February 10, 2024 • 30 mins
Welcome to Sound Ground, a podcast that dives deep into the intersections between sound, story and nature. Join hosts Agnieszka Zuchora, Anne-Marie, and Abigail Lalonde in enlightening discussions about our relationship with nature and derived from our shared love for nature, desire for community building, and drive for creative expression.
In the debut episode, we delve into the origins of Sound Ground, discussing what draws us to the voice of the Earth and its music. The podcast aims to join the global conversation on environmental awareness and challenges the way we use language in relation to the world around us. It provides a space to explore our individual connections to these elements and how sound and the ground connect us to the world at large.
This discussion extends to the significance of harnessing nature's wisdom through the lens of biomimicry. We share personal experiences and insights into perception and interaction with nature and sound, aiming to inspire solutions, creativity and a deeper connection to nature's rhythms.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Music.
(00:07):
Nature are these things. You're listening to Sound Ground, a celebration of
sound, of voice, of story, and change, where we seek to illuminate instances
of relationships with nature.
I'm your host, Agnieszka Zuchora, or affectionately known as Aggie.
We express our infinite gratitude for Mother Nature, for Earth,
and everything that it carries us through.
(00:27):
We also want to acknowledge the land where this is being recorded.
I myself am on the land of the Lekwungen-speaking peoples, the Songhees and
Esquimalt First Nations.
Your other host Anne-Marie is located on the land of the WSANIC people and Abigail
Lalonde is on the land of the Ghaniikahaga.
We give gratitude for the wisdom and leadership of Indigenous communities and
(00:47):
a continued commitment to living in harmony with nature.
On today's podcast, we introduce Sound Ground.
We share a little bit about what inspired the podcast and what each of our connections
and relationships to Sound and and Ground are.
Welcome. We're so happy to be here with you. Hello, both.
Thank you so much for being here.
(01:10):
I am so excited that this is going to be our first episode of the podcast and
to introduce everyone to Soundground and kind of how it came to be and what
our intention is behind it all.
It's been such a special journey getting to meet you both and get to do some
(01:30):
of this work so I think it'll be really wonderful to be able to share this out
into the world yeah does anyone want to start with the story of of how we kind
of this came to be I think you know the story best.
You're a little heart didn't it yeah I think it kind of came from both of us
(01:51):
and Abby we were introduced a little later but,
yeah, just finding ways to communicate the work that Nature R&D was doing and
how we can make it a creative space and a way to create community as well,
I think was something that was really important for all of us.
(02:13):
And I just remember sitting on your land, Anne-Marie, and having having snacks
and having these conversations with this massive, what are they called?
Those like paper, like post-its. Yeah.
And coming up with all these ideas, just like throwing around words.
(02:33):
And at some point we somehow just landed on knowing we wanted it to be two words
and we wanted it to rhyme and Soundground kind of sat there for a little bit before we were like, we,
you know, we came up with all these other ideas, but that was the one that resonated with us the most.
For me, it was so deeply rooted around...
Kind of the turbulence in the world and feeling very unsettled often and finding
(03:00):
that form of grounding and how in my life,
both sound and ground are such pillars as ways of helping me connect both through earthing,
through connecting my feet to the ground and being out in nature,
but then also working with sound instruments like tuning forks and crystal bowls and gongs.
And then the essence of the frequencies that
(03:23):
the earth emits and like the trees and the
birds and everything so yeah sound ground was very it just like sat so deeply
for me and i'm curious what your experiences were i also want to give some props
and credit to jameson daniel and Megan Annenberg for doing our intro.
(03:44):
We're lucky to have musicians on site to mix in a little nature with some beautiful human vocals.
For me, I don't have a lot of experience in the podcast.
Space. And so I feel very lucky that both with Agnieszka, who is sometimes called
(04:08):
Aggie, and Abigail, who is sometimes called Abby.
In both cases, you both found me and wanted to do biomimicry and expand out nature R&D.
So I feel very grateful to be
learning alongside and to sort of
(04:30):
be either angels or warriors or
kindred spirits or something in this space of nature R&D His mission is to ignite
the creative spirit in everyone and create more opportunities for good choices
in the lives of every day.
(04:52):
People. And so to me, this podcast is a way to start talking about that solution
space to start not just being well versed in the problems, but looking at the solution.
And for me, as we're recording this episode,
the president of COP 28 is trying to stop the inclusion of phasing out fossil
(05:16):
fuels in the, you know, hopeful agreements that are coming out of the COP.
We also have the whole Indigenous Advisory Committee to CN Railway having resigned,
like Canada's most well-known and active Indigenous community,
(05:37):
resigning because Because CN is getting caught up on the language of apologies.
And then we also have our global community getting caught up on the language of ceasefires,
including our own country wanting to talk about humanitarian pauses just so they don't say.
