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Explore poems read by the two authors in conversation with each other, then follow your own fish to unlock your own creativity, and share it with us.
Hello. This is Deborah Bachels Schmidt here with my friend and neighbor Sue Boudreaux, your host for Follow A Fish, the poetry conversation and inspiration podcast. It is such a gift to be able to engage in this continuing conversation centered on poetry. And we have with us again for this episode, the second of two, a special guest Claire Hedin. In fact, we were talking with Claire just now during the break about that very thing, about the gift of this kind of conversation.
Deborah:And Claire, was wondering if you'd be willing to share with our listeners some of your thoughts. I think this kind of a conversation is essential. And especially because you brought up the issue of climate change, pollution, disregard for the planet, like the way we're kind of manhandling, deliberately choosing that Yes, manhandling.
Clare Hedin:The subtleties of planet and affecting its resilience. So I think to be able to have these conversations, especially amongst artists in an intelligent way, unapologetically expressing that there is sentience in this world and that the planet has experiences. It's continually experiencing itself and therefore experiencing us in relationship with it. And how we do that is actually also impactful on our own evolution, both our ability to thrive and survive, but also our ability to become more than we were. You know to keep just sort of becoming more and more influenced by larger, the largeness of life.
Clare Hedin:So being here, having real conversations with other artists and being able to sort of sink in and reflect together in a quiet ambience with beautiful view of fields. It doesn't get much better than us.
Deborah:Thank you so much for that. It's really so good to be reminded of the many reasons that we have to be grateful. And we're also feeling very grateful right now for the community that we feel is building around the podcast and around our live Open Mic series, which launched February 15 at The Good Earth here in El Sobrante. Claire was there at that opening. The open mic series we're hoping will become a monthly event.
Deborah:In fact, have another one scheduled for this coming Sunday, May 15 at 03:30. For more information on that, check out our website at curiositycatpodcast.com. So I mentioned our special guest for this pair of episodes centered on rivers and streams is Claire Hadin. I'm just going to reintroduce her for those of you who might have missed the first episode. Claire is a singer, songwriter, and sound healer.
Deborah:Last time we read Claire's poem, Deiope, for the River Deebin in Suffolk, which opened questions about the importance of particular beloved places and connecting us to the natural world and building the foundation for stewardship. And today, I will share my poem Dreaming with Grey Eagle Creek. This carries an epigraph from Rilke, a a little poem called La Fontaine, which is part of Verget, a French collection of his. He's known as a German writer, but he also wrote some beautiful poetry in French. I want but one lesson, and it is yours, fountain who tumbles into yourself, that of the daring waters to whom is given this celestial return to earthly life.
Deborah:And here is Dreaming with Gray Eagle Creek. Even now, in late summer, Gray Eagle Creek runs from Long Lake making its way to the Feather River. At the lodge, it cascades into a pool. This is not a monumental waterfall, but it is plentiful enough to fill my parched and weary spirit. As it drops, the stream divides into feathery plumes that braid and unbrave down the dark face of the cliff.
Deborah:For a moment, as water rushes to meet itself, it becomes light and air. All night long, the creek sings through my dreams. Across from tears of low falls. As it spills over the stones, its music is urgent, layered, multi voiced, many tongued, lapping, licking, liquid, liquid, constant but incessantly recreated, always itself but always becoming other.
Clare Hedin:So Deborah, just looking at this beautiful poem and hearing you read it, thank you for that. It's fun because I get to ask you questions now early on in the poem you talk about the waterfall not being monumental, but plentiful enough to fill your parched and weary spirit. What is it that actually renders your spirit parched? What tires you and gets you to feel weary? And then how does water rejuvenate it?
Deborah:Really good questions, yeah. This came at the beginning of our summer break. So after a long uninterrupted push through the academic year with everything that entails, obligations in the real world, family obligations, and, of course, our nested set of political, horrible, draining episodes that continue unabated to this very day. So and there was a drought on top of all of that. And I've been just, also parched for downtime, alone time, which is the only way I can generate any poetry and hadn't been able to access for a while.
