There is a poem Piano by D H Lawrence, where 'despite himself' he is overcome with nostalgia, and finds himself weeping for the past. With him, it was the sound of a piano which transported him back. For me recently, it's been a song Meet Me in the Morning by Everything But the Girl, which contains the lines:
I'll have the motor running
Down frosty lanes, under a glass blue sky
This is living
This is living
Whilst not quite weeping, every time I heard this I was moved by a profound sense of loss, and kept wondering what that was. The sense of youthful adventure suggested in the song? In part, perhaps, but what really struck me on examination was the vividness of nature being inextricable from that adventure. And I wondered, how often recently have I been on the edge of something unknown on a frosty lane, under a glass blue sky? My adventures have taken a different hue since recent events, and are now much more relentlessly focused within.
It is more than personal though. Over the years I have witnessed an attempt collectively to divorce ourselves from nature in every way possible; and it is a messy divorce, involving quite a lot of theft. The names bothered me initially e.g. big tech firms like Blackberry and Apple. Now there's The Cloud. And the obvious one, while deforestation runs rampant across South America, we keep ourselves happy by supporting a company with dubious ethics named after the greatest forest of all. Rather shamefully, I must admit, I enjoy the American habit of referring to 'TV seasons'. I am complicit in this grand theft. We all are.
Forty years ago I was concerned with the electric cages we were erecting around ourselves, that we were disassociating our bodies and minds from natural rhythms. Then when working as a Feng Shui consultant, I took care to find ways to reduce electromagnetic fields with clients. With the advent of mobile phones and wi-fi though, the deluge became unstoppable and I have more or less given up. The separation from nature is emphasised with our circadian rhythms being disrupted by unnatural light. In recent years I have stayed in a few hotel rooms where the owners have proudly installed automatic systems so that you can't go to the bathroom in the middle of the night without getting blasted by white light. This is on top of the various security, safety, smoke alarm lights etc that remain on in the bedroom. I also found this pattern, surprisingly, in hospitals despite the staff - as I discovered in conversation - being well aware of the disruption to hormonal systems this causes.
Right now as conversation is rampant in the UK about how to make the populace healthier, and save the over-stretched health system, I feel it is the more subtle areas that are not being addressed. As well as light and electromagnetic field exposure, there is also sound. A doctor told me that in most of the cases referred to him for stress, disruptive sound could be identified as the chief cause. The obvious thing is noisy neighbours disturbing your sleep, but it goes far beyond that. Recently I found I was being driven mad by my kettle, having to leave the room when it was on. It also bothered me that generating so much sound was a clear waste of energy. After doing some research I found I wasn't alone in these concerns, and there was a consumer group Quiet Mark who worked in conjunction with the Noise Abatement Society. Thanks to these leads, I replaced my kettle with one that hums quietly as it quickly comes to a boil, and it's completely transformed my living space.
People tend to have a mild look of panic when I mention any of this, that I want us to return to a non-technological way of living. This is not the case. Every time I am spared from waiting for ages in foul weather for a bus that doesn't come, by simply checking on an app, I feel immense gratitude that I live in a time where this is possible. And that is just one of countless examples of how things are better. What I would like is more 'black box thinking', as they call it, to admit there is a problem first, then find ways to deal with it. This works for the aviation industry, and there is no reason why it cannot be applied elsewhere. Thus, we can have our cake and eat it.
There is a Quiet Zone in the States where no wi-fi or microwave signals are permitted because of the radio telescope array nearby. Even wireless doorbells are banned. There is a strong sense of community, boosted by electro-sensitive refugees who have moved to the area. But I would argue that we are all electro-sensitive, these fields are affecting us one way or another, it's just more obvious with some people. This, in combination with our disruptive soundscapes and unnatural light patterns, seem to have cut us off more or less entirely from nature.
It isn't real though. At best it's a temporary separation. I recall an Australian saying that at least in their country, when it comes to humans and nature, there is no doubt whatsoever who is really in control. Elsewhere we may pretend it is us, that we can live apart from the natural world, but nature will always come right back and smack us down eventually and collectively - perhaps through disasters, climate change or illness. In the meantime, rather than let it get to that, we can all find solace on an individual level, seeking out those corners of the natural world still available to us, remind ourselves how we connect to the natural world, and rediscover those frosty lanes under glass-blue skies.
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