(06:00):
So for me, this space of Soundground is also about starting to create a shared
language about what is really happening.
And nature R&D is also trying to play in that space of, not trying to,
but is playing in that space of, what are we calling this? What are we noticing?
What are we doing about it? How can we trust? And then I guess in nature,
(06:23):
what I will say about ground is not only does the ground hold the space for
us to be stable and for all the connections between the trees and everything
that happens there to hold our planet, the surface of our planet,
but also the soil processes the atmosphere.
(06:45):
And so all these greenhouse gases get processed, you know, through the work
of the soil, which is a microbiome.
So, yeah, just to always have a good consciousness around how can we heal the
(07:06):
place we are and how can we use language that helps create those connections. Oh, yeah.
It feels very deeply just like.
The interconnectedness of everything that we're trying to discuss and how foundational.
(07:28):
Language and frequency and the planet are in building those connections because
we all have some sort of relationship to sound or to the earth or to the languages that we speak, right?
It's somehow connected to culture and community and
(07:50):
and we do speak different languages ways things
are interpreted in different ways and this is even in like
in speaking english you know people are going to have different perceptions
and different interpretations and it's the same thing with people's relationship
to land some people will see it as an inconvenience and and something to be
(08:11):
removed in order to create something else.
Some people have a spiritual connection to it.
Their ancestors are there, or they believe that their ancestors are in that earth.
Or some people see it as something to grow, something to cultivate, something to manage.
And so, there's all these different ways that we can interpret things.
(08:33):
And I wonder if it truly is It is possible to come into that shared understanding
and what that would look like and how we bridge all these kind of gaps in our interpretations.
That's what we're trying to do. Yeah. It's all part of it.
(08:53):
What about you, Lami? You're making me think. I'm thinking about this idea that
I've, well, it's not an idea. It's more of a principle that's held close to the heart.
This idea that relationship is a conversation and that that conversation doesn't have to be linear.
It doesn't necessarily have to be grounded in understanding, but that it is ongoing.
(09:18):
And that the people that are engaging in that conversation are committed to it,
into showing up with like honesty and
integrity as much as they possibly can understanding that
that's not always feasible but having some empathy
and compassion for when it isn't i feel
like that sort of speaks to what you were saying aggie about how sometimes these
conversations can feel disjointed and it's tricky to figure out how how they
(09:42):
connect and i think that so many things are connected like i think that there
is inevitably an entanglement between sound and ground in the same way that
there is inevitably an entanglement between anything,
but articulating that entanglement and understanding the nuances
of that that like ball of yarn or microaisel network is a labor and it's a love
(10:07):
and trying to figure out the words to say what you mean but also to be understood
is such an endeavor something that that I'm deeply committed to,
both in my work and in my personal life,
which are also enmeshed together.
When I was thinking about my relationship to sound, the first thing that came
(10:31):
to mind was how undeniably sensitive I am to it,
how loud it is to live in Montreal, how much I noticed last week when my power
went out and the fridge wasn't making the sound that the fridge makes,
how good it feels to to step outside,
and hear the rain and remember that that there are things that are happening
(10:53):
and that I'm affected by them I love you,
And how important listening is to
me, even if it's not necessarily tied or tethered to like understanding,
which I feel like is a very complicated, complicated space to occupy understanding
because everyone has their own different embodied experiences.
(11:15):
Everyone uses words a different way, but rather to just listen and at least
be in the company of someone with the intention of hearing them and absorbing.
And then that brings me to ground, like the idea of absorption,
the idea of meeting someone,
and the undeniable connection that we have to the ground in that we're always
(11:36):
in contact in some way or another with this rootedness, and that we can't be removed from it.
And so to me, SoundGround is like, those are two words, but ultimately they're like one.
And they they the work that we do here is i guess to understand that intersection,
(11:58):
as best as we can with three different minds and three different hearts and three different bodies,
and three different experiences and to
try to understand how to show up for people who are not represented by us three
and to listen and to
offer our voices and the
lands that we're rooted in in solidarity it's really
(12:19):
beautiful abby in you speaking i was
what really stuck out to me is entanglement and
how everything is so deeply connected in it and we can't necessarily pull things
apart and you know in my in my reflection of of sound and ground and also this
this witnessing that they are interconnected what kept coming up for me is that
(12:43):
it's it's all about about feeling.
It's difficult to articulate what might come up for us, a sensation or a relationship,
but it's that feeling and that.
To me, very similarly, I'm quite sensitive to sounds and I'm quite sensitive
to the changes of the seasons and my relationship to land.
(13:05):
And it's never a cognitive thing that happens first. It's always a feeling.
And it's that same thing with relationship, right? You meet someone and you
kind of just like, you know that they're going to be in your life in some form,
or you know that they're not, or you feel a resonance in some sort of way.
And it also makes me think of how I've heard this quote that love is a verb, it's an action.