Deborah:So, yeah, in those ways. And I think water fills me up because usually an experience with water doesn't occur until I remove myself from all of that nonsense and all of that busyness, and I'm in natural surroundings where there's quiet. So all of that hunger that I've had for stillness is beginning to be answered, and the water itself just feels like the quintessence of all of that. It's not silent, but it carries a stillness that answers some deep craving in my spirit.
Clare Hedin:Oh, that was beautiful, thank you. You've made me think of a bonus question I might have to ask at the end about a different poem that you wrote, if I remember. Just after that you write this: as it drops, the stream divides into feathery plumes that braid and unbraid down the dark face of the cliff. And I became curious about this metaphor of what I then immediately went to human hair. But of course it could be a horse, but just this idea of hair being braided as the water descends.
Clare Hedin:And the question that comes from that thought is, do you see a
Deborah:link between human experiences of intimacy and nature, in this case water? I wasn't really thinking about hair, was just thinking about the braid that can occur with any sort of textile or light or play or anything really, water. You know, a poem is what it is in the world, it's subject to many interpretations. So there's nothing at all wrong with your picking up on that. And then the okay.
Deborah:So you ask about the connection between human intimacy and the experience in nature. Am I getting that right? I think what I
Clare Hedin:mean is the, for me there's a lived experience that when I'm in nature or dreaming of nature, I feel an intimacy within myself and with the whole of life and in particular with nature. And I was just, I think I'm curious what your take on that is and whether you find nature helps you to experience intimacy.
Deborah:With nature, intimacy with nature. Yeah. Yeah, yeah definitely. I feel that too, that there's a way in which being present in the natural world breaks down our barriers. Right?
Deborah:Our little artificial box that we put ourselves in. And suddenly that erodes, we're open to everything that is around us, and we cease to define ourselves as being separate from nature. So I think you and I had this conversation once before about how I have always seen the myth of Eve and the Garden of Eden as a story of what has happened of the the journey of human conscious, that we come into the world feeling as one with the garden. We're a part of the garden. We're another singer in the garden.
Deborah:And then eating the apple bestowed the burden of self consciousness on Eve, and that's what she shared with Adam. Suddenly humans were aware of themselves as being separate from nature. In just the way that children, as they grow, suddenly have to define themselves as differentiated from their mother. They're no longer just part of her body. They're this other little creature, and that's a necessary differentiation.
Deborah:In order for us to function in this world, we have to go through that. But then I feel like we spend the whole rest of our lives learning how to reunite again, how to become one again, and being in nature is a huge part of that.
Clare Hedin:Lovely, thank you. This might be a more unusual question. So all night long the creek sings through my dreams. The creek sings through my dreams. And so I was wondering what does a singing creek sound like in your dreams and what might it be telling you?
Deborah:So the sound of it that I remember in my dreams was very much that actual sound of the creek in this particular setting because it was a very large, very wide, shallow part of the creek that was bordered on one side by a very long shallow waterfall. So there were all these little plumes coming down into the shallow water and mingling amongst the stones, and you were hearing all these little separate voices. It was like a conversation, like a nice little buzz of conversation in a hall before the music begins, only it was the music. So that's what I was hearing in my dream. And I don't know if you've ever had the experience of listening to birdsong and hearing words in the birdsong.
Deborah:I mean, I've always had a fantasy of being able to decode animal speech. And in that dream, there were times in which I could hear the actual words that the creek was speaking or overlapping words, but I was only getting a little bit here and a little bit there. So it was still really mysterious to me, it was something that I wanted more of. It wasn't an overt message in any way.
Clare Hedin:Mhmm. Got it. Thank you. Thank you. And here's another one, just in the same stanza.
