{"id":99,"date":"2024-10-11T12:53:37","date_gmt":"2024-10-11T11:53:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/djcdelahaye2\/?p=99"},"modified":"2024-11-01T11:07:07","modified_gmt":"2024-11-01T11:07:07","slug":"plant-shaman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/djcdelahaye2\/2024\/10\/11\/plant-shaman\/","title":{"rendered":"Plant Shaman"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I have just finished reading Monica Gagliano’s ‘Thus Spoke The Plant’. Through scientific experiments she proves that plants are sensitive beings which are capable of remembering, perception and responding to environmental stimulus, including sound1<\/a><\/sup>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was Aristotle who differentiated plants, animals and humans in his theory of biology and his ‘structure of the souls’2<\/a><\/sup>. By defining plants as insensitive, Gagliano argues that he effectively turned them into objects which to this day \u201csanctions the human right to use (and abuse) plants\u201d3<\/a><\/sup>, rather than treat them as living, sensitive beings. Through a ritual practice which involves dieting on certain roots, she experiences plants in a new light and begins a journey into dialogue with them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In many of the chapters, Gagliano makes reference to time and rhythm. The first is on page 14;\u00a0\u201conce dieted, a plant\u00a0is a teacher that will stay with you forever and keep teaching you in her own plant time\u201d. Later, she recounts an experience of recognising that \u201ctime is not out there; real time is, if anything, \u2018in here\u2019. In fact, all organisms are innately endowed with an internal sense of time, a body clock regulating circadian rhythms\u201d4<\/a><\/sup>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe are able to [\u2026] keep track of time thanks to a small groups of cells on our brain, which, together with a handful of genes, have the job to keep everything synchronized (and, by the way, these same time-keeping genes are found in all other animals, as well as in plants and microbes)\u201d5<\/a><\/sup>. It made me wonder if the rhythms of aquatic plants have a function beyond a byproduct of photosynthesis? Perhaps their sounds act as a sunshine alarm to beetles who may be taking a nap, like the clocktower that alerts factory workers, or the knocker-uppers6<\/a><\/sup> who woke colliery miners for first their first shift?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To tap into this sense of time, Gagliano often employs the use of a drum describing the monotonous rhythm as a “powerful beat [which] pushed me over the threshold and into the unseen underside of reality\u201d. Within shamanic practice she describes using “the repetitive drumming of a large hoop drum to bring myself into an altered state of perception with the idea of learning more about the osha root, my dream, and – perhaps – the connection between the two, if any was to be found\u201d7<\/a><\/sup>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The repetitive and trance-inducing rhythms remind me of time spent listening to the complex click-trains8<\/a><\/sup> of macrophytes. So I plug myself into the pond and begin to improvise. It is a bright midday and the plants are in full voice. As if in a dream-state, I am<\/em> listening to the voice of a plant who speaks to me directly. The aquatic plants become the shaman, drumming out an ancient beat which resonates with the cilia of my inner ear, sending me back to a time before we stepped foot on dry land. The hydrophone becomes an aural time machine. I play along to scattered pulses, pulling me in and flooding my senses.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n
Intense polyrhythms live at the pond<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n
  1. pp.31-35. See the first example of plants (yellow corn kernels, recorded in Bristol) emitting, hearing and responding to external sounds.\u00a0 \u21a9\ufe0e<\/a><\/li>
  2. https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Aristotle%27s_biology<\/a> \u21a9\ufe0e<\/a><\/li>
  3. p.105 \u21a9\ufe0e<\/a><\/li>
  4. p.116 \u21a9\ufe0e<\/a><\/li>
  5. p.117 \u21a9\ufe0e<\/a><\/li>
  6. Definition: https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/uk-england-35840393<\/a> \u21a9\ufe0e<\/a><\/li>
  7. pp.39-40 \u21a9\ufe0e<\/a><\/li>
  8. term borrowed from cetacean terminology, but might also be applicable? \u21a9\ufe0e<\/a><\/li><\/ol>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    I have just finished reading Monica Gagliano’s ‘Thus Spoke The Plant’. Through scientific experiments she proves that plants are sensitive beings which are capable of remembering, perception and responding to environmental stimulus, including sound. It was Aristotle who differentiated plants, animals and humans in his theory of biology and his ‘structure of the souls’. By […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11987,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"[{\"id\":\"528e7dcc-9437-4628-b65e-f31844160775\",\"content\":\"pp.31-35. See the first example of plants (yellow corn kernels, recorded in Bristol) emitting, hearing and responding to external sounds.\\u00a0\"},{\"id\":\"b1588d3a-29a7-4a1d-ad05-cdfd0560ce02\",\"content\":\"https:\\\/\\\/en.wikipedia.org\\\/wiki\\\/Aristotle%27s_biology<\\\/a>\"},{\"id\":\"ea1dedb3-2fec-4116-800c-166fdc766067\",\"content\":\"p.105\"},{\"id\":\"2db89f22-3f81-4088-b583-31f7e2032c48\",\"content\":\"p.116\"},{\"id\":\"7be6b149-65b9-4393-9468-450126a9e217\",\"content\":\"p.117\"},{\"id\":\"24bdfe4b-96b4-46db-87ec-2c68a26fde5a\",\"content\":\"Definition: https:\\\/\\\/www.bbc.co.uk\\\/news\\\/uk-england-35840393<\\\/a>\"},{\"id\":\"cb2767de-2243-47cd-ac36-0b0cd05d1bbc\",\"content\":\"pp.39-40\"},{\"id\":\"0783a73b-e850-4cb2-b6f6-6129c8a4c093\",\"content\":\"term borrowed from cetacean terminology, but might also be applicable?\"}]"},"categories":[5],"tags":[4,2,3],"class_list":["post-99","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-aquatic-plants","tag-botanic","tag-plant","tag-rhythm"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/djcdelahaye2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/djcdelahaye2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/djcdelahaye2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/djcdelahaye2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11987"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/djcdelahaye2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=99"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/djcdelahaye2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":138,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/djcdelahaye2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99\/revisions\/138"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/djcdelahaye2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=99"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/djcdelahaye2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=99"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/djcdelahaye2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=99"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}