(13:31):
And that's not just an intimate partnership, which is what it seems that we
focus on so much, but it's the love of the land. It's the love of community.
It's the love of the rain on a tin roof or a plant growing or crossing paths
with a stranger, hearing a busker on the street, hearing the crickets at night, right?
(13:54):
It's all these beautiful things that we tend to take advantage of and to miss
out on because we're moving so quickly and we're processing logically and thinking
and it's that sense of coming back to feeling.
And it's almost like we can alter time in those moments where we can come back
to the feeling and noticing of what is going on around us and actively choosing
(14:19):
to show up from a space of love every day.
And listening is such a huge part of that because how can we hear other perspectives
and be open to other people's experiences if we We are not choosing to show
up from a space of love and softness and a willingness to be curious.
(14:40):
That's another thing that keeps coming up for me is curiosity and the importance of that.
I want to pick up on what you said about the hum of the refrigerator.
Because it took me a while. I have a background in mediation.
I'm now 55 years old. And when I was about 45 years old or 44 years old,
(15:06):
it seemed crazy for me to indulge myself in the world of biomimicry because
I should be putting my kids through school.
You know, I should be like at this time in my life of just pure responsibility.
And anyway, I fell in love with biomimicry, which is, of course,
(15:28):
looking, learning from nature and listening to nature, quieting the cleverness
to understand, you know, how does nature solve the problem?
And anyway, one thing after another, and suddenly the next thing you knew,
I was not only enrolled in the
master's program, but doing the biomimicry professional program, and...
(15:49):
In Louisiana. And we were having a design jam to try to, and all the groups
had different challenges,
but our challenge was to try to deal with the hum of the refrigerator,
or what you would call white noise sometimes.
And white noise is one of my pet peeves. If there's a fan going somewhere in the house, I can't do it.
(16:16):
Some people turn on a noise machine to sleep. sleep that would send me, you know, spheric.
And so anyway, I was like, yes, I will work on this problem.
And I got assigned two engineers.
And so in biomimicry, you have this interdisciplinary thing happening all the
(16:36):
time where there's a deep belief that everybody has a piece of the puzzle.
And so I was with these two engineers for like a day and a half trying to solve
this problem. Where has nature muffled sound?
And so we looked at like the paws of cougars and, you know, a lot to do with
whiskers and hair and fur does a lot of sound muffling.
(17:01):
But anyway, because they were engineers, I said to them, would it be possible
to cause all the vibrations of the white noise to tune to middle C?
Because then it would be in tune with the sound of the planet.
Supposedly spinning makes the sound of middle C, right?
(17:21):
And anyway, they ran the numbers on it.
Because they're engineers, that's such a beautiful thing about a creative space
where people are coming from different places.
As you were talking about, Abby, they were starting to look at.
In the end, we came up with something to do with the crocodile has these concave
(17:44):
depressions in its jaw so it can hear any kind of thing happening on the water.
And so we actually engineered those
into like the walls beside the highway
in order to muffle the noise that
way but but yeah i just love sitting with those engineers and thinking about
(18:06):
whether we could get that white noise to tune to middle c maybe by putting it
out here on the pad podcast somebody else will will find it but it also reminds
me of that expression keeping an ear to the ground.
I guess whether it's water, whether it's earth, different substrates carry sound
(18:27):
well and it used to be a thing to listen to the ground to hear what was happening.
I don't remember the last time that I put my head up against the ground to listen.
I feel like the last time that I was really consciously in the
ground and making noise was the summer on
Hornby Island on the beach in that
like sort of sandstone depression in the cliff that Rose and I were calling
(18:51):
the face of the earth and we just sat in this like strange little cave and hummed
and felt the world resonate it was crazy it was so beautiful,
and we're just staring out at the beautiful ocean and humming to the earth and
having the the earth humpbacked at us, makes me think about this thought,
(19:13):
this process that I had when I came back from BC this summer,
where I was thinking about missing the ocean and wondering if the ocean missed me too,
and thinking of missing the trees and wondering if the trees missed me too.
And it touches on this thought that I've had a lot of, which is it's grounded
in the knowing that humans belong to the earth and that humans are of the earth.
(19:39):
And the fact that there is a sort of hierarchy in terms of species relevance
as constructed by human society that posits that humans are more valuable than
ecosystems. ecosystems.
And that creates a divide between land and life.
But to think about the ways in which like trees might miss us in the same way
(20:03):
that I might miss a tree makes me aware of and reminds me of the relationship.
Once again, like going back to that relationship, like the relationship that
you have with the engineers trying to come up with, like sort of maybe coming from different spaces,
but this idea that we are close and our presence is appreciated and that tenderness
(20:25):
can be extended past just one self and one species and towards other beings
that are essential for our thriving.
And to be aware that their existence is a gift to us and our existence can be
a gift to them as well, like that reciprocity is relevant, if not incredibly important.