Clare Hedin:It's music is urgent, layered, multi voiced, many tongued. And this might be just an extension of what you were just saying, but it made me wonder how is the movement of water musical to you?
Deborah:I think because it has all the characteristics of music. It's got complex rhythms that are sometimes recurrent and often changeable. It's got layers of stacked pitches that change also. So it's just as complex and compelling as any musical piece.
Clare Hedin:I love that. The many tongued makes me think of, like, groups of people singing.
Deborah:Mhmm.
Clare Hedin:You know, it could be multicultural, but just polyphonic. Yes, and sometimes polyrhythmic all at the same time.
Deborah:Right, yeah. I like the play on the word tongue which can mean language or it can just mean this organ in our mouth that allows us to speak and sing. Exactly.
Clare Hedin:Yeah. And then the last question from this poem for me comes from the very last line, which says, Always itself, but always becoming other. My question is, what does it mean to you to be oneself yet also becoming other? If you could describe what does that look like, maybe it means also what does it feel like? How do you experience being having two experiences simultaneously?
Deborah:Right, or maybe selfness and oneness. I think what I try to learn from water is that it's okay to be changeable. It's okay to change, it's okay to grow, it's okay to accept new experiences within yourself and let that change you and become someone else on the other side of that. Not to be afraid of that. There's a fundamental selfhood that transcends all of those inputs and changes.
Clare Hedin:Also, for me it also speaks to the interdependency of life, that when we aren't individual as such, we're simultaneously autonomous but in communion. An example of that in terms of in the exterior world, this commercial world that can really threaten the beauty of what's being described here, is that I hear a lot of people who describe themselves as entrepreneurs or successful, in quotes, businessmen. And they love to say they've done it on their own. But that doesn't take into account any kind of workforce, the use of civic, like roads, energy. There are mothers who
Deborah:gave to mothers who gave
Clare Hedin:birth to them. Somebody raised them. Somebody funded them. Nothing happens on its own. And that's true in human life as it is in nature.
Clare Hedin:Everything depends on everything, is affected by everything and affects everything.
Deborah:Yeah, that's so true, so true. And I do think that part of the situation we find ourselves in now with this divide from nature and the deleterious effects of our domination comes from that extreme definition of self as divided from nature and from other people, that individualism especially in America. I'm going to
Clare Hedin:reread Deborah's poem Dreaming with Grey Eagle Creek, which started with an excerpt from Rilke, La Fontaine, Fountain. I want but one lesson and it is yours, fountain, who tumbles into yourself, that of the daring waters to whom is given this celestial return to earthly life. Even now in late summer, Grey Eagle Creek runs from Long Lake, making its way to the Feather River. At the lodge, it cascades into a pool. This is not a monumental waterfall but it is plentiful enough to fill my parched and weary spirit.
Clare Hedin:As it drops, the stream divides into feathery plumes that braid and unbraid down the dark face of the cliff. For a moment, as water rushes to meet itself, it becomes light and air. All night long, the creek sings through my dreams. Across from the cabin door, it descends in tears of low falls. As it spills over the stones, its music is urgent, layered, multi voiced, many tongued, lapping, licking, liquid, constant but incessantly recreated, always itself but always becoming other.
Deborah:Alright, dear listeners. Here is your prompt for this episode. Think about the first watery place, a stream, a river, a lake, an ocean shore that touched you deeply when you were a child. What can you remember about that experience? See where your poem takes you and send it to us at curiositycatpodcasts@gmail.com.
Deborah:We promise to respond and maybe include your work in a future show. We love hearing from you. See our show notes for more details from these two river and stream episodes and for the written versions of our poems. Don't forget to share, subscribe, and tell your friends about our podcast, and thank you for that. The music for season two is Emile Pessard's Andalus, played by me, Deborah Schmidt, on flute, accompanied by Brian Baker on piano.
Deborah:Production and editing by Sue Boudreaux in El Sobrante, California. Thank you so much for listening.