rat, who was in the stern of the boat, while Mole sculled, sat up suddenly and listened with a passionate intentness. Mole, who with gentle strokes was just keeping the boat moving while he scanned the banks with care, looked at him with curiosity.

‘It’s gone!’ sighed the Rat, sinking back in his seat again. ‘So beautiful and strange and new. Since it was to end so soon, I almost wish I had never heard it. For it has roused a longing in me that is pain, and nothing seems worth while but just to hear that sound once more and go on listening to it for ever. No! There it is again!’ he cried, alert once more. Entranced, he was silent for a long space, spellbound.

‘Now it passes on and I begin to lose it,’ he said presently. ‘O Mole! the beauty of it! The merry bubble and joy, the thin, clear, happy call of the distant piping! Such music I never dreamed of, and the call in it is stronger even than the music is sweet! Row on, Mole, row! For the music and the call must be for us.’

The Mole, greatly wondering, obeyed. ‘I hear nothing myself,’ he said, ‘but the wind playing in the reeds and rushes and osiers.’

The Wind in the Willows, by Kenneth Grahame. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/289/289-h/289-h.htm#link2H_4_0007.

As Grahame suggests, Mole and Rat hear differently, exist and experience differently. Mole, like Caliban, is more of the earth, a part and parcel of the world’s motion around him. Rat, on the other hand, represents a more active and engaged imagination, seizing on moments and movements as the human mind often seems wont to do. Perhaps our role, as teachers, as lovers, friends, and fellow human beings, is to hear how we hear, while allowing for how others may hear as well, letting their participation continue in its own way, seeking to be informed by it rather than to stifle it. If the greater music really is the same, and if our being is somehow delineated or enhanced by our own participation in the flow of the greater river, then the long slow listening of the trees really must be very like our own, if only removed by a single facet from our own perspective or from the edge of our own single being in this starlit world.

* As always, more of Karin Brown’s moving and thought provoking tree, landscape, and light images may be found on her website:  https://brownkcd.wixsite.com/imbolc , and also (as previously stated) on Instagram @imbolcphotographic. Thank you, Karin. I remain grateful to you for your continued willingness to share your work on this site.

**Prominent German thinkers who were often grouped as founders of the ‘German Idealism’ movement, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling (1775-1854), Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762-1814), and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770 – 1831) were contemporaries, and Schelling and Hegel were initially friends and university roommates.

***This according to the late Donald Fleming, and I believe him. Intellectual historian and Harvard University’s former Jonathan Trumbull Professor of American History, seldom have I met a more rigorous thinker, a more astonishing speaker, and a more generous human being. A brief memorial piece about him from the Harvard Gazette may be read here: https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2009/10/donald-harnish-fleming/

****The late literary and cultural critic Sacvan Bercovitch (1933-2004) was born in Canada although he spent much of his life living and teaching in the United States. His ideas about the great scope of Puritan influence on social identity in the U.S. are laid out in his early books The Puritan Origins of the American Self and The American Jeremiad, while his later The American Puritan Imagination focused more on the Puritan voice in the literature of New England. A knowledgeable, personable, and compelling teacher, his instruction was always both fascinating and accessible.

*****Whiteley, Opal Stanley. The Singing Creek Where the Willows Grow: the Mystical Nature Diary of Opal Whiteley: with a Biography and an Afterword. Edited by Benjamin Hoff. New York: Penguin Books, 1995. Opal Whiteley lived the latter part of her life in England where she committed herself to a psychiatric hospital in 1948, and she remained under psychiatric care until her death in 1992.

******More about Feynman’s associatio with Tuva may be read in: Leighton, Ralph. Tuva or Bust!: Richard Feynmans Last Journey. New York: W.W. Norton, 2000.

*******Hutton, Ronald. The Rise and Fall of Merry England: the Ritual Year, 1400-1700. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996, p. 5.