(20:49):
Yeah, science is so behind on recognizing the love of nature,
which includes human nature and feelings and everything.
Like, yeah, I think the ocean misses you very much, Abby. And the trees, the edge.
I have a lot of different homes. I have a home in Montreal that I currently
(21:16):
am in right now, my apartment in Verdun.
I have a home that I grew up in in
Laval which is just across the water and I have
a home in Gaspé which is like
my ancestral home like my grandparents are from there
I learned today that my family has
lived on like has been settled on the
(21:37):
land that is known as Canada for over 400
years like since before the confederation which
creates a really it's really interesting to be a product of of like
the technologies of settler colonialism as well as
from just like a deep connection and refusal to
leave this land and to be like relocated
(21:58):
post that settler experience it
comes with a lot of responsibility and a lot of acknowledgement on
my part but it makes me think about all the trees that
i i'm kin to because i have relationships with like very specific trees it goes
back into the three tree rule that that where the russian initiative is working
on but that is a tale for another day but i am wondering about as we think about
(22:21):
like trees and we think about sound and we think about ground maybe what are some of the trees that.
You feel attached to like what are some things that make you feel grounded to sound and to space.
I'm still stuck on you being in that sandstone and humming and being surrounded by the hum of the earth,
(22:42):
Can you talk a little bit about the work that you do to deal with sound,
Agnieszka, so that the world can appreciate what you do?
Sure, which is also related to what brings me grounding, so those words.
Yeah, Abby, and you speaking of humming and having that resonance surround you
(23:03):
and how nature naturally creates these spaces where sound can be amplified and felt.
And you know
we're we see objects as
as physical matter and we forget that
matter is still energy and so everything
still emits some sort of frequency and
(23:26):
has some sort of energetic field
healed humans included and some
of the work that i do with sound is to
support in the regeneration of
the body and the self-healing of the body in different ways by bringing it into
(23:47):
alignment with frequencies such as the planetary frequencies like the earth
so one of my favorite tuning forks is actually when I can't get out and stick my feet into the earth,
I will use an earth-tuned tuning fork and place it under my feet because it
instantly kind of like brings me back to that grounding.
(24:10):
And you would think that it's like, it's just vibration.
Like what, how could this possibly happen? But Einstein is quoted saying that
the future of medicine is energy.
Was frequency and it makes me think of.
(24:31):
How our bodies shift when we're in a space where we can feel the vibration of
sounds, or coming back to the mycelial networks, how they are in the ground.
They have these conversations with the whole ecosystem of the earth,
but they also emit a sound.
There's so many videos up there where speakers are connected to mycelial networks or mushrooms,
(24:58):
and they emit these incredible sounds and
frequencies and patterns and I'm so
curious you know what the world would
look like and what human existence and connection
would look like if we acknowledge that we all
emit a frequency and we in the same way we absorb
different frequencies not just from other humans but from animals and from plant
(25:23):
life I want to jump in there's an apostle bird I believe in Australia that emits
a frequency that compacts the mud of its nest.
Wow. Yeah. So frequency does affect matter.
You can even put out fires with sound.
(25:45):
That's incredible. Yeah. I saw these, if you look it up on YouTube,
you'll find these two guys who created this gizmo that you can put put a fire
out with a sort of, I don't know what it is they're holding,
but some kind of like handheld device sound.
One of my greatest discoveries early on in trying to understand patterns in
(26:11):
nature was about looking at the face of the greater horseshoe bat,
who is one of the best sort of echolocators working with sound.
The one of the best biological champion, the greater horseshoe bat has the same
morphology or the same shape, same shaping as the orchid.
(26:34):
As many orchids if you look at them if you
put them side by side so like and people
talk about talking to plants all the time but anyway you
start to realize how plants just look like every kind
of musical instrument and that you know they're super
set up to hear the vibrations of
their pollinators so just
(26:58):
getting to your question about favorite plant life
to understand that that other
species are also attuning to vibration
in order to decide what
their next move should be feels like we don't really
give nature enough credit in that space and maybe
as a result don't lean into
(27:20):
or acknowledge maybe everything that's going
on for us personally which is kind of what you
were talking about how how sensitive you actually
are and can be and can use sound
as a healing modality i love that
you can bring it back to biomimicry and nature i totally forgot about how so
(27:45):
many plants are look like a lot of the instruments that we've created and i've
seen that picture of the Batteny Orchid and it's just phenomenal.
And that plants emit a frequency or create shapes to attract pollinators.
It's just, it's all right there.
(28:05):
It blows my mind every time.
We've got a sacred connection going here between sound and ground.
