Its been a while since I’ve made a blog post, caught up in the whirlwind that is the dissertation. Writing it however has in fact helped me along quite a bit with my creative ideas. Last I blogged, it was following a fairly spectacular and serendipitous encounter with a vast clattering of jackdaws. This exchange of energy, between jackdaw and I, is what I have come to think of as a ‘mutual transformation‘; an intersubjective result of our encounters with ‘the more than human world’; I’m still fleshing out exactly what this means. As it stands, this concept speaks to the change in agency one might experience when faced with such encounters, the kind that fixes you to the present moment, a beckoning to realise your body as not only sensitive, but a sensible make up of another’s life-world. Still, I find there are so many blurred lines to tread here. These encounters can’t possibly effect the long term agency of, say, a bird, and so I am reduced to thinking that any immediate transformation is confined to the human subject. In my dissertation I conclude that these transformations become mutual in the sense that any emotional shifts might result in a changed attitude towards the very object of our symbolic interpretations, changing its long term future. I suppose the transformation I seem captivated by is one that pertains to the psychology of a human being, in our paradoxical tendencies to abstract and rationalise. A bird need not be changed in such a way as they are driven by instinct, thus any inherent potentiality associated with it is concluded by its biological rhythms. Our complex nervous systems confuses the potentiality of a human. But without getting too lost in logical fallacies, inconsistencies and contradictions, the most important thing to explore in my creative endeavours for now is the ‘more-than-human encounter‘ as some kind of portal – one that somehow links the experiential and the symbolic as two equal players in a deeper, more holistic understanding of the world, and our place within it.
To note, despite the ‘more-than-human’ emphasis, I do believe that such transformations occur regardless of one’s species taxon, thus what transpires with the jackdaws becomes only a more potent, symbolic, and even archetypal happenstance of something one can experience in the mundane – is there a danger in overlooking the everyday if one only seeks the extraordinary? Perhaps it is not so much a return to the ordinary, but perceiving the extraordinary within it. As a result, mutual transformations become as all encompassing and omnipresent as the air itself, whereby all interactions with the animate and inanimate are opportunities to change the way we understand and interact with the world; Not a canvas for our corporeal brushstrokes or mental projections, but an embodied reflection of something more internal. I realise here that I start entering into psychological, and even what feels to me sometimes as religious, territory, and though I have an intuitive grip on what I mean, I don’t think I’m prepared just yet to concretise it in words. But it is not dissimilar from the determinations of humankind throughout history – the hermetic adage ‘as above so below’ comes to mind. Either way, those Jackdaws, and their deafening chorus, symbolised something to me in that moment underneath the trees. Much like when looking at an incredible view at a high altitude, looking up at them made me feel a similar sense of awe, clarity, insignificance or what have you. In such moments, it only becomes more obvious how experience reveals the colours we imbue onto the world. A door opens to a clearer view of the self, and by default, reality. I feel that the way I unpack this exchange of energy concerns those unseen things – occult, not so much the political or the material, but the unspoken things of the feeling fabric. These are the forces cast aside by logic, defined by what is measurable, yet they persist in shaping experience. And by default, they become the root of all politics and culture, moving beneath the surface like currents beneath the tide, unseen but undeniable.
Over the weeks I have frequented Nonsuch Park, always just before sunset, staying until dusk. This, it seems, is the best time to record the jackdaws as they all gather and murmurate during the penumbra of twilight, before settling down to roost. I’ve become well acquainted with their gathering location, as well as their loose trajectory from tree to tree. Overtime its become easier to judge where to be, to experience their chatter and flight optimally. Sometimes their presence eludes me, while at others I am gifted with their closeness. Following them from tree to tree sometimes feels like a chase, other times a dance – though to them perhaps I am only an annoying human! Sometimes I wonder whether they recognise me. Whether they understand me as a part of their ‘more-than-jackdaw’ world? A waddling human, sometimes draped in cables, tracking their movements like a persistent and curious child. At times, especially those where the sun has disappeared from view, my vision muted by the onset of darkness, they become inseparable from the trees they line, appearing to me as the silhouettes of leaves. So much so that, while searching for them in the woods, I am startled with fright when they all spring into flight, leaping in a hundred directions from the branches of overhead trees. That sight though, is quite something to behold. As if the leaves themselves shapeshift into birds, unclothing their resident tree. Its worth mentioning that these critters chatter a lot – a talkative bunch. Sometimes they pervade the soundscape with their harsh ‘tchacks!’ and ‘kyas!’ Other times they serve as a soft backdrop to the songs of other, more solitary birds.
Key words : animism, phenomenology, encounters
