beneath the stream

Around the world there are over 100 human names that mean ‘The Sun’; perhaps the clearest evidence of us humans being inspired by, and acknowledging the significance of, a 4.5 billion-year-old yellow dwarf star, a nearly perfect ball of hot plasma, heated to incandescence by nuclear fusion reactions in its core.

Its benevolence and its destructive capacity affect all aspects of our being, our cultures, our artworks, and take The Sun away and Polar Night makes us sad, detached, without energy, struggling to concentrate, struggling to stay awake. Give us too much of it and we cannot survive its power.

With music from Colin Williams

Some of the ideas and references we make in this podcast can be found here:

Equinox

Rush

2001 A Space Odyssey

Richard Strauss ‘Sunrise’

Sun Studio

RKO Pictures

Isla Santa Catalina

Helios

U2

Kiribati

Hopi

New Mexico

Mexico FIFA 1986

Serotonin

The Road - Cormac McCarthy

Carrington Event

Svalbard

Carl Nielson

A high tide coming

Will eat the land

A tide no breakwaters can withstand.

Act 1 Scene 1 Peter Grimes, Op. 33 Benjamin Britten, libretto Montagu Slater

With music from Colin Williams.

‘JUST AS THE TIDE WAS FLOWING’ BY JON BODEN. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. USED BY KIND PERMISSION OF THE ARTIST https://www.jonboden.com 

Some of the ideas and references we make in this podcast can be found here:

River Alde 

Benjamin Britten 

Corhampton 

Svalbard 

Moby Duck

Wild Man of Orford 

Wadden Sea 

Just as the Tide was Flowing 

Isle of Iona 

Dunwich

Woodhenge 

Doggerland 

Cockles

Julius Caesar; William Shakespeare

We live in the age of the 6th Mass Extinction; one that is human caused. Yet, amidst all this loss, we are still finding so called ‘Lazarus’ species; creatures that we believe we had extirpated but have been re-found. And some that have not been proven, but many fervently believe are still alive, clinging on to existence away from human gaze and knowledge; ready for a second coming.

Why are we so reluctant to let go of that which has demonstrably gone? Why do we hold a desperate desire that some creatures are still there, but we didn’t care enough at the time to stop their eradication? In this episode we explore stories of the Tasmanian Tiger, the Ivory-billed Woodpecker and others, and wonder why do so many of us ache for natural loss not to be final.

With music from Colin Williams

Some of the ideas and references we make in this podcast can be found here:

Ivory-billed Woodpecker

Thylacine

Arthur Conan Doyle

Cottingley Faeries

Sixth Mass Extinction

Yangtze River Dolphin

Passenger Pigeon

Honshu Wolf

Mexican Grizzly Bear

Tasmanian Emu

Tasman Starling

Coelacanth

New Zealand Storm Petrel

Mahogany Glider

Mountain Pygmy Possum

Adelaide Pygmy Blue-tongued Skink

Bridled Nail-tailed Wallaby

Night Parrot

Aldo Leopold’s ‘Sand County Almanac’ 

Darren Rees

Ghosts of Gone Birds

BirdLife International

Carolina Parakeet

John James Audubon

Galapagos 

Lonesome George

Natural History Museum, Tring

Sam Keen

Of all the ways we relate to the natural world it could be said that the human sense of smell is by turns our most powerful sense and yet also our weakest link with the rest of Nature. Scents can transport us, can help us form enduring memories, proves the link between our olfactory system and our limbic system.

The human nose and brain can detect 1 trillion different odours yet we have inadequate language to describe them, often amalgamate them into collective smells (“it smells like a forest”) and struggle to quieten our mind in Nature and become one with the odours. With contributions from Ella Roberts, Sam Lee, Devi Singh and Gina Gow, we attempt to make sense of scents.

Music from Colin Williams

Some of the ideas and references we make in this podcast can be found here:

Jasmine 

Is song connected to even deeper roots than time and place? Can music and song can bring us closer to the non-human world? Does musical meaning arise from the experience of inhabiting the world and is it shared freely between humans and birds and trees and ‘all our relations’? 

We explore all this and much more with the wonderful Sam Lee. A highly inventive and original singer, folk song interpreter, passionate conservationist, song collector and successful creator of live events. Alongside his organisation, The Nest Collective, Sam has shaken up the music scene breaking boundaries between folk and contemporary music and the assumed places and ways folksong is appreciated.

And he is the author of the acclaimed ‘The Nightingale’, a book about a bird whose presence and reassurance of nature represents an English totemism, a symbol of a visceral relationship with the natural world, myth and identity. Mixing grief, hope and vision for the future, we explore how Nature projects on to us, not us on to Nature.