And hopefully we can make the
space to inspire some solutions and
creativity in the people who join this conversation
well that feels
(28:28):
like a really great ending point and a
great vision for what this podcast will become and i
really hope that that's how it's received and
i know that we're all open to feedback and suggestions and and
comments so we'll put little
links in the in the description and we hope
to continue connecting with everyone thanks so much both of
(28:50):
you thank you thanks so much for joining us today to learn more visit natureind.com
and click subscribe to keep up to date with when we launch new podcasts we can't
wait to hear from you and to connect with you thanks so much for being here
you're listening to To Soundground.
Music.
Soundground, Soundground,
(29:10):
presented by Nature R&D.
Music.
(00:07):
Nature are these things. You're listening to Sound Ground, a celebration of
sound, of voice, of story, and change, where we seek to illuminate instances
of relationships with nature.
I'm your host, Agnieszka Zuchora, or affectionately known as Aggie.
We express our infinite gratitude for Mother Nature, for Earth,
and everything that it carries us through.
(00:27):
We also want to acknowledge the land where this is being recorded.
I myself am on the land of the Lekwungen-speaking peoples, the Songhees and
Esquimalt First Nations.
Your other host Anne-Marie is located on the land of the WSANIC people and Abigail
Lalonde is on the land of the Ghaniikahaga.
We give gratitude for the wisdom and leadership of Indigenous communities and
(00:47):
a continued commitment to living in harmony with nature.
On today's podcast, we introduce Sound Ground.
We share a little bit about what inspired the podcast and what each of our connections
and relationships to Sound and and Ground are.
Welcome. We're so happy to be here with you. Hello, both.
Thank you so much for being here.
(01:10):
I am so excited that this is going to be our first episode of the podcast and
to introduce everyone to Soundground and kind of how it came to be and what
our intention is behind it all.
It's been such a special journey getting to meet you both and get to do some
(01:30):
of this work so I think it'll be really wonderful to be able to share this out
into the world yeah does anyone want to start with the story of of how we kind
of this came to be I think you know the story best.
You're a little heart didn't it yeah I think it kind of came from both of us
(01:51):
and Abby we were introduced a little later but,
yeah, just finding ways to communicate the work that Nature R&D was doing and
how we can make it a creative space and a way to create community as well,
I think was something that was really important for all of us.
(02:13):
And I just remember sitting on your land, Anne-Marie, and having having snacks
and having these conversations with this massive, what are they called?
Those like paper, like post-its. Yeah.
And coming up with all these ideas, just like throwing around words.
(02:33):
And at some point we somehow just landed on knowing we wanted it to be two words
and we wanted it to rhyme and Soundground kind of sat there for a little bit before we were like, we,
you know, we came up with all these other ideas, but that was the one that resonated with us the most.
For me, it was so deeply rooted around...
Kind of the turbulence in the world and feeling very unsettled often and finding
(03:00):
that form of grounding and how in my life,
both sound and ground are such pillars as ways of helping me connect both through earthing,
through connecting my feet to the ground and being out in nature,
but then also working with sound instruments like tuning forks and crystal bowls and gongs.
And then the essence of the frequencies that
(03:23):
the earth emits and like the trees and the
birds and everything so yeah sound ground was very it just like sat so deeply
for me and i'm curious what your experiences were i also want to give some props
and credit to jameson daniel and Megan Annenberg for doing our intro.
(03:44):
We're lucky to have musicians on site to mix in a little nature with some beautiful human vocals.
For me, I don't have a lot of experience in the podcast.
Space. And so I feel very lucky that both with Agnieszka, who is sometimes called
(04:08):
Aggie, and Abigail, who is sometimes called Abby.
In both cases, you both found me and wanted to do biomimicry and expand out nature R&D.
So I feel very grateful to be
learning alongside and to sort of
(04:30):
be either angels or warriors or
kindred spirits or something in this space of nature R&D His mission is to ignite
the creative spirit in everyone and create more opportunities for good choices
in the lives of every day.
(04:52):
People. And so to me, this podcast is a way to start talking about that solution
space to start not just being well versed in the problems, but looking at the solution.
And for me, as we're recording this episode,
the president of COP 28 is trying to stop the inclusion of phasing out fossil
(05:16):
fuels in the, you know, hopeful agreements that are coming out of the COP.
We also have the whole Indigenous Advisory Committee to CN Railway having resigned,
like Canada's most well-known and active Indigenous community,
(05:37):
resigning because Because CN is getting caught up on the language of apologies.
And then we also have our global community getting caught up on the language of ceasefires,
including our own country wanting to talk about humanitarian pauses just so they don't say.
(06:00):
So for me, this space of Soundground is also about starting to create a shared
language about what is really happening.
And nature R&D is also trying to play in that space of, not trying to,
but is playing in that space of, what are we calling this? What are we noticing?
What are we doing about it? How can we trust? And then I guess in nature,
(06:23):
what I will say about ground is not only does the ground hold the space for
us to be stable and for all the connections between the trees and everything
that happens there to hold our planet, the surface of our planet,
but also the soil processes the atmosphere.
