Re-embracing references to the natural world in popular culture..a way of integration?
Reed pen and ink observational drawings of plants by children
The last few decades have given rise to many wonderful examples of nature writing and poetry, but arguably these might be speaking to a converted or relatively informed and sympathetic audience. With the decline of natural spaces and species everywhere- not just in urban situations, how can we discover ways to bring awareness of nature into peoples’ everyday reality?
Listen to Oak tree by Lua Maria while you read on.
In March 2017, in a journal ”Perspectives on Psychological Science,” sisters, Pelin and Selin Kesibir published results from their data research into how nature is represented in our popular culture.
Their findings were disturbingly revealing showing that references to nature have been more or less in steady decline since the 1950s. They concluded that the probable reason for the disappearance of nature words like the lyrics in Paul McCartney’s songs - “Till there was you,” and “Blackbird” was due to less public engagement in nature. Their argument rested on the belief that songs, books and films capture the zeitgeist of culture and therefore offer good evidence for measuring trends in society.
The trigger for this research had arisen from reading about a group of writers, including the nature writer Robert Mcfarlene, who had come together to write a letter of request to the Oxford University Press to turn round their decision to cull certain words from their junior dictionary, since they were no longer deemed relevant to children who didn’t use them enough.
The words included the following; conker, heron, bluebell, kingfisher, blackberry and acorn.
Pertinently, the words added were download, attachment, broadband and voice-mail reflecting a probable truth that today’s children deprived by an ever diminishing baseline of natural areas and species, are more at home on the internet than out in the woods and meadows.
“It’s not just children who need nature; nature needs children too.” Robert Macfarlene ( his collaboration with the artist Jackie Morris in the book “The Lost Words” would be a great addition to a school library.)
Yet, there was a time not so long ago (1970s) when references to nature were used in work books for children of primary school. People of that era remember how they learned basic maths by adding up in apples, swallows and even flowers of celandine. Perhaps weaving them back into the education resources of young children could be a way of increasing engagement with the natural world.
“Just as nature’s names are vanishing from the language of children, nature itself is vanishing.
Forgetting is an easy way to lose things- as each generation becomes more at ease with less nature, we forget what it is that we have lost,’ says Macfarlene. “Keeping everyday nature alive in the words and stories of children in particular - who are the ones who will grow up and decide what to save and what to lose - seems to me vital.”
As a grand example of nature returning to the world of popular novels, “The Overstory” by Richard Powers described as a “sweeping impassioned work of activism and resistance”, is a book packed with wonderous details of how trees behave in ways as dramatic as any animal. Challenging anthropocentric beliefs, Powers combines scientific experience(botanist) and emotional writing skill to interweave the nine characters of the gripping story- the tree becoming the tenth- so that their interactions with trees and each other give us glimpses of huge and primal sensibilities developed over ageless time.
Probable scientific inspiration for the book is “The Hidden Life of Trees,” Peter Wohlleben’s appreciation and call for conservation of these life forms. Scientists tend not to use anthropomorphic language in describing the “behaviour” of nature, but Powers is not frightened to explore other realms of consciousness in enforcing his understanding of our deep connection to these ancient beings.
On the inner leaf of the book, he quotes from the nature transcendentalist, Ralph Waldo Emerson.
“ The greatest delight which the fields and woods minister, is the suggestion of an occult relation between man and the vegetable. I am not alone and unacknowledged. They nod to me, and I to them. The waving of the boughs in the storm, is new to me and old. It takes me by surprise, and yet is not unknown.Its effect is like that of a higher thought or a better emotion coming over me, when I deemed I was thinking justly or doing right.”
It is this type of deep conversation with nature that is at the heart of many of singer/ writer/ musician Lua Maria’s songs. Having grown up in the Devon countryside and spent days riding, walking, swimming and sleeping on the moors and woodlands, one could say she has experiences of total immersion. Although individual, her music is evocative of the folk or country traditions that still contain references to the natural world- perhaps these valuable sentiments will seed and germinate in more popular culture at a time when we need them more than ever.
“Oak Tree’ was written on returning from a foray into the ancient Rushford woodland, home to many veteran oak trees and their inhabitants. She felt in awe of their silent witness and wondered what we could learn if only we paused more to listen to them.
This version was recorded in La Zarza Forest, La Palma where Lua experienced first hand the frightening effects of the world warming up, when a forest fire engulfed the woods around the land and house where she lived with her husband and little girl.