Listen and Watch: NPR's "Here and Now" and a Conversation with Robin Wall Kimmerer

First, a bit of news: if you happened to be listening to NPR’s “Here and Now” program yesterday, you might have heard me talking about one of my early musical influences, Igor Stravinsky's Les Noces. You can now listen to it here. It was very exciting; I found myself at a gas station when it came on, and I had to hop back into the car to listen! 

The segment was produced by Essential Tremors, a podcast that asks composers and musicians about music that helped define their personal style. I highly recommend it! Soon, you’ll be able to hear an entire episode with me talking about Stravinsky, composer Frederic Rzewski’s Coming Together, and my favorite Kentucky ballad singer, Addie Graham. Look for that in the next month or so.

In addition, to celebrate the “Sound Is Magic” newsletter, you can use the Bandcamp code “magic” for 20% off anything from my catalog. If you’d like more information on the releases, check out this wonderful Bandcamp feature article that recently came out. Thank you!

Now, on to other news: I’ve had a chance to reflect on the conversation I had with author and botanist Robin Wall Kimmerer, along with fellow artist Cadine Navarro. It took place at Otterbein University in Ohio on March 29th. Kimmerer’s talk was insightful, inspiring, and touching. You can watch it in its entirety—along with our conversation, which starts around minute 58:00—for only a few more days, until Thursday (April 13th):

When we first met one another, I made a joke that Cadine and I had mistakenly coordinated the colors of our outfits: my jacket was a mustard color, and Cadine’s blouse was ketchup red. Kimmerer quickly chimed in, “and I’m the salad!” (She was wearing a colorful shawl.) We laughed together, and it immediately put me at ease. From that moment on, I knew she was carefully listening to us and quickly responding with empathy. Her lightness, humor, and presence were delightful.

The motivation behind our conversation was to introduce ourselves and our work to Kimmerer, and then find relationships between our approaches to art and social practice and her writing, indigenous wisdom, and scientific rigor. 

As it turned out, my questions weren’t really questions. Instead, I kept searching for ways to articulate the connections I so clearly saw between us, and share how Kimmerer’s thoughts and deeds have influenced me. I tried not to gush too much! I mostly succeeded. 

Anyway, my first question centered on the phrase, “listening with.” It is a phrase I’ve adopted from one of my mentors, Marina Peterson. It refers to a way of being in the world that positions us with others and with the land, as opposed to “listening to.” It is a small grammatical shift, but an important one: suddenly, we are not separate from what we are paying attention to. Instead, we are with others, and are part of a place. I also mentioned the sound artist and composer Annea Lockwood, who also used this phrase—“listening with”—as a radical way to understand the sonic world she lives in (you can watch a lovely documentary by filmmaker Sam Green on Lockwood here). 

Kimmerer, of course, responded with generosity and enthusiasm. She noted that “listening with” made her think of listening to birdsong, something she particularly craves this time of year. She also recounted a story of her curiosity about birds and the buds of flowers: she wanted to find out if there is a reciprocal relationship between the two. To her surprise, scientists have shown that flowers open when they hear birdsong. “We are listening together, we are listening with,” she stated.

I also told Kimmerer about my project Forest Listening Rooms, where I take residents in Appalachian Ohio into the surrounding forest to listen to the land and to each other, as a way toward responsible land use, bridging divides between urban and rural communities, ending hydraulic fracturing on public lands, and the slow work toward social and environmental change.

Kimmerer identified with this process of taking people into the woods to listen, and found community-engaged listening to be important. She said, “listening with, I think, is just magic.”

I then asked about the idea of gifts. I was specifically thinking about Lewis Hyde’s book The Gift and about gift economies: how the power of gifts lies not in property or ownership, but in the gift’s exchange. With gifts, it is their circulation and movement that keep them alive. I tied this notion of gifts in with a story from Kimmerer’s book Braiding Sweetgrass, called “The Sound of Silverbells.” In this story, she thought she had failed her students for getting too embroiled in scientific terminology and not encouraging more wonder. In fact, she described a low point for her, when one student said, suspiciously, “Is this like your religion or something?” And yet, in that moment, she realized that her job as a teacher was to prepare her students to be able to hear the gifts all around us: from the land, and from each other.

And then I finally got to my last (non-question) question. I asked Kimmerer to comment on this idea of the gift in motion; and also to think about young people, and how they might be able to listen for and find their own gifts.

Her response was extraordinary. After sharing that she, too, is a fan of Lewis Hyde, she told us a follow-up story to “The Sound of Silverbells.” She had been giving a talk at the McKenzie River Land Trust in Oregon. During that talk, she met the director of the land trust, who revealed that he had been in her class many years before. In fact, he was the very student who had asked that suspicious question, “Is this like your religion or something?” She was bewildered—not quite remembering him from the class—but also amazed: the student she thought she had failed was now the director of a land trust. He had taken her words to heart, and listened for the gifts all around him. For Kimmerer, this was evidence that the gift was in motion. Regardless of her fears and hopes, he was able to pay attention to the world around him, notice the rich gifts the trees and plants and animals and land all had to offer, and accepted them. He found a way to be a part of the world and make it better, too.

It was an amazing story. It humbled me, and I felt such a strong sense of connection with Kimmerer and her message. I hope you can tune in to feel it, too.