(06:45):
And so all these greenhouse gases get processed, you know, through the work
of the soil, which is a microbiome.
So, yeah, just to always have a good consciousness around how can we heal the
(07:06):
place we are and how can we use language that helps create those connections. Oh, yeah.
It feels very deeply just like.
The interconnectedness of everything that we're trying to discuss and how foundational.
(07:28):
Language and frequency and the planet are in building those connections because
we all have some sort of relationship to sound or to the earth or to the languages that we speak, right?
It's somehow connected to culture and community and
(07:50):
and we do speak different languages ways things
are interpreted in different ways and this is even in like
in speaking english you know people are going to have different perceptions
and different interpretations and it's the same thing with people's relationship
to land some people will see it as an inconvenience and and something to be
(08:11):
removed in order to create something else.
Some people have a spiritual connection to it.
Their ancestors are there, or they believe that their ancestors are in that earth.
Or some people see it as something to grow, something to cultivate, something to manage.
And so, there's all these different ways that we can interpret things.
(08:33):
And I wonder if it truly is It is possible to come into that shared understanding
and what that would look like and how we bridge all these kind of gaps in our interpretations.
That's what we're trying to do. Yeah. It's all part of it.
(08:53):
What about you, Lami? You're making me think. I'm thinking about this idea that
I've, well, it's not an idea. It's more of a principle that's held close to the heart.
This idea that relationship is a conversation and that that conversation doesn't have to be linear.
It doesn't necessarily have to be grounded in understanding, but that it is ongoing.
(09:18):
And that the people that are engaging in that conversation are committed to it,
into showing up with like honesty and
integrity as much as they possibly can understanding that
that's not always feasible but having some empathy
and compassion for when it isn't i feel
like that sort of speaks to what you were saying aggie about how sometimes these
conversations can feel disjointed and it's tricky to figure out how how they
(09:42):
connect and i think that so many things are connected like i think that there
is inevitably an entanglement between sound and ground in the same way that
there is inevitably an entanglement between anything,
but articulating that entanglement and understanding the nuances
of that that like ball of yarn or microaisel network is a labor and it's a love
(10:07):
and trying to figure out the words to say what you mean but also to be understood
is such an endeavor something that that I'm deeply committed to,
both in my work and in my personal life,
which are also enmeshed together.
When I was thinking about my relationship to sound, the first thing that came
(10:31):
to mind was how undeniably sensitive I am to it,
how loud it is to live in Montreal, how much I noticed last week when my power
went out and the fridge wasn't making the sound that the fridge makes,
how good it feels to to step outside,
and hear the rain and remember that that there are things that are happening
(10:53):
and that I'm affected by them I love you,
And how important listening is to
me, even if it's not necessarily tied or tethered to like understanding,
which I feel like is a very complicated, complicated space to occupy understanding
because everyone has their own different embodied experiences.
(11:15):
Everyone uses words a different way, but rather to just listen and at least
be in the company of someone with the intention of hearing them and absorbing.
And then that brings me to ground, like the idea of absorption,
the idea of meeting someone,
and the undeniable connection that we have to the ground in that we're always
(11:36):
in contact in some way or another with this rootedness, and that we can't be removed from it.
And so to me, SoundGround is like, those are two words, but ultimately they're like one.
And they they the work that we do here is i guess to understand that intersection,
(11:58):
as best as we can with three different minds and three different hearts and three different bodies,
and three different experiences and to
try to understand how to show up for people who are not represented by us three
and to listen and to
offer our voices and the
lands that we're rooted in in solidarity it's really
(12:19):
beautiful abby in you speaking i was
what really stuck out to me is entanglement and
how everything is so deeply connected in it and we can't necessarily pull things
apart and you know in my in my reflection of of sound and ground and also this
this witnessing that they are interconnected what kept coming up for me is that
(12:43):
it's it's all about about feeling.
It's difficult to articulate what might come up for us, a sensation or a relationship,
but it's that feeling and that.
To me, very similarly, I'm quite sensitive to sounds and I'm quite sensitive
to the changes of the seasons and my relationship to land.
(13:05):
And it's never a cognitive thing that happens first. It's always a feeling.
And it's that same thing with relationship, right? You meet someone and you
kind of just like, you know that they're going to be in your life in some form,
or you know that they're not, or you feel a resonance in some sort of way.
And it also makes me think of how I've heard this quote that love is a verb, it's an action.
(13:31):
And that's not just an intimate partnership, which is what it seems that we
focus on so much, but it's the love of the land. It's the love of community.
It's the love of the rain on a tin roof or a plant growing or crossing paths
with a stranger, hearing a busker on the street, hearing the crickets at night, right?
(13:54):
It's all these beautiful things that we tend to take advantage of and to miss
out on because we're moving so quickly and we're processing logically and thinking
and it's that sense of coming back to feeling.
