To stay a Stream (2023)

In the summer of 2023, I visited de Nieuwkomers for a short residency. There hadn't been any rain for weeks, so I brought a contact microphone and went into their garden to see if I could record the creaking sounds of the trees.

As soon as I placed the contact microphone against the bark, it started to rain, and I was met with the following sound:

I was greeted by what could only have been the sound of a tree drinking. Amazed, I wanted to find out whether this was really what I was hearing. I placed the microphone against a dead tree and heard nothing. Then I tried a few different living trees, each had its own distinct sound, its own personality. The older trees near the lake drank at a slow, steady pace, while the younger ones seemed to be greedily gobbling up as much water as they could. It was a powerful reminder that, although these woody beings may appear to be stationary, they are very much alive and breathing.

Reading The Flowering Wand by Sophie Strand and immersing myself in the work of Ursula K. Le Guin became a major source of inspiration. I believe that climate change has reached this point largely because we have come to see our surroundings as something lifeless that can be extracted and exploited. Trees, rivers, soil, and animals have all been reduced to resources, to things, rather than recognized as living beings.

Since then, this desire to de-thingify through storytelling, to re-enchant the world, has become central to my practice. I pursue animistic forms of storytelling, learning if one can be a spokesperson for the trees, using stories to weave intimate connections between all that lives.

All of these experiences came together in a cyclical poem, accompanied by a video, and left me with a newfound fascination with rain.

Where does a circle start?

A raindrop doesn't bend well into our linear way of thought.

I was outside, submerged in the first rain after a month-long drought. I was immersed in all that the downpour released from the earth: the smell of wet soil, mixed with the pollen of early summer plants, and the awakening of ten thousand childhood memories.

I sought shelter beneath a young tree and hung my umbrella on its branches. With my hands now free, I reached out and gently placed the microphone against her bark, trying to open up a conversation.

She took a moment, carefully taking in her surroundings, and composed her greeting.

She spoke of water.

Me and her share the same mother's tongue, the same ancient water.

My hands slowly traced her bark upwards, and rainwater streamed down the trunk to meet my hand, turning into tiny cooling streams between my fingers. I followed the trunk with my eyes further up and saw raindrops shaking the leaves as they made their way down towards the soil, as if storm gods were playing the foliage like a piano.

Something arose within me that I couldn't quite name then and there. Was it sonder, the realization that every passerby has their own complex inner life? No, this was different. It was the realization that every tiny drop of water, inside and outside of me, had traversed its own ever-unfolding, winding path to arrive here.

I looked at the raindrop that had come to a halt on my thumb. At some point, it had been inside the body of a whale. The drop sliding down my forehead had once been absorbed by the roots of a prehistoric fern. The drop making its way down my neck had been drunk from a creek by a very, very distant ancestor.

I, too, opened my mouth, and a drop landed on my tongue, a drop that I had once sweated out as a child while building huts in the garden with my brother. I wondered with which new memories it had returned to me.

Water, life flow of this planet,

Thank you,

for animating everything you pass through. I'll try to learn from you: not to hoard or stagnate, but to let things pass through me: to remain a stream, one body of water closer to a new world where cycles are the norm instead of ambition.

A world that is gentler, more fluid. A world where certain questions no longer matter as much. Questions like:

Where does a circle start?