Sam Lee website  

The Nightingale book 

Old Wow album 

Some of the ideas and references we make in this podcast can be found here:

Jeannie Robertson - MacCrimmons Lament 

An archetype, a creature that we impose human ideas, ideals, values and characteristics upon? A real, spectral being, visiting us from the demonic world? Or simply our domestic companion for thousands of years that we have venerated, commemorated and depicted in myriad ways? Hounds have been - and continue to be - all of these for us humans.

As a denizen of the wild around them, humans have encountered wolves, jackals and dogs dependent upon geography, and those cultures have found ways to bring those relationships into myth, legend, worship, movies and more. In this episode we ponder Anubis in Egypt and the Beast of Bray Road, Robert Johnson’s ‘Hellhound on My Trail’ and the legend of East Anglia’s ‘Black Shuck’.

THEME MUSIC BY COLIN WILLIAMS

Some of the ideas and references we make in this podcast can be found here:

Holy Trinity Church, Blythburgh

The power of place, our fascination with what is not human . . . these have been cornerstones of Beneath the Stream since we began. But so too is the power of the human mind, our perceptions, our telling of stories and perhaps, most of all, the telling of stories to ourselves through culture and memory and the tricks and truths we encounter.

The work of author Ed Parnell is a powerful illustration of all of the above. His acclaimed book Ghostland has been described as “Parnell’s moving exploration of what has haunted our writers and artists – and what is haunting him. It is a unique and elegiac meditation on grief, memory and longing, and of the redemptive power of stories and nature.” Ghostland was shortlisted for the PEN Ackerley 2020 Award for memoir.

Speaking in the book of his memories he says, “All of it was real, I think”.

Ed Parnell’s website https://edwardparnell.com 

INTRODUCTORY AND INCIDENTAL MUSIC: Colin Williams singing ‘Breaths’ by Sweet Honey in the Rock

Some of the ideas and references we make in this podcast can be found here:

M R James https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M._R._James 

“There are many songs in the landscape”, says Ed O’Brien, guitarist and member of Radiohead, “it roots you in what it means to be a human being; what are we doing walking on this planet”. In this podcast it’s our delight to have time with Ed as he describes the making of his solo album ‘Earth’ in retreat in mid-Wales, amidst a timeless, rich vein of Celtic tradition, and in Brazil amidst the polyrhythms of insects that are at the heart of samba.

Landscape, belief, aliveness, quantum physics, spirituality, and reading poetry aloud in the mountains, the interview dances through concepts, connections and contrasts, from a man who continues to be creating contemporary music that is a record of time, place, resonance and emotions. “Nature and landscape are not always easy places to be but you couldn’t feel more alive”.

Ed O’Brien and ‘Earth’ https://www.eobmusic.com 

INTRODUCTORY AND INCIDENTAL MUSIC: Colin Williams 

Some of the ideas and references we make in this podcast can be found here:

Led Zeppelin 

Gillian Burke is a biologist, TV presenter, public speaker, voiceover artist, writer and mother, and she joins us to discuss how people can relate to, and tell stories of, the human and non-human world. At a critical time for our environment scientists and artists can tell stories, especially when every single person and every single organism has a story to tell, about staying alive.

With her African, Asian, European, Native American, Oriental and Polynesian ancestry she uses different perspectives is to push past boundaries and discover greater empathy and connection with each other and the world we live in. A passion for science and storytelling reside in the universal themes of defeat and victory, endurance and resilience, the light and shade of being alive.

Gillian Burke’s website http://www.gillianburkevoice.com

INTRODUCTORY AND INCIDENTAL MUSIC: Colin Williams 

Some of the ideas and references we make in this podcast can be found here:

Kenya 

Entering wild water we have the chance to become one with the river, the kingfisher, the sea, the seal. Or instead the visceral thrill of breaking the surface ice can leave us, in Karen’s words, “screamy flappy and trying to quieten the survival part of your brain”. It all depends it seems on what intention you set out with - a personal wild experience with no safety forms to complete.

With Karen of the glorious Swim Wild podcast as our guide, we explore how everyone comes to wild swimming for different reasons. How magical places and times of day are enhanced simply by being held by the water. As she says, each wild swim is unique and once it trickles through your fingers it’s gone, you can’t hold it, and there its no other recourse than to plan your next one.

Swim Wild podcast

INTRODUCTORY MUSIC EXPLORING THE BLUE BY LUKA BLOOM. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. USED BY KIND PERMISSION OF THE ARTIST

Luka Bloom https://www.lukabloom.com 

Some of the ideas and references we make in this podcast can be found here:

Lake District, Cumbria UK