And it's almost like we can alter time in those moments where we can come back
to the feeling and noticing of what is going on around us and actively choosing
(14:19):
to show up from a space of love every day.
And listening is such a huge part of that because how can we hear other perspectives
and be open to other people's experiences if we We are not choosing to show
up from a space of love and softness and a willingness to be curious.
(14:40):
That's another thing that keeps coming up for me is curiosity and the importance of that.
I want to pick up on what you said about the hum of the refrigerator.
Because it took me a while. I have a background in mediation.
I'm now 55 years old. And when I was about 45 years old or 44 years old,
(15:06):
it seemed crazy for me to indulge myself in the world of biomimicry because
I should be putting my kids through school.
You know, I should be like at this time in my life of just pure responsibility.
And anyway, I fell in love with biomimicry, which is, of course,
(15:28):
looking, learning from nature and listening to nature, quieting the cleverness
to understand, you know, how does nature solve the problem?
And anyway, one thing after another, and suddenly the next thing you knew,
I was not only enrolled in the
master's program, but doing the biomimicry professional program, and...
(15:49):
In Louisiana. And we were having a design jam to try to, and all the groups
had different challenges,
but our challenge was to try to deal with the hum of the refrigerator,
or what you would call white noise sometimes.
And white noise is one of my pet peeves. If there's a fan going somewhere in the house, I can't do it.
(16:16):
Some people turn on a noise machine to sleep. sleep that would send me, you know, spheric.
And so anyway, I was like, yes, I will work on this problem.
And I got assigned two engineers.
And so in biomimicry, you have this interdisciplinary thing happening all the
(16:36):
time where there's a deep belief that everybody has a piece of the puzzle.
And so I was with these two engineers for like a day and a half trying to solve
this problem. Where has nature muffled sound?
And so we looked at like the paws of cougars and, you know, a lot to do with
whiskers and hair and fur does a lot of sound muffling.
(17:01):
But anyway, because they were engineers, I said to them, would it be possible
to cause all the vibrations of the white noise to tune to middle C?
Because then it would be in tune with the sound of the planet.
Supposedly spinning makes the sound of middle C, right?
(17:21):
And anyway, they ran the numbers on it.
Because they're engineers, that's such a beautiful thing about a creative space
where people are coming from different places.
As you were talking about, Abby, they were starting to look at.
In the end, we came up with something to do with the crocodile has these concave
(17:44):
depressions in its jaw so it can hear any kind of thing happening on the water.
And so we actually engineered those
into like the walls beside the highway
in order to muffle the noise that
way but but yeah i just love sitting with those engineers and thinking about
(18:06):
whether we could get that white noise to tune to middle c maybe by putting it
out here on the pad podcast somebody else will will find it but it also reminds
me of that expression keeping an ear to the ground.
I guess whether it's water, whether it's earth, different substrates carry sound
(18:27):
well and it used to be a thing to listen to the ground to hear what was happening.
I don't remember the last time that I put my head up against the ground to listen.
I feel like the last time that I was really consciously in the
ground and making noise was the summer on
Hornby Island on the beach in that
like sort of sandstone depression in the cliff that Rose and I were calling
(18:51):
the face of the earth and we just sat in this like strange little cave and hummed
and felt the world resonate it was crazy it was so beautiful,
and we're just staring out at the beautiful ocean and humming to the earth and
having the the earth humpbacked at us, makes me think about this thought,
(19:13):
this process that I had when I came back from BC this summer,
where I was thinking about missing the ocean and wondering if the ocean missed me too,
and thinking of missing the trees and wondering if the trees missed me too.
And it touches on this thought that I've had a lot of, which is it's grounded
in the knowing that humans belong to the earth and that humans are of the earth.
(19:39):
And the fact that there is a sort of hierarchy in terms of species relevance
as constructed by human society that posits that humans are more valuable than
ecosystems. ecosystems.
And that creates a divide between land and life.
But to think about the ways in which like trees might miss us in the same way
(20:03):
that I might miss a tree makes me aware of and reminds me of the relationship.
Once again, like going back to that relationship, like the relationship that
you have with the engineers trying to come up with, like sort of maybe coming from different spaces,
but this idea that we are close and our presence is appreciated and that tenderness
(20:25):
can be extended past just one self and one species and towards other beings
that are essential for our thriving.
And to be aware that their existence is a gift to us and our existence can be
a gift to them as well, like that reciprocity is relevant, if not incredibly important.
(20:49):
Yeah, science is so behind on recognizing the love of nature,
which includes human nature and feelings and everything.
Like, yeah, I think the ocean misses you very much, Abby. And the trees, the edge.
I have a lot of different homes. I have a home in Montreal that I currently
(21:16):
am in right now, my apartment in Verdun.
I have a home that I grew up in in
Laval which is just across the water and I have
a home in Gaspé which is like
my ancestral home like my grandparents are from there
I learned today that my family has
lived on like has been settled on the
(21:37):
land that is known as Canada for over 400
years like since before the confederation which
creates a really it's really interesting to be a product of of like
the technologies of settler colonialism as well as
from just like a deep connection and refusal to
leave this land and to be like relocated
(21:58):
post that settler experience it
comes with a lot of responsibility and a lot of acknowledgement on
my part but it makes me think about all the trees that
i i'm kin to because i have relationships with like very specific trees it goes
back into the three tree rule that that where the russian initiative is working
on but that is a tale for another day but i am wondering about as we think about
(22:21):
like trees and we think about sound and we think about ground maybe what are some of the trees that.
You feel attached to like what are some things that make you feel grounded to sound and to space.
I'm still stuck on you being in that sandstone and humming and being surrounded by the hum of the earth,
(22:42):
Can you talk a little bit about the work that you do to deal with sound,
Agnieszka, so that the world can appreciate what you do?
Sure, which is also related to what brings me grounding, so those words.
Yeah, Abby, and you speaking of humming and having that resonance surround you
(23:03):
and how nature naturally creates these spaces where sound can be amplified and felt.
And you know
we're we see objects as
as physical matter and we forget that
matter is still energy and so everything
still emits some sort of frequency and
(23:26):
has some sort of energetic field
healed humans included and some
of the work that i do with sound is to
support in the regeneration of
the body and the self-healing of the body in different ways by bringing it into
(23:47):
alignment with frequencies such as the planetary frequencies like the earth
so one of my favorite tuning forks is actually when I can't get out and stick my feet into the earth,
I will use an earth-tuned tuning fork and place it under my feet because it
instantly kind of like brings me back to that grounding.
(24:10):
And you would think that it's like, it's just vibration.
Like what, how could this possibly happen? But Einstein is quoted saying that
the future of medicine is energy.
Was frequency and it makes me think of.
(24:31):
How our bodies shift when we're in a space where we can feel the vibration of
sounds, or coming back to the mycelial networks, how they are in the ground.
They have these conversations with the whole ecosystem of the earth,
but they also emit a sound.
There's so many videos up there where speakers are connected to mycelial networks or mushrooms,
(24:58):
and they emit these incredible sounds and
frequencies and patterns and I'm so
curious you know what the world would
look like and what human existence and connection
would look like if we acknowledge that we all
emit a frequency and we in the same way we absorb
different frequencies not just from other humans but from animals and from plant
(25:23):
life I want to jump in there's an apostle bird I believe in Australia that emits
a frequency that compacts the mud of its nest.
Wow. Yeah. So frequency does affect matter.
You can even put out fires with sound.
(25:45):
That's incredible. Yeah. I saw these, if you look it up on YouTube,
you'll find these two guys who created this gizmo that you can put put a fire
out with a sort of, I don't know what it is they're holding,
but some kind of like handheld device sound.
One of my greatest discoveries early on in trying to understand patterns in
(26:11):
nature was about looking at the face of the greater horseshoe bat,
who is one of the best sort of echolocators working with sound.
The one of the best biological champion, the greater horseshoe bat has the same
morphology or the same shape, same shaping as the orchid.
(26:34):
As many orchids if you look at them if you
put them side by side so like and people
talk about talking to plants all the time but anyway you
start to realize how plants just look like every kind
of musical instrument and that you know they're super
set up to hear the vibrations of
their pollinators so just
(26:58):
getting to your question about favorite plant life
to understand that that other
species are also attuning to vibration
in order to decide what
their next move should be feels like we don't really
give nature enough credit in that space and maybe
as a result don't lean into
(27:20):
or acknowledge maybe everything that's going
on for us personally which is kind of what you
were talking about how how sensitive you actually
are and can be and can use sound
as a healing modality i love that
you can bring it back to biomimicry and nature i totally forgot about how so
(27:45):
many plants are look like a lot of the instruments that we've created and i've
seen that picture of the Batteny Orchid and it's just phenomenal.
And that plants emit a frequency or create shapes to attract pollinators.
It's just, it's all right there.
(28:05):
It blows my mind every time.
We've got a sacred connection going here between sound and ground.
And hopefully we can make the
space to inspire some solutions and
creativity in the people who join this conversation
well that feels
(28:28):
like a really great ending point and a
great vision for what this podcast will become and i
really hope that that's how it's received and
i know that we're all open to feedback and suggestions and and
comments so we'll put little
links in the in the description and we hope
to continue connecting with everyone thanks so much both of
(28:50):
you thank you thanks so much for joining us today to learn more visit natureind.com
and click subscribe to keep up to date with when we launch new podcasts we can't
wait to hear from you and to connect with you thanks so much for being here
you're listening to To Soundground.
Music.
Soundground, Soundground,
(29:10):
presented by Nature R&D.
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